This book offers an up-to-date "umbrella perspective" of the communication technologies that are currently at work and those that are still in development. Updates to material found in the book are offered on the web. A great introduction to the world of technological developments that will be aiding us in communicating.

FROM ANOTHER ANGLE is for teachers and parents--brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles--for any person who knows and loves a child--for anyone invested in helping that child reach his or her full potential as an ethical, creative, intellectual, spiritual, physical being. Pat Carini's compassionate vision of how we might begin to understand and teach our children shines through this collection on the Prospect School and the process of "Descriptive Review."

Margaret Himley has done an exceptional job of editing the volume, juxtaposing detailed descriptions of children and their learning styles with illuminating essays on the guiding philosophies of Prospect's processes.

The Descriptive Review of a Child is based on phenomenology, on the belief that all possible facets of human experience are valuable and important, worthy of inquiry and respectful contemplation. As Margaret Himley says, "Through description the person becomes more visible and real education begins, and it is, finally, this *taproot value of the person* that characterizes Prospect's particular ethical stance and that gives meaning to the descriptive processes. It is the ethical insistence on the hard work necessary to accord others--*all others*--the status of person, with all the complexity, capability, range of emotions and desires, and possibilities that we know ourselves to have."

Indeed, the actual Descriptive Reviews of Three Children--Gabriel, Victoria, and Nile--are at the heart of this remarable volume. Pat Carini and her Prospect colleagues believe curiosity is the core of all passionate learning. Students who are given the opportunity to pursue their natural interests are more inclined to take risks, to challenge themselves to work well beyond the expectations for their ages and grade levels."....

This thoughtful, cyclical work is the core of Prospect processes, a means of discovery that is neither singular nor static. In her lucid essay on the value of "Oral Inquiry," Margaret Himley reminds us that language must remain fluid, that we must resist the tendency of words to "fix" ideas in our minds or to "explain" things in terms too reductive to be helpful. By participating in dialogues with others, by pooling information, we keep ourselves alert and flexible, willing to interrogate our own biases and perceptions, able to see and celebrate the unique spirits and the limitless potential of our children, our parents, our friends, ourselves. The joyful work of description is an explosive affirmation of life itself, the never-ending miracle of creation.

For twenty-six years, the work of Pat Carini and her colleagues at the Prospect School in North Bennington, Vermont transformed the lives of children and their families. Though the school closed in 1991 when the fragile financial base finally gave way, the work at Prospect continues, and the bold vision of Pat Carini continues to fire the imaginations of all who have ears to hear, voices to describe and encourage, hands to help, and minds to remain forever open and alive and curious. We cannot love our children unless we know them; we cannot nuture their unique interests and gifts unless we allow ourselves to watch them with absolute attention and wonder. Teachers and parents who visit the Prospect School, who read Carini's and Himley's work, who embrace the difficult and rewarding endeavor of Descriptive Review, will be forever changed. There is great hope in this--for all of us.

Dr. Pitkin presents a warm and nostalgic image of a Vermont childhood in the 1920-1930's. The book includes descriptive reminiscences of her parents' backgrounds in more remote areas of Vermont. In spite of some inaccuracies in names of people (Miss Welch, not Miss Walsh), and churches ( St. Francis De Sales and Sacred Heart are two churches in Bennington), the author develops a warm and pleasant account of friends, activities, and school and church life in small-town Vermont. The reviewer hopes that the author will continue with memoirs of her high school years.

Barbara Morgan Adams, BHS, class of 1943

"I shall speak of ghost, of flame, and of ashes." Derrida has a flair for tackling different philosophical in unique and roundabout ways. If there can be any "main thesis" to this book (Derrida, I believe would "avoid" such a "thesis" statement) is an in depth and deeply nuanced examination of Heideggars' use of several german words "Geist, geistig, geistlich" and their evolution in his work, including his avoiding using them, over several years. The thread of discussing weaves through Heideggar's ever present idea of "questioning" the "question" and how, insidiously, through various textual operations, Heideggar privileges the "question" [fragen].This includes a look at Heideggar's seminal text Sein und Zeid (known to anglo-philosphers as Being and Time) and even several essays on one of Heideggar's favorite poets Georg Trakl.

In the end, this book is one of Derrida most dense, and "closed" discussions. What I mean by that, is that someone who is not sufficiently versed in Heideggar's philosophy, various emtymological aspects of teh german and french language, Heideggar's relation to Georg Trakl and ultimately the Nazi party, will be easily left out in the cold in this one. Derrida begins with several complicated questions and is ruthless in his close-textual readings and endless re-contextualization of Heideggar's work.

This is his forte. Its just not a great introduction text. Nor even a good intermediate text. Start with Of grammatology. Not Of Spirit. And return to it later with a deeper understanding of Derrida's strategy before tackling this one.

If you read this book, you might notice how one century tends to follow another, but certain problems could crop up, particularly in places which don't define the world quite like we do, philosophically or religiously. I expected to spend a full weekend trying to figure out what this book has to say, but it dropped right into my preconceptions.

Some questions are more unsettling than others, and the question of spirit in Heidegger is worse when Derrida makes it perfectly clear that Heidegger knew how to avoid the question in purely philosophical works, firstly in Sein und Zeit, but treated spirit like a bandwagen that "the leap" (p. 32) would land on for those "in the movement of an authentication or identification which wish themselves to be properly German" (p. 33) in his famous Rectorship Address six years later, in 1933. The key paragraph of that address pictures the Germans, for whom the "will to essence creates for our people its most intimate and extreme world of danger, in other words its true spiritual world." (p. 36) My confusion about this doesn't really start until page 41, where "Spirit is its double." The consideration moves to the Einfuhrung (1935) which "repeats the invocation of spirit launched in the Address. It even relaunches it, explains it, extends it, justifies it, specifies it, surrounds it with unprecedented precautions." (p. 41). What has become a concern for Heidegger is "The darkening of the world implies this destitution of spirit, its dissolution, consuming, its repression, and its misinterpretation. We are attempting at present to elucidate this destitution of spirit from just one perspective, and precisely that of the misinterpretation of spirit. We have said: Europe is caught in a vice between Russia and America, which metaphysically come down to the same thing in regard to their belonging to the world and their relation to spirit." (p. 59). The collapse of German idealism a century earlier was, to Heidegger, the problem of an age "which was not strong enough to remain equal to the grandeur, the breadth, and the original authenticity of this spiritual world, that is, to realize it truly." (p. 60). I dropped a lot of German words from the passages I quoted, and the bracketed "[to the character of their world, or rather to their character-of-world, Weltcharakter]", for the benefit of those who might have thought that he already said that. Plenty of attention is paid to language, but of all the foreign words which might mean spirit, I'm barely aware of how the Latin word spiritus might be sung in church with a different meaning than how German philosophers arrogate about geistliche or Geistigkeit.

Page 63 has a sentence on how the metaphysics of the latter word as well as the Christian value, "a word which will itself thus find itself doubled" form some "profound relationship with what is said twenty years earlier of the darkening of world and spirit." (p. 63). If you are following this, this might be the book for you, if you still want to know, "Heidegger names the demonic. Evidently not the Evil Genius of Descartes . . ." (p. 62).

An open question in the (by now) standard readings of Heidegger is his relation to Geist - spirit. From prescribed avoidance to evangelical inclusion over twenty five years, what motivated this change in Heidegger's pronouncements on spirit?

By following the formations, transformations, presuppositions and destinations of this sea change, Derrida once more opens the question of the question, that famous Heideggerian question or questioning which originates human kind: "Human being is that being which questions the being of its Being."

In reading any Derrida analytique, one is made aware all over again of the many echos surrounding every voice, every attempt to speak. This is particularly poignant with regard to Heidegger, and Derrida does not gloss over the German's naziism as much as trace the hubris of his fallen state.

Is there a conclusion? There is no conclusion. It's enough to keep talking...not to interrupt.

The Virgin of Bennington by Kathleen Norris is misnamed, mismarketed and misleading to potential readers. Described as a memoir beginning at Bennington college and moving on to her first years in New York, the book focuses much less on Norris's coming of age than it does on the events before, during and after her friendship with Betty Kray, the executive director of the Academy of American Poets.

The primary fault with the book does not lie with the author, who admits at the end of the first chapter that the story begins with "an untidy but cheerful job interview" at the end of her college years. It lies instead with whoever decided to sensationalize what could be described as a quiet but interesting book of tribute to a woman who devoted herself to poets and poetry. Norris's prose is clear and easy to read. But her description of her brushes with famous and not-so-famous poets in New York in the 1970's are not that interesting, as the encounters themselves tend to be of the mundane variety. The true kernel of this book is Norris's love and admiration for Elizabeth Kray, which is only briefly alluded to on the book's cover. In sum, a bit of a disappointment.

For a true coming-of-age memoir, check out Susanna Kaysen's Girl Interrupted or the more recent humorously written Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl.

If you're looking for a juicy read, this isn't it. If you're looking for more about the author Kathleen Norris, this will provide you with new information about her, but only about five percent of the material in the book covers her life at Bennington, and maybe 15 percent more covers her life in the '60s. The rest is an excellent biography about Betty Kray and her work at the Academy of American Poets. The book gives great incite into the workings of the Academy and its important contribution to poetry in the United States. Norris gives glimpses of the lives of various poets popular in the '60s.
Don't expect a spiritual revelation from this book. Do expect to learn a great deal about Betty Kray.

I purchased this book the day it came out and returned to my favorite bookstore a few days later to find a large display of "The Virgin of Bennington" with the description "Sex, Drugs and Poetry". If you are looking for the first two, you would find more in a few minutes of a sitcom. Poetry, however, is the main context in which Norris tells the story of ten years of her life, from entering college to moving to her mother's childhood home in South Dakota. While the world of late sixties-early seventies poetry may not seem the most interesting of subjects, Norris mananges to hold the reader's interest until we encounter the real subject, Elizabeth Kray, the arts administrator who headed the Academy of American Poets.

Norris' abilities as a storyteller were evident in her earlier works, especially "Dakota: A Spiritual Geography", and again she takes what might be for some an uninteresting subject and grabs our attention. Readers who are looking for a spiritual read similar to Norris' earlier prose may be disappointed, but I feel that Norris probably sees God's hand in her experiences with Kray.

Highly recommended, well-written and, more importantly, well thought out.

They have missed the point. When asked by the IRS to conduct an audit of your return, the very best thing to say is, "Is it mandatory or voluntary for me to let you see my private books and records?" Just watch, they will never answer - because it's VOLUNTARY! The courts have said so! It HAS TO BE voluntary, otherwise it would be a violation of your 4th and 5th amendment rights! You NEVER have to let the IRS see your records - even if they send you a summons, all you do is show up and claim the 5th each time they ask a question, or to see a document!! The book never tell you this!! So it is ultimately not helpful.

If you want to protect yourself against the IRS, you should start by asking why you need the protection to begin with. Books like this are all about trying to "play the game" as shrewedly as you can. This is absurd, since you're playing odds as much as you are playing the game. the IRS doesn't care about you or the Constitution, it cares about quotas and scaring you into submission.

Freedom is your birthright as an American. SEIZE IT! Read "Freedom in Chains" by James Bovard and "Your Money or your Life" by Sheldon Richman and "Why we mustAbolish the income tax" by Nelson Hultberg. These books point the way to freedom rather than more pointless submission.

THIS BOOK WAS TOO OLD TO BE ON THE MARKET AND SELLER SHOULD HAVE SAID THE DATE OF THE PUBLICATION