As I am a loan officer, I think that this book is a masterpiece. Eespecially, The book covers the naked analysis of an unsucessful corporate's financial statement. I'd like to call it Corporate Anatomy!

I live in New Orleans, and was excited about reading this book written by two New Orleans Detectives. When all the news broke about the New Orleans cemetary thefts, it broke my heart. Reading this book gave me a sense of justice in that the citizens of New Orleans will not tolerate this kind of evil.

Magnificent Meekness is Morton Bustard's guide to greatness in the now kingdom of God. His major points are that God can and will use us in spite of our weaknesses; God can and will use us in spite of our circumstances; and God can and will us in spite of our mistakes. These are perhaps summed up in Bustard's statement, "The key to highly effective ministers and leaders is they have an understanding of weakness." He challenges us to seek what's best in place of what's right; otherwise, our shrines may become our sepulchres. Alternately uplifting and challenging, it is a book which I hope to share with others as the author requests. Giving the book a good, thoughtful reading should encourage anyone to agree with D.L. Moody who often said:" The world has yet to see what God can do through a man who is totally yielded to Him. I want to be that man." Magnificent Meekness can be the catalyst for change that starts one down the road toward the awesome relationship God intended for all of us to have with Him.

"A play should educate and entertain," said Carlos Morton, using his Univ. of Calif., Riverside, professor voice, in a 1989 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW (LATR) interview by Lee A. Daniel of Texas Christian University. This 1983 anthology was the first published of Morton's plays. It includes "The Many Deaths of Danny Rosales" (1976), "Rancho Hollywood" (1980), "Los Dorados" (The Golden Ones, 1978), and "El Jardin" (The Garden, 1975). (Dates represent year of first production.) Morton was born in Chicago, Ill., but his father's military career necessitated moves to other cities in the U.S. and Latin America. The playwright's escapades as a young man included hitchhiking to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and back in nine months so that he could improve his Spanish. It was his grandfather who lifted the surname "Morton" from a Morton Salt billboard; the name change worked like a charm for grandpa Carlos Perez who finally reeled in a job the first time he used it. (See Alicia Arrizon's bio on Morton in CHICANO WRITERS, 2nd ser., DICTIONARY OF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY, vol. 122.)

The spark for "The Many Deaths of Danny Rosales" was a NEW YORK TIMES clipping about the 1975 murder of a 26-year-old Chicano construction worker by the police chief of a rural Texas town near San Antonio. A slap-on-the-hand sentence dispensed as justice mobilized Chicanos to request a federal investigation. Morton read through court transcripts and interviewed local residents. The courtroom drama was written with input from Morton's fellow M.F.A. students at Univ. of Calif., San Diego (UCSD). The actual names of the people connected to the criminal incident were used in that 1977 version. However, their names and the play's title were changed when Morton reworked the script in 1980 for the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts in Los Angeles. The play "is seemingly calculated to rouse the audience from their seats directly into a protest rally," wrote TIME magazine in 1988. It won Joseph Papp's 2nd National Latino Playwriting Contest in 1986.

In 1995 I saw a production of "Rancho Hollywood" performed by Grupo de Teatro Sinergia at Unity Arts Center Theatre in Los Angeles. The playwright was in attendance. "Rancho" is a tongue-in-cheek account of California history beginning with the territory's collision with Manifest Destiny. It's also a parody of the popular Ramona pageant, officially designated California's State Outdoor Play, based on Helen Jackson's 1884 novel RAMONA of a doomed romance between an indigenous man and a Spanish senorita. As the play opens, they're busily filming "Ye Olde California Days." The movie's cast of characters includes Governor Rio Rico and his family. (The truth is the last Mexican governor of California was Pio Pico; Morton's "Rancho" character names have a tendency to wink back.) The playwright pulls out all the stops to get clear shots at culturally disparaging cartoon media stereotypes and "it-don't-hold-water" racial prejudices.

"Los Dorados" (The Golden Ones) can be thought of as a prequel to "Rancho Hollywood" though "Dorados" was written first. It's a seriocomic reconstruction of the initial meetings between a California indigenous tribe self-named the Kemyia and the invading Spanish soldiers and missionaries. The characters occasionally access a contemporary frame of mind, which creates a cognitive dissonance leading to laughter or reflection, perhaps both.

"El Jardin" is a Chicano musical spin on the Adam-and-Eve myth (Adam-vs.-Eve is more like it). Bennett B. McClellan in a 1977 LATR review wrote, "Given the context of the play, and the stage of development of Chicano theatre, I perceive that it is a work of great innovation and even daring." (It was called "El Garden" for the 1976 UCSD production to advertise that the play was not wholly in Spanish.) John Igo for the SAN ANTONIO LIGHT said of Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center's 1983 production, "It's toughminded and hurtful, wise and silly, pious and profane, primitive and subtle, but unfailingly interesting." La Serpiente (The Serpent) and a "Just-Do-It!" Eva play against Dios (God) and a stick-in-the-mud Adan. The characters are jerked from a paradise of ignorance...to the year of Christopher Columbus...to the top of an Aztec pyramid where Eva eats tuna (prickly pear) from the Forbidden Tree..to the suburbs of Chicago...to land in the middle of the Chicano movement. Sounds like a familiar journey, doesn't it?

Dr.Heller has done it again. She has written a useful book for the special educator. A must for the teacher of severely impaired students.

I have loved the poetry of Morton Marcus since his 1972 book, Santa Cruz Mountain Poems. Now he has released a collection of finely honed prose poems. Marcus anchors philosophical insights to dazzling imagery and metaphors. He explores the line between essay and poem, prose and poetry--but he remains firmly grounded as a poet. His work is accessible, appealing, and profound.

If you like to read material that uses vivid word pictures to deal with thought-provoking subjects ranging from childhood to our place in the cosmos, then this is the perfect book. Marcus is never didactic, but pulls us brilliantly into his world and helps us to see as he does.

In "My Father's Hobby," Marcus describes a man who collects sneezes--and makes the whole description work perfectly. "Fire" is an extended poem in 26 short parts. Beginning with a burning house that "...seemed a god had gotten loose inside and was raving against his creation..." Marcus effortlessly alludes to Troy, the burning of Rome, Alexandria, the Chinese poet Wei Chuang, cremating Shelley's body, Aborigines, and many other elements in a masterful display. "My Encounter with the Eternal Mystery" not only holds us in suspense, but allows us to make the supreme discovery at the same time the narrator does.

In one of the final poems in the book, "The Library," Marcus writes, "When I die, I will be a book on a shelf in the library, and this notion doesn't bother me. I look forward to leaning against Melville and Montaigne, and I can't wait to stand in the ranks shoulder to shoulder with Rabelais, Sterne, and Twain..." He goes on to mention Cervantes, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Li Po, Whitman (and he should have added Borges). Moments Without Names fits well with the books of these authors, and even enlarges the literary world of these giants.

Moments Without Names certainly deserves a wide reading, and I recommend it enthusiastically.

"Morton Gould/American Salute," by Peter W. Goodman, should appeal to anybody with even a passing interest in modern American music. Goodman, who had extensive access not only to the subject himself, but to the efforts of previous, would-be biographers, breezily moves the story of Gould's life along. The central theme of the book is the composer's unfulfilled, life-long yearning for acceptance in his field. At every turn, Goodman explains, from his early success in radio, to his widespread play by "secondary" orchestras, Gould snatched despair from the jaws of professional satisfaction. Gould's continuous battle with depression weaves through the narrative.

The author goes to great lenghts to vividly protray on the written page what, one imagines, really must be heard to be fully appreciated in Gould's work:

"'Dance Variations' is in four movements, most of which fly by at breakneck speed. Gould's harmonic language and organization are tonal and conventional, yet the music is passionate and unsettling. . . . [I]ts 'Can-Can' is pounding and raucous. And the concluding 'Tarantalla' is frighteningly angry. Far from being a simple-minded crowd-pleaser, 'Dance Variations' is a score of depth and complexity, the work of a mind that is hiding in plain sight." (P. 211.)

Goodman also delves into Gould's many and varied sexual conquests. Unlike many of his peers (Copland and Bernstein, among others), Gould was, most decidedly, heterosexual. The detailed dissection of his two marriages (curiously, to two women with the same name (Shirley)), is a vital part of Gould's life story.

Perhaps the best compliment for this book is that the reader is left with the strong urge to round out his or her personal musical collection with anything Gould! It is highly recommended.

Since his death in 1988, there has been no shortage of interest in Morton Feldman. While alive there was a small but devoted following. The Brits loved the utter beauty, and simplicity of his work, Composers Howard Skempton, Cornelius Cardew, even the improv ensemble AMM speak deeply of Feldman's influence. With this collection of analytical investigations the rigours of academia as well now are making,staking a claim. And that's illuminating because the Feldman aesthetic is the direct opposite of someone the demeanor of Elliot Carter. But herein all the creative periods in Feldman's life are exposed with ample analytical tools of graphic renderings. Here John Welsh discusses 'Projection 1' a modest cello solo notated on graph paper, considered at the time of writing 1950, an experimental piece and something gleaned from John Cage I suspect. Feldman to my mind never had that kind of aesthetic voice for innovation. His concern was always in the aesthetic object, its attenuation, shape, its design and process, as opposed to Cage where the aesthtic object was a by=product of a larger process, hence it fell or stood,depending on the gifts and vision of the performers. Venturing forward, an important contribution to piano literature is discussed by Paula Kopstick Ames, a work modestly titled 'Piano" from 1977, a 20 minute work where we begin to see Feldman's interest in large scale durational values . And if something is missing here it is an appraisal of these massivly long works like the String Quartet, that Kronos had premiered, or 'Triadic Memories',or 'Cryppled Symmetry', or 'For Christian Wolff' a four hour work for flute and piano. For John Cage(1982) is well rendered with structural definitions and charts which mark its divisions. When you see these divisions its odd how simple it is, you always think an analysis will preserve the complexity we hear, or didn't hear or discover a complexity to exhibit the visual side of analysis, for let's face, this kind of academia work is an end in itself. I know of no performers of this music who consult analyses prior to their performative work, Like wise Elliot Carter. The ultimate highlight here is the inclusion of three essays by Mr. Feldman himself. He was a gifted orator, and verbal communicator. He had a gift for interdiscipline- like approach, where he interjects concepts from Mondrian,Tolstoi, Henri Bergmann, something now we take for granted. 'The Anxiety of Art', is an essay and position statement, on that the American Revolution, in art that is, the Pollock, Abstract Expressionist Revolution which rendered New York the art world center was devoid of bloodshed, hence no banners, and the word of subversion is only now coming through. This book is one example of that revolution.

If you want to learn some geology, with emphasis on volcanism, this is the place to start. Ron Morton gives a good overview of geological sciences, entertaining us all the way, and at times even painting frightening word pictures. With comments on poetry, literature, politics, engineering, and human behaviour, Dr.Morton appears as the modern renaissance man. We are all the richer for having this book, and we envy the real winners, who surely are the students in Dr. Morton's geology classes.

Showcasing approximately 200 black-and-white images, this historical retrospective tells the story of Nashville's dynamic African-American community through visual memorabilia, vintage photographs, and accompanying captions.