This book is different from many of Nouwen's other writings in that he presents lessons learned and spiritual reflections from a very specific event in his life (an almost fatal accident). As he often does, Nouwen delves deep into his own mind and shares his fears and deepest thoughts as he faced death. His thoughts on forgiveness "in the very end" for others and by others, caused me to give great consideration to how I daily forgive. If you fear death or are not "ready" for it, this book provides comforting thoughts for preparing for our real home.

As a seminarian you are always searching for new and exciting ways to attain a deeper and more enriching level of spirituality. However, Henri Nouwen presents in this little book the basis for all spirituality. More than anything, he emphasizes that spirituality is what works for you. Furthermore, he reminds us that spirituality is not some far fetched ideal but brings us back to basics by making us realize that spirituality is found in our everyday realities. The tools for spirituality are not only theoretical, but also practical and need to be utilized in our lives as much as possible. Although a Catholic priest, as I hope to be some day, he presents a very objectified view of his experience.

Henri Nouwen wrote "Beyond the Mirror" after suffering from a serious, nearly fatal, accident with the intent to "...bring comfort and hope to my brothers and sisters who are afraid to think of their approaching death, or think of it in fear and trembling, but never in peace."

This slight (only 74 pages) volume delivers - in spades. The transcendental love Nouwen experiences, the peace and relaxation he feels while ill, and the struggle to hang onto his new experiences after recovering are believable, touching, and all too real. This book would make a wonderful gift for anyone facing a serious or life-threatening illness, or those deeply frightened of dying. I hope it comes back into print soon.

This is a slim volume with lots of white space and cartoons. Although I could identify with many, if not all, of the work situations portrayed, I didn't walk away with many "concrete, practical suggestions," as the back cover implied I would. Basically, Mr. Elwood recommends making prayer and scripture (or, I would add, spiritual) reading a part of your daily routine, which I highly recommend also: I find that starting my day by getting up early, reading a passage from the Bible and meditating on it, and attending daily Mass before work all help center my day and provide me with a spiritual foundation and focus--spiritual food for my mind for breakfast.

The notion that anyone might seek work--a commercially oriented enterprise--to fulfill spiritual needs in the first place perhaps suggests how work-oriented our culture truly is, as though work could provide one-stop shopping for us and we could obviate the need to center ourselves spiritually outside of work. "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but give to God what belongs to God," Jesus said. Perhaps the focus should rather be on how we can enrich ourselves spiritually so that we can bring that spirituality to work with us and thereby enrich our work environment. For to be "spiritually aware" is to be a leader, and thus a giver and a cross-bearer--not a taker. Why should we expect that someone else--our boss or our coworkers or clients--should be providing for our spiritual needs, as though work were intended to provide this paternalistic function?

Mr. Elwood also recommends knowing who you are and simplifying your lifestyle. Certainly, by simplifying your lifestyle, you are less likely to become addicted to your work as a means of propping up a materialistic lifestyle. And indeed, learning to know who you are is an activity that must take place away from work; otherwise, you risk becoming addicted to your work and identifying yourself by your work alone. He does point out wisely that there is a difference between being passionate about work you love, work to which you bring your spirituality and that enriches your spirituality, and work that is addictive and drains you of your spirituality, that seems at cross-purposes with your spirituality.

If these suggestions are new to you, then I recommend reading the book as a starting point. If, however, you already practice these suggestions, you might seek something meatier, as it will only reinforce what you already know to be true and effective.

This is a "must read" book for anyone seeking a more meaninful life in this downsizing world. I have just been layed off after 26 years with a company. After reading this book I could see myself in many of the chapters. The book has shown me how lucky I am to be away from a job that I was never truly happy in. Thanks Murray for putting in to words what I had thought about for a long time.

Murray Elwood's book has many virtues. It is funny. It is full of wise thoughts. It is easy to understand. Read it. Your life just might be enriched.

As a hypoglycemic, I am trying to find out what I can do to keep my blood sugar level. Dr. Murray provides the reader with more suggestions than just eating right and exercising. The addition of supplements is very helpful. He also educates on the connection between hypoglycemia and diabetes. This is important for hypolycemics to know since it is very possible for this condition to turn into diabetes.

I highly recommend Hypoglycemia: The Classic Healthcare Handbook, by Jeraldine Saunders and Harvey M. Ross in addition to this book.

1996 is almost light years away from all the new nutrient info available today. I have both encyclopedias that Dr. Murray has authored, & they are more recently published than this book.

I have low blood sugar and throughout the past few years I have read many books on the subject of sugar. In fact tonight I was reading; The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Program. As I was reading this book I was getting frustrated at how wordy the book was and how wordy the other books had been that I had read before. The book by Michael T. Murray is clear and to the point. It's an easy read but invaluable for the information it conveys. It is definitely my favorite book and I have been recommending and purchasing it for friends and family for years.

I re-read this play recently after being asked to submit a few choices to direct at a local theater, and fell in love with the humor of Aristophanes all over again.

His comedies are virtually unparalelled in the surviving classical works. The humor of the plays, particularly the Frogs, is just as fresh and vibrant today as it was thousands of years ago.

Dionysus, Greek God of theater, has grown despondant that upon the death of Euripides there are no great poets left on Earth. He resolves to travel to Hades and beg Pluto to allow him to resurrect Euripedes so that he might continue his work.

Dionysus, accompanied by his faithful porter Xanthias, travels first to the house of Heracles, dressed as the Greek hero, to ask his advice...as well as directions. Heracles suggests conventional methods (death by ones own hands) before he reveals the path he himself followed.

The two then set out to rescue Euripides. Xanthias, being a slave, is given a foot route to follow, while Dionysus enjoys a boat ride courtesy of Charon, the ferryman of the dead. Upon arrival at Pluto's house, and after a case of mistaken/disguised identity ends up in a draw, Dionysus finally meets up with Euripides.

However, Aeschylus isn't about to give up without a fight...Pluto has arranged for a contest between the two famed poets to determine the better of them...as Aeschylus decries Euripides as merely a 'flavor of the month' among the people of Hades. A dialogue ensues between he and Euripides, with Dionysus left to judge the merits of each.

Full of delightful comic insight into the works of both poets, The Frogs is a completely accessible foray into classical theater that you don't need to be a scholar to understand. While a basis of Euripides and Aeschylus helps to augment enjoyment of the work, it stands apart on its own.

An enchanting, intriguing, and entertaining read.

As a struggling (college) student of Classical Greek, I found K.J. Dover's edition of Frogs to have a wonderful amount of translation help and historical notes, without being overwhelming (or overly expensive). Since the second half of the play is a gentle parody of Aeschylus and Euripides, it helps to have read those authors (preferrably in the original) to get some of the jokes -- if you're new to Greek Comedy, take a look at K.J. Dover's edition of Clouds, which I haven't yet tackled, but intend to. (That one parodies Plato and Socrates...)

N.B. -- this edition doesn't include a translation, which is how I prefer it, but some may not.

On the one hand Aristophanes's comedy "The Frogs" is a farce, but it is of more interest because it presents the earliest known example of dramatic criticism. Presented in 405 B.C., the play tells of how Dionysus, the god of drama, had to go to Hades to fetch back Euripides, who died the previous year, because Athens no longer had any great tragic poets left. The first part of the comedy involves Dionysus, who has disguised himself as Heracles, and his slave Xanthias on their way to Hades and features several interesting songs by the chorus of blessed mystics and the chorus of frogs. However, the high point of the comedy is the contest between Euripides and Aeschylus.

Each of the two great tragic poets denounces the other and quotes lines from their own works to prove their superiority. We discover that Euripides writes about vulgar themes, corrupts manners, debases music and has prosaic diction. In contrast, Aeschylus finds obscure titles and is guilty of turgid prose. In the end Dionysus finds that artistic standards of judgment are useless and turns to a political solution. This makes sense since the problem facing Athens is a political one: what to do about the tyrant Alcibiades. What is most interesting is the implicit belief that the tragic poets had a social responsibility towards the audiences of their dramas.

"Frogs," in addition to being one of the better comedies by Aristophanes, is also of interest because it contains the only fragments from several tragedies by Euripides and Aeschylus that have been long lost to us. As always, I urge that if you are studying Greek plays, whether the comedies of Aristophanes or the tragedies by those other more serious fellows, it is important to understand the particular structure of these plays and the various dramatic conventions of the Greek theater. This involves not only the distinction between episodes and stasimons (scenes and songs), but elements like the "agon" (a formal debate on the crucial issue of the play), and the "parabasis" (in which the Chorus partially abandons its dramatic role and addresses the audience directly).

This book is a great "ground floor" place to start. It deals with the basics very well and in an easy to read fashion. I only gave it 4 stars because I didn't care for the attitude and polemic against "western medicine" and the pro-vegetarian push seemed a rather straw man arguement to me. I do believe that a beginner would get a great deal of use from the book.

A most enjoyable book! >I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It is full of information on >health, medicine and herbs. It is really worth buying and reading it >thoroughly. I am reading it for the third time at the moment and am still >enjoying this title. The emphasis is on prevention, not on curing. One of >the best books on the subject I have ever read.

Probably the most illuminating book on preventative health care for the average person that I have read. It's a must read, especially for those of us who want to minimize the effects of aging and illiness!

Rick Talender creates a new view of collage football for the eyes of all involved. Talender stumbles over an unusual premonition. "Child abuse" constantly realed across his mind. He related it to the treatment of the collage players by the collages and spectators treat the players. Student dealing with collage life as well as playing tirlessly with no pay and no moral support except for the little relatotionship they have with their coach. Rick Telander casts some light on the much ignored situation.

A good book with some slow parts in the middle where the author goes to subjects that could be shortened. Telander is a former player in college and is watching the game he played be ruined. But he honestly discloses more than once that what is being said now has been said since the 1930s.

Maybe Telander should stop tilting at windmills and just give up to fight another fight and that may be my feelings also. But then you read his well-thought suggestions for changing the game and you see they could solve the problem. Let big colleges run professional sports team for entertainment and segment other colleges. The players would be paid and would not be required to attend college. The suggestions are fascinating and seem to address most of the points of weakness in the problem. All it will take is backbone from the college presidents and a few other powerful players. Oh, well. There goes this problem as no one associated has backbone. Witness the Oklahoma president presiding in the late 80s who years later tries to downplay the problems he faced. Witness Walter Byers who presided over the NCAA and now has his own book stating that there is a problem and it should be solved. Where were you years ago Mr. Byers?

If you love college football, you should read this book. Maybe it won't change your mind but it should at least let you see there is a problem. And Mr. Telander still doesn't cover football. Nice boycott.

Telander exposes rampant cheating, exploitation, and NCAA hypocrisy in this searing look at the sordid underside of college football. The author attacks amateurism as fraudulent and unworkable, and shows that scandals have recurred almost since the game's founding (by rebellious students) in the late 1800's. We also learn that athletic programs rarely turn profits or boost fund-raising for their host schools. Despite these criticisms, this author (and ex-player at Northwestern) remains as attached to the game as us fans. Telander concludes his concise and highly readable book with a sensible proposal for reform. "The Hundred Yard Lie" fell on predictably deaf ears when first published in 1989. Still, it's an eye opener for those who dare question football's relationship to education.

It is a very good review on how things developed between world wars. It provides a good insight of the thinking of the different countries and how they coped with their doctrines and how much they took an advantage of the WWI experiences.
I am rating 4 stars because actually I would like much more information rather than 30 pages on each subject.

This is an anthology of various articles. Generally anthologies are the pits as they tend to lack a central them and the quality will vary. These articles are generally by the authors and as such they are of an even standard.

There are a number of chapters that discuss a range of issues from the use of Tanks to the development of the Aircraft Carrier.

The book is interesting although the area covered is naturally enormous and the amount of space that can be devoted to complex subjects is naturally limited. Despite this most of the essays are interesting and not only for what they say. In the first essay about the development of armored warfare by way of an aside the writer attacks Gueridian as a sycophant and also as a person whose reputation was largely the result of self publicity. Later the English theorists Fuller and Liddell Hart are critiqued as presenting overly schematic histories of the First World War which warped the truth to fit in with their own theories. Interestingly the essay then goes on to suggest that the first world war infantry battles were so complex that even now we struggle to understand them and for that reason it was no surprise that Douglas Haig had the problems that he did.

All in all an interesting book although again very much a starting point for the issue it covers.

This may be the one book Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld should read. It is a serious systematic look at military innovation between the first and second world wars and its ten chapters run the gamut from aircraft carriers to submarines to mechanized combined armed warfare (the Blitzkrieg) to the development of radar, the emergence of amphibious landing capability, and the evolution of strategic bombing campaigns. There is a wide divergence of patterns both between topics and between countries. The British led in aircraft carrier development but made a series of organizational and technological choices that left them far behind the Japanese and the Americans. The British also led in the development of the tank but then rejected it as a mobile warfare system and were rapidly supplanted by the Germans who used the 1920s British tests as a basis for their development of Blitzkrieg. The submarine was rejected politically by everyone but was then developed effectively by the Americans and the Germans. The American torpedo failures are a maddening study in bureaucratic rejection of reality and a sober warning to the current peacetime Pentagon.

This book captures the complexity and the lessons of peacetime military innovation as well as any that has been written. It should be required reading for everyone who wants to work on the current problems of transforming the Pentagon.

I am over 65 and have found the "Roth IRA Book, An Investor's Guide" by Dr. Gobind Daryanani to be an excellent information source. There are a number of factors to be considered in evaluating the the conversion of a Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. Dr.Daryanani's book is an excellent supplement to IRS Publication 590 (Individual Retirement Arrangements) since it explains and clarifies many potential problem areas. His book is well organized and written in clear understandable language. The book, together with reference to Pub. 590, provided the information I needed to feel comfortable in my IRA planning and execution.

This book takes some pretty complicated number crunching and makes sense our of it. It walks you step-by-step throught the calcualtions to determine what kind of benefit a ROTH IRA would provide to you. After reading you should easily be able to tell if the ROTH IRA is the best choice for you. Additionally, if you have other funds eligible for rollover into a ROTH IRA, the book helps you determine the optimum rollover amount. I thought is was very well written.

I've been reading a lot about the Roth and this is the most complete treatment I've seen. This is easy to follow and complete. I'm happy to have read it and have already saved money.

I enjoyed the early part of the book. The examples worked beautifully every time. I felt I was learning about C# and ASP.NET at the same time.

As I progressed through the book I wondered when they were going to get to databases. They never did. What about Cookies? They are not mentioned either! OK, no book can cover everything, and who'd want it to. But this one simply doesn't go far enough even for a c#/.net novice like me.

In summary, a good starting point but you'll soon need other books beside this one.

I didn't give this book 5 stars because nothing is perfect. However, these authors have done a pretty impressive job on their book.

Let me tell you what I liked: I liked the introduction where they gave you all of the important C# syntax BEFORE launching into the WEB material. Then they showed me how to get started with simple WEB projects. This included the use of important controls, properties and more.

Then they even did some work on GDI graphics (and I couldn't find this material in ANY other book on the WEB that I looked at in the book store). The book ends with a couple of good WEB service examples, but I haven't gotten to writing them yet.

Well, the book is about 500 pages... Pretty good deal for what I got out of it.

If this book is suppose to be an introductory book on C$# fundamentals - they guys got it right.

I was hoping for some windows programming but I just learned they have another C# book for that.

I found it to be useful, accurate and to the point. A good book.

Murray presents ten teaching methods for Bible study. Some of his ideas are quite good including theological Bible study, all senses Bible study, depth Bible study, and shared praxis Bible study. In these four methods, Murray helps us move past the written words to personalization and deeper understanding on both the part of student and teacher. However, in comparing all ten teaching methods Murray tends to be redundant, as there is a good deal of overlap in the ten methods. Additionally, some of the more current methods are not included in this book, which could be due in part to the fact that the material is somewhat dated, i.e. no material is presented which covers learning stations and/or cooperative learning groups. This book would be a good starting point for a novice Bible study teacher; but, for someone with any teaching experience, this book is not recommended.

Mr. Murray provides a refershing look at Bible Study that is well thought out and well organized. The themes that author provides are fully discussed anfd the author is very thorough.
This is a good guide for any Bible Study teacher in any setting Because the author is sensitive to the learning needs and abilities of different people, he provides a diversity of different approaches.
Murray obviously desires to share his faioth woith others and through this book he not only underscores the value of Bible Study but the value of the method as well.
The reader is surprised by the quantity and duiversity of the methods in Murray's book.

This book provided explicit procedures for implementing various Bible study methods. Each of the methods outlined gave detailed approaches to develop meaningful studies. Being non-technical, the methods used were very student oriented. Evaluations were also given of different prepared Bible studies, although these were somewhat outdated. Several of these methods were used in a class setting and most were very effective. This book is highly recommended for anyone interesting in beginning a Bible study, since it gives a wide variety of ideas for getting started.