The author exquisitely expresses the psycho-social and spiritual conflicts that the seriously ill person struggles with on a daily basis. The author also guides the ill person toward spiritual serenity and emotional peace. The excellent heartfelt expression of the human psyche under the duress of these life circumstances is written both simply and poetically. Faith & Illness offers spiritual strength and healing of a very unique type. I recommend this book to anyone who desires insight to such struggles whether it be a loved one or friend.

Faith & Illness is a beautifully written book. It's as if the author is truly aware of all your mixed feeling as you confront your illness. The author helps to hold your hand in getting you and your loved ones through this difficult time in your life.

This is a wonderful inspirational book. It will help anyone that is struggling with the many various emotions that come when facing a serious illness. When it is read, the reader feels like "ahhhh, someone finally understands what I have been going through!" This is a must for the bookshelf of anyone who helps others.

This book in incredible. I read the book while in the Ivory Coast and can account for it's authenticity. In fact, I have read it over three times as it brings back the culture and the people that are so dear to my heart. Through her incredible writing skills the author brings Africa to life and provides a more complete accurate picture of West Africa. Excellent book, a definite must read.

This is an extraordinarily sensitive portrait of a West African village. The writer really made the effort to know and understand her environment, and it pays off in a warm and tender account of her experience that brings the people and the culture vividly to life. I read this book six years ago, in preparation for a trip to Africa, and the strong sense of place she evokes stays with me still.

Spindel's book humanizes and softens our often bleak view of Africa. The adventures of the American student of West African language and culture remind us that people are not so different as they seem. Furthermore, she reminds us that before European interference, there was gentility and natural wealth in African society.

Highly recommended for those readers who desire another perspective on the continent's people.

This is an excellent introduction to the history and great minds of western philosophy. Even if you are not new to philosophical writing you will enjoy this book since it avoids "wordiness" so many other books in this area are guilty of.

My only complaint about the book was the awful artwork that lends little or nothing to the information being presented. Between the amateurish drawings and the pictures of the moronic looking punk girl I found it really distracting to the overall flow of this outstanding book.

The book is still a great deal, and worth every penny to someone interested in thinking deeper.

This book gives a good feel for the major Western philosophers ranging from the ancient Greeks to Descartes, Hume, Hegel and Kant to Nietzsche, Marx, Feuerbach, Dewey and Sartre and how they have investigated epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and political forms. If you don't grasp everything completely don't worry; some of these fellows, particularly the post-modernists, need to be operated on by Ockham's razor.

even if you're wel-versed in philosophy, this is such a neat compilation of succinct right on capsules of the greatest thinkers, that it can jog the minds of those of us who know it all, but can't recall it like we used to.

The characters in this book are real and down-to-earth, and are so typical of the people in the mountains of Appalachia. I found this to be a very heart-warming story of normal, everyday people who have faced the struggles of life with strength and courage, and how they have dealt with the issues in their everyday lives. I could not stop reading, and often found myself wiping away the tears on my cheeks. Since I am a native born West Virginian, a part of the Appalachian mountains, and have lived through and experienced the 60's and 70's I could understand and relate to this family's stuggles and triumphs. I enjoyed reading this short, but profound and captivating book, and would recommend it highly.

Lucy, Sweet Lucy is the story of a woman raising her six children alone in the mountain region of the U.S. commonly known as Appalachia. Lucy herself was born and raised in Appalachia and the story covers her own children's growing up and early adult years. She loves her children fiercely and her mission in life is to be a good mother and provider. As we all know, there are some things that we just cannot protect our children from. War is one of those things, and when the Viet Nam conflict begins to claim the young men from Appalachia, Lucy faces a nightmare that she may never recover from. The story is about the daily triumphs and defeats of mountain life; and also about how the Appalachian region itself changed during the tumultous sixties and seventies. Wanda J. Groves writing style is earthy and easy to read. The friends and neighbors are believable and real. I found myself absorbed in the details of their lives and really wanting to know what was going to happen next. The book itself is short, but the story is one you will never forget.

A heart warming short story

Very systematic way to develop the theory. Easy to read. I read a few newer books in this field, no one even comes close to this classic book in terms of the treatment of the basic theory.

Detailed treatment of Semiconductor Physics. A classic book in this field and a excellent source of reference for any Electrical Engineer.

This book is one of the early written books dealing with silicon device physics. I use it every day in my research work since it provides a comprehensive theory of the semiconductor devices. It also provides a good explanation of the physical mechanisms involved in these devices. Everybody working in the electronics field, from device engineers to circuit designers, should have this book in his library.

This is on my list of Most Favorite Books Ever! I've looked for SHADY GROVE for years as a gift for people I love, but it's been long out of print. Thank goodness it's again available. The book, which is about the Sudley Fowler family of Broke Neck, Ky, including their relationships--regular and irregular---moonshining, Lonelyhearts letters, government men, picking and grinning, hound dogs, getting "on the draw," and that old time relgion.
Mostly, though, it's about a way of life unique in all the world, and there's a belly laugh on every page.
Oh, gentlemen, you are mortally going to love this one!

I love this book. It is the funniest book that I have ever read. I could just picture them running up on that porch in that old car that was out of control. Every time I get slightly depressed, I re-read this book. I will always have a copy. It's good medicine.

This is the funniest book I have ever read. After reading the first page, I could not put it down. I wanted to know why that preacher wound up with a guitar around his neck. I wanted to know why the television crew was there in Broke Neck. This book is for everyone who enjoys a good laugh. It is just pure fun from the first page to the last.

My first taste of algebra came from Lang's book (big mistake). I then read Gallian's undergrad. book and tried Lang again, it was still very difficult. I finally found Grove. This is a great book. Very easy to read and understand. Although it doesn't cover everything in Lang, it covers everything that commonly comes up in a first year graduate class. The book's only drawback is it's difficulty to find. If you're looking for a good intro. to algebra text (and if you can find it) buy it!

This is one of my favorite beginning graduate texts. Although it follows a very terse definition-example-theorem-proof style, the proofs and examples seem very enlightening. Each Chapter comes
with numerous exercises interleaved with the material, as well as
exercises at the end of the chapter. Groups, rings, fields, and modules are covered in depth.

I will admit that I was not immediately enamored with this book. The luciferous introduction on Keane's predecessors in Paineite biography was engaging enough, but I found his systematic, nit-picky demolition of each work to be just plain egotistical. In Keane's eyes, each previous biography "failed" or "floundered" for various reasons, thereby opening a window for his own, earth-shattering tome on the subject. Granted, it has become common practice for authors to "justify" their reasons for writing "yet another biography on _______" in the preface of their books, but this sort of self-serving, hypercritical overview left me with a seriously bad taste in my mouth. I seriously worried that the 540 pages that followed would be tinctured with the same sort of pomposity - thankfully that was not the case.

The book is a solid biography, and I can very well see Paine enthusiasts flocking to this as one of the best biographies ever written about him. As this is the only biography of him I've read, I'll reserve my judgment on that question, but I will admit that it is an exceptional study of a peculiar man. What the general public knows of Paine is often just his authorship of Common Sense, but of course there was so much more. He penned not one but three of the best-selling books of the 18th century, and, arguably, he initiated modern political thought on the subject of democratic republicanism. Paine was born an Englishman but for most of his life considered himself a "citizen of the world," which prompted a major change in how we view national citizenship - no so much as a gift from the state, as was the 18th century perception, but rather a promise from it to preserve certain rights indigenous to its people. Yet despite his cosmopolitan leanings, Paine managed to ostracize himself from all three countries in which he declared citizenship - England, France and America - thanks to his revolutionary ideals and his fervent insistence on airing his views publicly regardless of their popularity. He would eventually face public execution in both England and France - the story of his brush with death in La Luxembourg prison during the French Reign of Terror is decidedly spine-tingling - but would survive both to end up back in America, ostracized by the generation that remembered him, and nearly forgotten by the generation that followed.

Keane doesn't devolve into hero-worship, despite several initially-worrisome hyperbolic descriptions of him as "the greatest American revolutionary." Instead, the author deals with each of Paine's failings in a forthright manner. Paine was certainly a man driven by ego, though certainly an ego unaffected by cares for money, power, or public approbation. To put it simply, he just knew he was right, and he would never back down from any of his arguments, regardless of their popularity. Even his most unpopular anti-Christian sentiments displayed in the Age of Reason could not be moved, despite the efforts of many to make him recant on his deathbed. As for Paine's legendary alcoholism, Keane suggests it was just that - a legend. According to Keane, Paine never drank to excess when in social situations. He only drank himself into stupors later on in life when the pain of gout and bedsores became unbearable. This may or may not have been the case - I lean towards may not - but in the end it is of comparatively little importance when calculating the worth of a man whose ideas have arguably shaped many of our own modern ideas on government and civil rights.

All told, the biography earns four stars from me on a scale of five. The rating falls short of the final star more because of style than substance. Keane's prose is certainly readable, and in most cases enjoyable, but it was a bit dry and academic for my tastes in several places. On top of that there was some strange editorial snafus, including several instances of sloppy repetition and an imprecise policy of when and when not to translate from the original French. In one chapter Keane includes an entire paragraph of French extracted from a letter (p. 405), with no accompanying translation, and yet in the next he feels it necessary to include a parenthetical translation of the decidedly uncomplicated Dissertations sur les Premiers Principes de Gouvernement as, surprisingly, or not, "Dissertations on the First Principles of Government" (p. 423).

Regardless of my editorial trifles, the book is strong and well recommended to anyone interested in picking up a book on the life and works of Tom Paine. You'll find his life, in many respects, reads like an adventure novel, and his ideas on government and society are surprisingly, shockingly, modern.

As I read this book, I couldn't help but think, where is the Tom Paine of our time? The insights that Tom Paine had are needed today more than ever.

Crackerjack biography of Old Tom (Paine) in the four stages of his life, from his early years in England til Ben Franklin advises him to reach America, the period of _Common Sense_ and the American Revolt, then the _Rights of Man_ and the French Revolution, and finally his return to America, where the reputation of the _Age of Reason_ caught up with him, and his great early popularity was replaced with the jibes of those in a suddenly religious republic, whose liberties were won by more secular sorts (cf. Gordon Wood's book on the Revolution, such as Paine. It is a sad ending to a magnificent tale for a true champion of freedom, one who brought the democratic idea to a republican experiment in constitutions. The phenomenal nature of the sales of his books, whose profits he renounced in the name of his cause, is an episode almost world-historical in its seminal influence. Paine's trek is also a classic snapshot of the 'classic' liberal in his revolutionary phase, and the subtleties of great tomes politcal philosophy seem prefigured in the sheer horse-sense of this man who saw the gist of it all, and somehow at a glance. Witness his instinctive in the spectral course of the French Revolution from the Girondins to the Terror to the dungeons, which he survived. It may finally be that his reputation has recovered at last its nineteenth century shadows where the truest of patriots was consigned.

This book is an introduction to Saniel and to the process of awakening with him. Coming from a guru based background he teaches, and preaches this way of devotion. To start his path one must visit Saniel or one of his awakened associates and receive their 'transmission'.

"Waking Down" offers an intimate overview of the spiritual school also known as Waking Down. As an overview, it combines a deeply informed dharma that is delivered in a refreshing style that communicates the total humanity of the author, Saniel Bonder. I read the book three times, and each time came away shaking my head at the warmth that saturates Saniel's language.

What you can be sure of is that in Saniel's presentation, there is a comprehensive understanding of the pitfalls, the blindness, and the real dangers that exist in schools of esoteric work. What is offered in place of all of these frightening aspects of "hypermasculine" spiritual politics is a value for the individuality and the unique sovereignty of each person. Saniel's view of the process of Waking Down begins and ends with the integrity of the individual, and what I come away with is a feeling of trust that Saniel is truly offering a breakthrough way for Westerners that does not lead away from the world, or from my unique life in it. Far from it: "Waking Down" offers a way for me to embrace my life as it is in all of its particularity, privacy, and limitations in and through the transmission of Being. Further, this transmission is something I felt quite tangibly while reading "Waking Down", and which led me to recently visit some people who have actually gone through the process of Waking Down. They demonstrated to me first hand that this school is based on protecting the individuality and the privacy of each person intact, while offering a transformative immersion in the living transmission of Being. I for one never thought the two could co-exist; now I'm sure they can, and indeed, I see that they must.

To paraphrase some stuff from Saniel Bonder's "Waking Down": The necessary, natural, ordinary, regular, unrealized, unenlightened, normal, usual existence in the realm of identity is one of confusion about who and what you are. The necessary, natural, ordinary, regular, unrealized, unenlightened, normal, usual existence in the realm of relatedness is one of chronic separateness from all things and beings. This confusion and separateness simultaneously together is "the core wound." Patriarchs and patriarchal orientations are as natural and ordinary to human culture and affairs as their matriarch and matriarchal counterparts. These terms should dignify the responsible wisdom and power of human elders. These terms, patriarchal and matriarchal, shouldn't be burdened with negative connotations, but they are. So, out of simultaneousness sympathy with and exasperation with the frequently pejorative use of these terms, Saniel has come up with a neologism for patriarchy and matriarchy that is as yet unburdened with negative connotations: "hypermasculine." The word hypermasculine serves well, without demonizing, anyone who, in his or her family or domain, happens to be a patriarch or matriarch. The hypermasculine orientation in human individuals and groups involves the tendencies toward dissociation, from the body, from the physical world, from ordinary human relations, from desires, from feelings, from activities, from relationships. Hypermasculinity is a dissociative transcendence of all our messy, human pain and mortality. This dissociative transcendence is for the sake of control of (Occidental/Omega) embodied life and material conditions, even all phenomenal Nature, or this dissociative transcendence is for the sake of liberation from (Oriental/Alpha) embodied life and material conditions, even all phenomenal Nature. Simple masculinity is the necessary, natural, ordinary, regular, unrealized, unenlightened, normal, usual impulse, or urge, in each and all of our natures, be we male or female, that seeks to analyze, control, govern, grasp, understand and penetrate. In order to analyze, or to control, or to govern, or to grasp, or to understand, or to penetrate, to do any, or all, of these things, the masculine impulse must first differentiate itself from that, from the other, which it is seeking to analyze, control, govern, grasp, understand and penetrate. However, when this natural, ordinary, regular, unrealized, unenlightened, normal, usual masculine impulse, or urge, in each and all of our natures, be we male or female, achieves EXCESSIVE dominance, in ANY individual, in ANY group, in ANY civilization, this impulse, or urge, toward differentiation and autonomy becomes hypermasculine. Hypermasculinity becomes dissociative, self-isolaing and alienated from that from which it is differentiating. This natural, ordinary, regular, unrealized, unenlightened, normal, usual masculine impulse, or urge, TAKEN TO AN EXTREME, can become OBSESSED with an ABSOLUTE severance of relatedness to all that is felt to be "other," different, threatening, binding. And, even if these urges are not put to the service of that extreme desire for a dissociation that severs all ties, these urges can still achieve hypermasculine extremes: These urges to analyze, control, govern, grasp, understand and penetrate can become obsessive forces that tend to, at least, stifle, suppress, violate and tyrannize "that" from which the hypermasculine mind, the hypermasculine psyche, has become detached. And what does the hypermasculine impulse, which has gained dominance over the last five thousand to ten thousand years distance itself from? From the "hyperfeminine." What has been described as the "primordial unconscious unity" of human pre-history, before written language, of "oral-tradition," is the earlier human cultural format we could call "hyperfeminine." It is the body, the natural world, the sluggish, restrictive limits of material and phenomenal Nature, it is Matter, "Mater" - the female, the feminine in all its forms, that which is dark, hidden, unconscious, instinctual, uncivilized, out of rational control. Humanity has had to pull itself UP into all the hypermasculine cultural arcs, in order to convert its cultural force from older hyperfeminine forms that were primarily expressive of only the elements of earth and water (the static or conservative geological and biological forces) and into those hypermasculine forms that allow and are more expressive of the elements of fire and air (the dynamic and transformative and transcendental geological and biological forces). The hypermasculine arc of classically Western (Occidental/Omega) culture has been seeking to liberate the human psyche and human body WITHIN or in active relation to material and phenomenal Nature, to Matter, "Mater" - the female, the feminine in all its forms, that which is dark, hidden, unconscious, instinctual, uncivilized, out of rational control. The hypermasculine arc of classically Eastern (Oriental/Alpha) culture has been seeking to liberate the human psyche and human body FROM or in active dissociation from material and phenomenal Nature, to Matter, "Mater" - the female, the feminine in all its forms, that which is dark, hidden, unconscious, instinctual, uncivilized, out of rational control, including, even particularly, the material human body and materially based human psyche. Perhaps the most obvious classically Western (Occidental/Omega) cultural arc of hypermasculinity has been the impulse, or urge, toward revolutions in scientific knowledge and technology that have changed the whole world in the last several centuries. The hypermasculine psyche in its Western (Occidental/Omega) mode is not trying to get away from material and phenomenal Nature. The hypermasculine psyche in its Western (Occidental/Omega) mode is only trying to understand material and phenomenal Nature and thence, by rational and forceful means, to control, to alter, and, in general, to govern and exploit material and phenomenal Nature. In contrast, perhaps the most obvious classically Eastern (Oriental/Alpha) cultural arc of hypermasculinity has been the long-standing impulse toward liberation from this world and all the pain and suffering associated with it. But the point is, BOTH these hypermasculine arcs of culture are alive in each and every one of our bodies and psyches. BOTH these hypermasculine arcs of culture are PROFOUNDLY dissociative, the one in order to control and the other in order to separate from and be free of, those fleshy, material, stubbornly assertive features of our lives that each and every one of us human beings find so fascinating and troubling: sex, desire, money, emotions, actual personal relationships, and the like. Literally ALL elaborated secular, religious, spiritual, and transcendent paths, or Ways, end up revealing their hypermasculine imbalances and governing dispositions. To go back a little, if we trace the lines of human history, we see that the hypermasculine paths arose as INEVITABLE and NECESSARY reactions to the earlier hyperfeminine condition of early humanity. In the pre-historic, before written language, "oral-tradition," hyperfeminine epochs, we were embedded in material Nature. We had not yet PROFOUNDLY differentiated ourselves from the world-stuff that surrounded us and pervaded our bodies. And some of us long for, at least, the partial reincorporation of certain of the believed supposedly better aspects when humans were not a "pestilence on the planet" of those "simpler" pre-historic times. But it is not that hyperfeminine or prehistoric humanity had no intelligent comprehension of its own nature, it is just that THAT COMPREHENSION ULTIMATELY DID NOT SUFFICE. Hyperfeminine humanity perceived, and still perceives (where it has survived), that human beings fit into the cycle of material and psychic natural conditions in a very particular way. Hyperfeminine humanity perceived, and still perceives (where it has survived), that human beings are subordinate to ancestors. Hyperfeminine humanity perceived, and still perceives (where it has survived), that human beings are subordinate to angelic and godlike beings. Hyperfeminine humanity perceived, and still perceives (where it has survived), that human beings are subordinate to the mysterious Creator of everything. Hyperfeminine humanity perceived, and still perceives (where it has survived), that human beings are in harmonious, rhythmic brotherhood and sisterhood with other living creatures. Like them, we feed on other creatures and, eventually, in death, are returned to yet other creatures as food. Hyperfeminine humanity perceived, and still perceives (where it has survived), that every living thing is a spirit, and every part of material Nature is alive. Hyperfeminine humanity perceived, and still perceives (where it has survived), that the world is thus made of Spirit, and that the individual and collective human being is meant to live in harmony with the individual and collective world th

Ms. Groves does a marvelous job at introducing yoga to people in the the west.

Yoga is not for me per se. Qigong, and the idea of the meridians ring true for me (based on first hand experience), but if Yoga, and the idea of the chakras ring true for you by all means do something instead of being a couch potato.

My ONLY nitpick with this book is Ms. Groves assertion that if you only have time to do one cycle of "The Sun Salutation) that is enough.

I would recommend a *minimum* of 5-10 minutes of exercize to get the heart rate up. If you want a speedy (but intensive) workout that is still in the Yoga model of exercize check out the five exercizes in either of these books.

"The Ancient Secret Of The Fountain Of Youth" Peter Kelder

"The Five Tibetans" Christopher Kilham

Both books describes the same exercize regimen but calls them by two different names. This exercize regimen took me 6 minutes to complete the five exercizes.

Of the two books above; I suggest the Kilham material because he does a better job in describing the exercizes. Plus it teaches various meditations to keep the mind in shape.

Please E-Mail me if you have questions or comments about this review. Two Bears.

Wah doh Ogedoda (We give thanks Great Spirit)

This is a great book if you want to decrease stress and increase energy. Since I've been following Dawn's suggestions I feel more energetic and relaxed while increaseing productivity. I highly recommend this book!

I bought this book to be a companion to a Yoga videotape I use. While my videotape takes me through a simple yoga routine, it was not very specific about how to perform poses correctly. Yoga for Busy People says "How" step-by-step (with drawings), "Modifications If You Have Difficulty" step-by-step, and then "Remember" step-by-step. It has helped me understand how to prevent injury ("Don't overbend. This posture is meant to stretch the upper back, not the lower back. Keep your naval flat on the floor.") and also when and how to breathe while doing a pose.

VERY easy to understand! I looked at several books before finding this one. It seemed the others had helpful bits and pieces here and there, but Yoga for Busy People is completely practical and helpful all the way through.