Reviewed in Journal of Financial Service Professionals - 01/01/2000:

Individuals serious about understanding the personal, corporate, and societal impacts of the shift toward defined contribution pensions should read Olivia Mitchell and Sylvester Schieber's Living with Defined Contribution Pensions: Remaking Responsibility for Retirement. The book is a compilation of the work of today's premier researchers on pensions. ...The articles in each part provide insight into many of the major issues ... along with a wealth of current data in support of the analysis. Examples include but are not limited to questions such as the following: What factors influence employees to contribute to plans? How financially literate are employees? Why do some employees spend, rather than roll over defined contribution pension amounts when they change jobs? What are the trends in defined contribution pension services? What policy options would spur more savings by employees? What is the future of the defined contribution revolution?

The book's major strength is its superb integration of corporate and personal financial planning, pension, and political issues. Understanding pension behaviors and trends requires a multidisciplinary approach. One particularly distinctive contribution of Mitchell and Schieber's editorial work is that the corporate issues have not been relegated to the background. Employer incentives are relevant to pension trends; to ignore business issues is to have a very incomplete picture. The articles in this book give the necessary attention to the nexus of corporate issues surrounding the core trend toward a shift to defined contribution plans both in the United States and abroad.

Don't expect to digest one of these articles in five minutes. This book is full of thought provoking, rigorous work aimed at those individuals with some background in economics and statistics. ...The incentives and policy implications are complex, and the analysis and discussion in this book reflect this challenge. But for those seriously interested in providing pension services, advising others about pensions, or understanding the trends for their own retirement needs, taking the time to read and comprehend the issues in Living with Defined Contributions Pensions: Remaking Responsibility for Retirement is definitely a worthwhile endeavor.

It is interesting to view philosophy through a woman's perspective. Indeed there lived an intellectual woman, praised for her psychological contributions to society, who still managed to devote a significant amount to writing about her personal experiences of friendship and reflection. She had a passionate love affair with poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and significant friendships with Nietzsche and Freud. Nietzsche once said that she is "by far the smartest person I ever knew." Indeed, such a woman once existed - her named was Lou Salome. Indeed the story is about Lou's life, yet intern the reader is introduced to Ree, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud. Reading "Looking Back" is quite a different experience than reading Nietzsche, or a nook of Rilke poems. It reminds us that these masters were human beings; they had feelings! Lou was present throughout a period of depression in both Nietzsche and Rilke. She wrote when they were mentally paralyzed. What strategies must a woman use to flirt with the some of the greatest minds of her time? Overall, how does she manage to have a successful career as well as be the subject of her lovers' poetry? Lou Salome's "Looking Back" answers some of these questions, and breaks the barrier between the words 'philosopher' and 'friend'.

Simply, I read this book because Dr. Mitchell's earlier book on Charles James Fox was so fascinating. While the personalities of the two great men must have made writng about Melbourne a bit harder to enliven, it is a fascinating biography of a man I previously knew very little about.

John Mitchell not only writes about treasure but You can tell he has also researched the facts about treasure he rode the hoofs off his trusty mules in the early days of the united states working and hunting for treasure. He had a job that took him in some of the most out of the way places in which some of the treasure was located in and around the old jesuit missions. I know he was there because his discriptions of the area matched later day treasure hunters descriptions to a T. He has 2 books out on treasure hunting, His 1st and later his updated version. He also explains how he got interested in treasure hunting too, which is a very interesting story. His books are real interesting reading even if you do not believe in buried treasure. Thank,s Bill Sharp P.S. I have both of his 2 books.

Those who are dating, getting married, married, divorcing, or getting remarried will benefit from reading this book. It will give you a new way to think about relationships.

A must read!

INS Agent Roscoe Brinker worked the border near Nogales when he was shot during an incident. He recovers, but is forced into retirement. To this day he believes one of his men either pulled the trigger or paid to have him shot, but he has no evidence against Sanchez. Instead, Brinker moved on and operates a private investigative firm out of Tucson.

Car dealer Mo Crain considers hiring Roscoe, but first asks the sleuth personal questions because he knows he needs someone who cares about loved ones to handle his case. The police have no leads into who killed Mo's philanthropic-activist wife. While standing besides her vehicle in a mall parking lot, someone shot Mo's spouse, but the killer failed to steal her car, jewelry, money or credit cards. Mo needs to know who and why so he engages Roscoe to find the answers that shockingly takes the sleuth full circle back to the border area where he was shot.

If LOVERS CROSSING is any indication of what readers can expect from debut author James C. Mitchell, fans of private investigative thrillers can expect some strong tales. The story line hooks the audience from the opening prologue when Roscoe as an INS Agent is shot until he completes his tracking of 900 miles in one week on the odometer of the car used by Mo's deceased wife. Readers will value this taut tale of illegal border dealings (not just crossings) that showcases a new talent.

Harriet Klausner

You don't get more authentic than this book when it comes to German cooking. You can definitely gain some weight reading this book!

This collection of essays, by a wide range of contributors, adds considerably to our collective knowledge of Gustav Mahler, his life and times and the cultural milieu in which he worked as composer and conductor, and of course his music.

The editors, as they note in the Introduction, provided very loose guidelines to the contributing essayists: Beyond refereeing the broad topics for inclusion, the editors largely gave carte blanche to the contributors regarding style and content. This "looseness of control" has resulted in a volume of both very considerable strengths (some of which I highlight here) and a few perplexing weaknesses and oversights which I allude to at the end of my comments.

The "logical bookends" of this volume are an opening essay by Leon Botstein, titled "Gustav Mahler's Vienna," and a closing essay by Wilfrid Mellers, titled "Mahler and the Great Tradition: Then and Now." The former sets the cultural, socio-political and philosophical stage of fin-de-siècle Vienna onto which Mahler entered, and the latter nicely summarizes how Mahler might fit into a continuum of musical composition and practice that preceded and succeeded him. (This new paperback edition also includes. at the end, two new essays, not present in the hardback edition, covering recollections of his daughter, Anna, and recently discovered Mahler "juvenilia" in the form early chamber music and songs.) In between these bookends, all of Mahler's music, and much about his life and times, and how he and his music were accepted (or not accepted) inside and outside Vienna, are covered.

The essays regarding Mahler's music are largely - and splendidly - informative, and provide alternative insights into the music not necessarily covered by the well-known analyses of Theodor Adorno, Constantin Floros and Henry-Louis de La Grange. (Interestingly, many of the music-analysis contributors reference Adorno's "Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy." Perhaps Adorno's time has come as well, some 40 years after his writing this difficult-but-epiphanic work.) But at least three of them are (to me, anyway) frustratingly idiosyncratic. Peter Franklin's essay on the Third Symphony ("A Stranger's Story: Programmes, Politics, and Mahler's Third Symphony") is heavy on largely-irrelevant minutiae and very light on certain matters of true import, such as the significance of the final Adagio of the work. David Matthews' "The Sixth Symphony," by his choice, largely limits his comments to the two well-known areas of conjecture/dispute: the ordering of the two inner (Scherzo, Andante) movements and the matter of whether the final movement should have two hammer blows or three. (I am personally in agreement with both of his choices, but that is largely beside the point.) And Colin Matthews' "The Tenth Symphony" is largely a technical analysis of the available raw materials of the work left by Mahler for realization by others but very little about what interests most Mahlerites regarding this final work: A detailed comparison of the various "performing versions" or "realizations" that exist.

Among the many personal "resonances" for me are the following: A finely-crafted analysis of Mahler's "Opus 1," his "Das klagende Lied" (but absent the fact that a splendid recording of the 1997-discovered Ur-text score has been made by Kent Nagano); (finally) a musicological connection between Mahler and Hector Berlioz, by way of how the widely-separated octaves (of trombone pedal tones and high flutes) in the "Hostias" of the Berlioz Requiem might have influenced Mahler when he was composing the first "Nachtmusik" movement of his Seventh Symphony; and a fascinating footnote to the analysis of the final Adagio of the Ninth Symphony, where some apparently reliable documentation is provided for Mahler's awareness of the famous hymn, "Abide with Me," the tune that always comes to mind every time I listen to this gorgeous hymn-like passage.

Elsewhere (and scattered throughout various essays) are frequent allusions to certain parallels between Mahler and Charles Ives. (They both wrote "music about music," incorporated "vernacular" music in their works, were almost-simultaneous "polytonalists" and of course contemporaries. The matter of whether Mahler had been aware of the music of Ives is put more in the affirmative than I've seen heretofore; hopefully this is the result of recent research about which there is more to follow.) Similarly, there are frequent parallels drawn between Mahler and Dmitri Shostakovich; the case for Shostakovich being the logical (and most significant by far) successor to Mahler is well-drawn without overlooking the obvious differences between them.

There is an intriguing chapter on some not-so-obvious parallels between Mahler and Debussy (although the overt pentatonicism of "late" Mahler is made elsewhere, most obviously in the essay on "Das Lied von der Erde"). And, for me, one of the best contributions is by Edward R. Reilly, in his essay on "Mahler in America."

The volume is exceedingly well-annotated, with liberal footnotes (many, such as the "Abide with Me" one, of considerable length), and, at the back, a full bibliography of source materials, a detailed index of works, and a general index as well. Clearly, a lot of work (both scholarship and "routine editorial") has gone into the preparation of this valuable resource.

The book is not perfect in all respects, at least from my own personal point of view. Biographical details are not its strength, but there are the volumes by La Grange and Blaukopf & Blaukopf to compensate. (Nonetheless, I would have liked to have seen a contribution by Herta Blaukopf, who is as knowledgeable about Mahler's Vienna Conservatory period as any.) But, as I noted at the outset, its very considerable strengths greatly outweigh its relatively minor weaknesses. If you consider yourself a Mahlerite, this book belongs in your library, alongside your copies of Adorno, Blaukopf, Floros and La Grange.

It's really a shame this book is out of print, as it is just as good as the more famous Ambrose books. The reason "The Making of a Paratrooper" reads so well is that Kurt Gabel was a paratrooper and participant in everything he describes...something Ambrose can't claim. His is a light, easy style of prose that reads easily, yet conveys the emotions, both high and low, of war. Friends blown to pieces or shot in the head right next to you. Moments of hilarity and joy...or the abject misery of fighting in hellish conditions. It's all here, from the beginnings in the tough jump school--it's amazing how hard these men trained--to the bloody European battlefields. All I can say is, this book pulls you in and keeps you there in a way that few tomes do. It is well worth the purchase. I might also add that Dr. William Mitchell, a paratrooper in the same Airborne outfit as Kurt Gabel and who wrote the final chapter of "The Making of a Paratrooper," was my political science professor at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He still proudly wears his paratrooper beret.

I'm interested in crime but all the books I've bought before are kinda nerdy - you know the sort of thing I mean. Anyway, this book is different: it's comprehensive and there are some laughs too. The only criticism I would make is that there are too many British references for an American audience - but you can't have everything. All in all, I really enjoyed this book. Steve Hunte