If you thought devotions have to be dry or boring, then let "Extravagant Grace" take you on an entirely different journey! These wonderful women have truly given us a gift... a gift of Grace in every facet of life. I've felt something was spiritually missing from my life for a long time and now I know how to look for, receive and give others grace. What a gift! Kathy W.

Extravagant Grace is a treat worth enjoying. The six authors each take their turn at sharing their thoughts about experiencing God's grace in their daily lives. These women of faith use a light-hearted approach to show how the deep truths of God's love are applicable in any circumstance. These short, devotional stories will open your heart and uplift your spirit.

I give this book five stars and more. The exercises and tape masque have helped me look younger and feel better about myself. The exercise I like best is the one for the lower face and neck. I use the tape masque about once a week.

This a wonderful book that shows you step by step exercises that truly help the elasticity of your face and improves the muscle tone. You will be so thrilled, as I was to know the information in this book is both reliable and helpful in keeping your face wrinkle free.

Family Literacy is an excellent resource for both educators and parents. Not only is it filled with ideas to help a child become a better reader and writer, but the activities are fun! I have used these activities with hard to reach students and shared them with many families. They are always a hit. I would encouage you to buy any books by Marcia Ardis---and if at all possible attend one of her seminars. She will inspire you more than you could imagine!

Family Literacy is an intriguing book developed for parents and educators concerned about the development of emergent readers and writers. This resource is perfect for educators-parents involved in promoting the literacy movement within their children and within themselves! READ IT!

Words cannot do this book justice. This is one of the finest studies of military bureaucracies rejecting change and protecting the old order that has ever been written. Anyone who wants to know how big Rumsfeld's challenge is in trying to transform the Pentagon must read this book.

Johnson was a career soldier before going to RAND. He has a deep sense of how military cultures operate. His portrait of the cavalry wing rejecting modernity is humorous and tragic simultaneously. It is a case study in how large bureaucracies protect themselves and their caste system from being threatened by new developments.

Equally, if not more fascinating, is his conclusion that the Air Corps was equally one sided in favoring its theory of big bombers. While the cavalry drove out officers who believed the time of the horse was past, the Air Corps drove out officers who believed fighter planes were powerful opponents for bombers. In some ways the Air Corps self-blindness was as dangerous as the cavalry's total identification with an obsolete past. The refusal to recognize the vulnerability of the bomber meant that bomber crews in Europe would have the greatest risk of dying of any elements of the American military.

Johnson also reports on the tankers fixation with lighter, less powerful "fast tanks" rather than the heavier, more powerfully armed versions the Germans settled on. The American fixation was on a fast tank that could break through and run amok behind enemy lines but was incapable of standing up to German tanks in one on one fights. The result was a tank that led to many more American casualties than necessary. Interestingly, all post World War II American tank designs have been based on the German model of heavy armor and heavy guns.

This is a very thoughtful book filled with quotes from sincere, serious professional military men who were dead wrong but determined to protect their views and to use their position in the hierarchy to get the job done.

It is a sobering story for anyone who would modernize a large, complex military bureaucracy.

This absorbing history of the U.S. Army between the world wars and on into the Second World War illuminates not only the past but the present and future. As his title indicates, author David Johnson traces two main themes: the Army's responses to the challenges and opportunities presented by the airplane and tank. He shows that these responses, although very different, were both seriously inadequate in ways that proved very costly in the test of war -- and he shows why and how these inadequacies developed. Johnson, a former professional Army officer and National War College instructor, is not dedicated to any theoretical framework. He tells the story very clearly and directly, relying on deep research in primary sources, and draws his lessons from the events as they occurred. He understands the people and the institutions and organizations within which they acted, and he views them sympathetically but dispassionately and objectively.

The story Johnson tells is not one of inevitable historical forces but of human decisions. The decisions were made under the influence of institutions and events, but were not determined by them. They were not catastrophic, but they were well short of optimum. Many Americans died as a result of deficiencies that could well have been avoided.

Because it does not tie the story up in a neat theoretical package, Johnson's book offers no canned recipe for success in responding to present and future challenges and opportunities. Instead, it provides a rich source of inspiration and caution, and a stimulus to thought.

There are a few disappointments, although minor in comparison to the book's strengths: (1) I would have liked to have seen a deeper analysis of the part played by technological factors. While we are too often treated to on-dimensional purely technological approaches to such questions, I feel Johnson goes a bit too far in the other direction. (2) Johnson's citation system for sources, while adequate for a brief article, becomes frustratingly cumbersome at book length. It is too often a real struggle to unearth exactly what his source for a given point is.

Another book that can profitably be read as a complement to this one is William O. Odom's _After the Trenches: The Tranformation of U.S. Army Doctrine, 1918-1939_ (Texas A&M U. Press, 1999).

Will O'Neil

This is a really great book. I've read all of them in the series. Libby hears a man named Franz play the fiddle and knows he's really good. But Libby feels that he has a secret that he's keeping back from everyone. Libby, Caleb, and Peter try and find out what it is. Then Franz's violin is stolen and they have three suspects.

I really like the ending, especially what Libby is thinking in her mind. (Can't tell you what!) You've got to read this book!

The Fiddler's Secret is my favoret of the series. I think its cool how Libby's Pa finaly marries (cant tell who). But I think its sad how Jordan and his family have to leave the Christina.

I have read buthaina al nasiri in Arabic. When I got a copy of the English translation of her stories entitled ( final night), I was relieved to find the translation is so good that it maintains the spirit of the writer. I am glad, being an Iraqi myself that more people around the world will be able now to read Buthaina Al Nasiri and to enjoy her world and characters as we have done for the last 30 years or so.

Before reading these short stories of the Iraqi writer Buthaina Al Nasiri , I thought I knew everything about the Arab ways, being an Arab myself; but these stories were a new revelation to me. The stories take you swiftly into a journey inside the head and heart of arab men and women. The writer , though , a woman herself but she writes with understanding and love about people in general . The stories are lively with wonderful diversity of characters : there is this prisoner of war who has returned to a family that he does not seem to know anymore; the German couples who have emigrated to Israel but still yearn to what they really consider (home); the lonly old lady with her long cherished love letters; the beggar who fails to train a dog for the circus; the final night of two lovers who find living together impossible; the strange encounter of a taxi driver and a street -walker in a windy rainy night , and several more .
Buthaina Al Nasiri writes in a startling way and the stories compell you to change your attitudes and to remember the characters as if you have known them all your life.

Tim Johnson's new book on job hunting seemed to be a good one so we ordered one for our granddaughter. She thought it so good that my brother ordered one for his son-in-law. Both books were shipped immediately and apprecated the books and the good service.

This is a great book to read to help you in the current situation in the job market. This is an excellent book that takes you through a series of simple execises to help you reach you goal of getting a job you are suited for. Easy reading and to the point no extra jargone to confuse you but simple steps to a simple goal of getting a job in tough times.

Delightful entertainment! The author's sensitive, tonque-in-cheek sense of humor culminates in her poem CowBoy Poetry: Out of Style.

This book puts you right there in the saddle, or on the dance floor waiting to be twirled, or creates flashbacks of women I've known as rough as Rawhide Annie. But then again, it brings back haunting sweetness of shy, old cowboys I knew in Northern California, always-perfect gentlemen. It gets right to the point of the differences of people where you least expect to find them. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that loves Poetry and loves the West. It hits both marks square on.

I love all Robert Johnson's work. I find him easy to read and understand.

"This book is about our wounded feeling function, probably the most common and painful wound which occurs in our Western world. It is very dangerous when a wound is so common in culture that hardly anyone knows there is a problem." Johnson opens his book with these provocative sentences. The first thing he does is convince the reader that the problem exists, and is of considerable scope. For example, our modern English language is not really adequate for a full description of the problem, having the vague and much abused word "feeling" and only one word, equally vague, for "love". Johnson, a Jungian analyst, explores the problem using myths -- the Fisher King and the Handless Maiden, to demonstrate the wounded feeling function in, respectively, masculinity and femininity. Through the myths, Johnson not only diagnoses the problem, but makes practical suggestions for healing. This wonderful little book, scarcely 100 pages long, can be read in an afternoon, although its insights could change the directions of a life.

Telling the truth can be a painful exercise. Telling the truth can open unhealed wounds with poisonous pus erupting. Once told the silence is broken. Only then can truth be liberating and true healing can take place.

African-american women get the truth told about their lives in this diverse collection of essays, poetry, interviews and photography. Through these various mediums we engage Black women in discussing the difficulties in telling about their lives, healings which took place, relationships that have been broken and reclaimed and the challenges of resisting marginalization.

For years many gifted Black women have been relegated into the obscurity of silence by the culture at large and sadly by their own people. Travel with Alice Walker as she rescues Zora Neale Hurston from the pit of obscurity. Walker shares with us the adventure of one Black woman writer searching to honor another Black woman writer who was placed in obscurity. Zora was independent and shows what happens to a woman with a mind of her own.

Kate Rushin questions us about suicide. Are Black women crazy enough to consider it? We're too busy going through life changes to worry about it. Or do we? Consider Rushin's poetry. Overall this volume presents Black women as they are. They are not the superwomensapphiresbitchesmammies and other stereotypes that are placed upon them but are reflective, intelligent women whose lives have enriched their culture. A brief glimpse of their works enables us to appreciate them for whom and what they are. Through the telling of the truth then we can appreciate ourselves and those women in our communities who have given so much. By all means put this book in your own personal library. I have.

I bought this book this weekend after hearing Drs. Bell Scott and Johnson-Bailey read from it on campus. I did not expect to be so moved, to experience the power of these stories. Once I did, though, I had to buy the book to read the rest of it. I was amazed by my own emotional reaction to stories so far removed from my life as a young, white, yankee girl.