Each time I think it's time I settled for something less than fulfilling in life I sit down and read through this book. It calms my soul. It realigns my senses to what it is I'm truly seeking in life and in a partner. I have given this as a wedding gift to those who I think have the mind and soul for such small wisdom as this. I would recommend this book to anyone who seeks to be complete before entering into a relationship or who seeks understanding of why their past relationship failed. It has helped me to keep clarity of mind.

This book was a wonderful gift from a friend. I used to beat my self up when I couldn't follow the advice of the many self help books I have. The Couple's Tao Te Ching really changed the way I looked at my behavior because it didn't tell me how to behave. I memorized this passage because it has been helping me through this global, troubled time: "The world will never know love, respect, kindness and tolerance until you experience them in the safety of your love. When you do, it will." It means a lot to me. It's more than just about a relationship with another person. It makes a lot of things clear.

I have a library full of books on relationships and improving communication. Those books (like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, etc.), tend to be read quickly with their advice being filtered through my brain for ideas to tweak our relationship. This book is refreshingly different. If you want to involve your brain by thinking about the deep meaning of the words, you can... or you can just hear the words and feel them nurturing your heart and spirit. Each page offers beautifully written verses to provide quick inspiration or a thought to meditate on for as long as you like. This books is a great addition to any library and makes a wonderful gift for any couple.

I happen to know the author personally and he is the most wonderful guy and it shows through his work and art. He is a great comic creator and I loved the book. Incredible Luke! GOOD JOB!!! Love Miss King ;)

The book was AWESOME!! Every page was full of Laughs, Fun and Wit that kept me aching for more. This is a keeper. I look forward to reading it over & over again, keeping it within reach for anytime I need a good laugh. Excellent buy! Can't wait for the sequal!!

I recall of of the jokes in this book made me laugh for several minutes. The artistry is fantastic. Very entertaining.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds has been a favorite of mine for years, so while I'm happy to see it popularized, there's so much I miss! This is the first book of Urban Legends. There's so much to the book, and so much is so funny, and the financial stuff is the driest part of the book.

That said, I understand Fridson has a theme, and by using these two old works, one Victorian, and one Louis XIV, he shows that nothing much changes: people will do very stupid things if that's what everyone else is doing. More to the point, people will do very risky things with their money, if everyone else is doing so. Examples abound in these two great books, and Fridson doesn't miss a chance to make a point, and usually gets a good laugh in as well.

Tulipomania (when the price of tulip bulbs in Holland inflated beyond the ridiculous) is especially revealing, and though Fridson is using it to make a point about price inflation, I couldn't help thinking also about the marketing technique by which the public is convinced it needs something, then that something is doled out like Oreos to a diabetic. I'm thinking specifically of diamonds, but there are lots of examples.

Fridson pulls this altogether, and as big a fan as I am of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, the original work he has created by mating a part of it with the other work, and with his own explanatory text is a great book.

I am not an investor, and generally find economics petrifyingly boring, but this book was a fun romp. Even if you have no interest in finance, read this book just to have a good laugh at our species.

The stories in this book will have appeal as long as human beings exhibit great greed and fear in their investing. Those traits will encourage people to manipulate those emotions to their advantage, and these tales will recur with new investments every few years or so. Some few winners will garner long-term wealth while most will lose their seats in this game of financial musical chairs . . . known as speculating in endless opportunity. Fast success draws attention, which draws new investors, which creates more fast success. The price takes off like a rocket ship to eventually crash to earth when it runs out of the fuel of optimism and greed.

No one can hope to be a successful investor without absorbing the stories of these timeless follies.

You will find in this book three sections from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay in 1841, and Confusion de Confusion by Joseph de la Vega from 1680. The Mackay material describes the almost simultaneous Mississippi Scheme in France and the South Sea Bubble in England, as well as the earlier speculation in tulips in the Netherlands. Confusion de Confusion is a translation from the Spanish about speculation in Amersterdam in the securities of the Dutch East and West India Companies.

The Mississippi scheme involved the use of private bank notes to improve the French debt and currency that were eventually tied into investments in a colony in Mississippi. John Law, a Scotsman, was the originator of the scheme, which grew out of control when the French printed too much money and the Mississippi colony foundered. You can read more about this in the recent book, The Millionaire. The basic facts are more easily absorbed, however, in this volume. Following along shortly thereafter, the English began to speculate in stock in a monopoly to develop trade with the Spanish, also tied to reducing public debt. That became the South Sea bubble and the speculation was encouraged by the early success of stock investors in the Mississippi scheme in France. Tulipomania is considered the best of the financial parts of this book, and recounts the amazing heights that a single tulip bulb could bring (with a famous table of the buying power of a florin at thta time) and the problems encountered, such as when a sailor mistook a rare bulb for an onion and had it for his lunch! These three essays are about psychology, and do not go into the market details too much. The descriptions about how the government dealt with these disasters provide relevant information for regulators.

In Confusion de Confusion, there are four dialogues about how bull and bear markets can be manipulated and the consequences, in the context of speculation in hopes of gain for the new colonies and trade. These dialogues are superb examinations of how markets actually work, and will be an illumination to the new investor of who she or he may be up against. The lesson: Be sure you know the rules and think about how they could be used against you.

This book is greatly improved by a series of essays. One is by Peter L. Bernstein in which he makes comparisons of the current markets to these early essays. Herman Kellenberg's introduction explains many of the details of the Amsterdam markets very well to make the de la Vega material more accessible. I especially liked the introduction by Martin S. Fridson in which he points out some of the errors and hyperbole in the Mackay material, and puts that work into a current context. Without these essays, I would simply encourage you to seek out the originals instead of this book. But these modern essays will add a great deal to your understanding.

Mackay's book was reportedly a favorite of Bernard Baruch's, which has helped its popularity enormously over the last 70 years. After you read this book, I do recommend that you read the entire book. Although it is a tough slog in places, you will come away with a much better understanding of crowd psychology than these three sections alone will give you.

The fundamental mechanism for each of these mania is that a new investment opportunity arises that seems to offer great potential. No one is quite sure what the future will hold, and optimism takes over. The price starts to rise, and that attracts attention. As more people invest, the market rises more. That draws more attention and investors. This continues until either pessimism starts to balance excess optimism, or the market simply runs out of new investors. It takes ever more money to create the same growth, so the market eventually has to fall. Along the way, a few are smart and take out their money. The rest lose.

This mechanism occurs about once a decade. Some of the recent examples are Internet stocks in the 90s, biotechnology stocks in the 80s, the Nifty Fifty in the 70s, the conglomerates in the 60s, electronics companies in the 50s, radio companies in the 20s, utility trusts around 1900, railroads in the 1880s, and so forth back in time. The key lesson: If you think a mania will form, do your buying and selling very early in the game or ignore the game altogether and go into safe securities. Either one will work. If you want to split your money in half with half for speculation and half for safety, that would give you the best and safest route. Most people do not have the emotional discipline to sell in time, so it is dangerous to play. The markets will fall many times faster than they rose, so the time to escape is on the way up.

I hope you will buy and read this book, and share it with your children when they start to invest.

When you are done with the book, I also hope you will also consider where else mania take over. These occur in consumption patterns (not unlike tulip bulbs), activities (remember disco?), businesses (franchised door-to-door selling), and entertainment (quiz shows will come and go many times). Be sure you watch out for your exposure to these mania as well. Avoiding wastes of time and resources are an important part of achieving true growth.

This is a must read if you work in any kind of market-related profession. The historical perspectives offered in both books are well-written and provide ample documentation into the history of panics, manias and crashes.

The book, despite its age, holds up well against many modern books on the same topic and should definitely be considered a finance classic!

I really enjoyed this book, although it is not my favourite BSC book.I liked the way Ann Martin made Claudia's personal experience reflect her family expierience. Claud eventually realizes thet the way she feel s about a girl in her class is the way her Aunt,Peaches,feels about claud. Not the best BSC book i have read but still very very good. You'd be mad not to read it!

it's very funny and entertaining for a book that came later in the series and as we all know the books that came later in the series were never as good as the older ones so yeah bottom line it's a good read

Yeah!!! One of my favorite characters has a new cousin! How exciting! My two cousins were born last year and I'm soooo happy! I enjoyed spending my time with them and with my aunt and uncle. It was great. It's too bad that Claud fought with Peaches. She must feel upset. Do they get a long again? You'll find out when you read CLAUDIA AND THE WORLD'S CUTEST BABY. You'll love it!

I really love this book! It was extremely well written and Dawn and Whitney had a beautiful friendship. This book illustrates that just because you have a disability doesn't mean you're different from everyone else. Also Dawn's dad is in the dating game and dawn and jeff come along for family dates, that was also an interesting read. I think this is one of dawn's better books. A great read!

I found this book so refreshing. Very rarely do you see books with a main character with a disability. Whitney is portrayed as a normal girl, even though she has a disability, and that is how it really is. So many books portray those with disabilities as weird, but Whitney is lovable and sweet. An A++ book.

Well the book Dawn and Whitney, friends forever, was a good book because it talks about two different girls, and two whole different lifestyles. Whitney has a desease, can Dawn be her friend without telling her shes her babysitter? Well I liked this book because its about friendship and I think friendship is a very important thing to me.

If you've ever worked with a creative director, an accounting manager or anyone in the ad biz, you'll enjoy this book. A 31-year-old ad exec must win the hope chest account, solve a murder, and explore the challanges of management. Some very funny characters, including a gifted but gutter-mouthed Creative Director, a huckster who knows his business, and a vegetarian Kafka-reading Copywriter who romances the protagonist. The use of the whodunit genre gives Martin license to explore the strange world of advertising, the characters and the fascinating process of art against deadline. He touches on enough detail about the financial world without excess, and the believable, well-drawn and colorful dialogue has all the mercurial fury of Wall Street. Makes me want to read more of his books.

Amanda Boyd, editor of Writer's Digest, announced on April 16, 1998 that Stephen Hawley Martin had won an unprecedented second Writer's Digest Book Award for Fiction. "No one has ever won twice in this competition," she said. "We'll be featuring Martin's book, Death in Advertising, in the August edition of Writer's Digest." Novels and other book length works of fiction are judged based on the quality of the writing. Writer's Digest staff screens entries and sends finalists to an independent panel of judges made up of publishing luminaries. These judges select the final winner. Advertising executives, and journalists who cover the industry, have also endorsed the work as a fast-paced thriller and an authentic look inside the business.""I'm overwhelmed," Martin said. "I felt good about this book all along, and it was a lot of fun to write, but I'd never have thought it would win the top award from Writer's Digest after they'd given it to me once before. I'm keeping my fingers crossed it will do well in the mystery award competitions, too."Death in Advertising, Martin's first whodunit, is set in a fictitious Richmond, Virginia, advertising agency. Shockoe Slip, the Fan District and other prominent sections of the city figure prominently in the story. Martin's previous winner was a suspense novel with a metaphysical theme called, Out of Body, Into Mind. A best seller in the New Age category, it is being reissued in June by Hampton Roads Publishing under the title, The Mt. Pelée Redemption. The first edition under the original title is still available through Amazon as of this writing. (4/21/98)

Martiin, a vetran of the New York and Richmond advertising scene (The Martin Agency) has written a very readable mystery using the Richmond advertising community as his setting. His characters are well-developed and the element of suspense is always with the reader. A delightful bonus for those familiar with Richmond is his accurate descriptions of the geography of the Fan and West End. A very good read. Lit Maxwell, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA.

Perhaps, considering a 2003 survey published in the Journal of Sex Research that concluded "heterosexuals dislike bisexuals more than gays, lesbians and most religous or enthnic groups," and that women tended to feel negative towards bisexual or gay men and women alike while men were more prone to rate bixsexual or gay men lower than they would bisexual or lesbian women. The earlier "Dual Attraction ..." coincidentally hints of similar findings, but goes significantly further than the more recent survey. Most notably, a distinction is made between the bisexual and gay male although both seem mostly to be lumped together in social and research terms. Maybe because of that, any serious study of bisexuality in particular is sparse. The bisexual male, then, is somewhat "invisible," accounting for the fact that most clinicial and social discussion and advocacy come from the bisexual female. And, consistent with the more recent study, the Indiana University sociologists behind "Dual Attraction ..." also come up with a reason that the bisexual male is apparently regarded beneath the gay male and lesbian and bisexual woman. The bisexual man, unlike the gay male, so the theory goes, is self-focused, preoccupied with sex and so sexually experienced with both genders that he feels superior to all, even the straight man. Add to that the apparent belief that bisexual men gave AIDS to the straight community, and the bisexual's social position plummets. Of course, the conclusions in "Dual Attraction ..." are pre-suppositioned on the hotly disputed Masters and Johnson opinion years earlier that sexual orientation is a choice rather than a biological pre-determinant. Even discarding that idea, however, "Dual Attraction ..." still comes out as something of a pioneering effort in acknowledging the existence and explaining the dynamics behind bisexuality. Perhaps no other published work has gone so far as this research. But is it relevant? Quite possibly, considering various surveys put between 25 percent and 75 percent the number of men in America having sex with other men.

This is, without a doubt, the BEST work I've ever seen on bisexuality. Kudos to Weinberg, Williams, and Pryor. Finally ... someone who understands.

This is, without a doubt, the BEST work I've ever seen on bisexuality. Kudos to Weinberg, Williams, and Pryor. Finally ... someone who understands.

A great book for those who wants to learn about Argentinian way of life and traditions. If you can read it in Spanish Language you'll apreciate it more. Regards.-

Listen, if yer at all like me, you've been looking for a BILINGUAL and reliable edition of this great work for some time. Well, I finally took a chance and got this one, AFTER buying the paperback also put out by State University of New York Press. First of all, this is a totally different translation (and I don't mean to say it's better or worse than the other one, just that they're not the same), it's not just the translation (it's a bilingual edition, with left pages in the original spanish, right pages in english), it's fully annotated (sometimes with the exact same explanations for certain words/passages for the english or the spanish reader, sometimes with particular explanations for just one versus the other, which leads me to believe the editors really gave some thought in their preparation of this volume), it's a beautiful, simple hardcover, it's illustrated (with extremely simple -- could be thought of as bad -- black and white reproductions of the classic Antonio Berni paintings), and it's COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED (which is to say it has BOTH Martin Fierro and the Return of Martin Fierro, which is very difficult to find let alone imagine someone being so kind enough to do). SO STOP BEING WISHY-WASHY ABOUT IT. THIS IS THE EDITION TO OWN. IT'S EXCEEDINGLY {inexpensive} FOR WHAT IT IS. IT'S BEAUTIFUL. REALLY. p.s. the lack of a description is what threw me off it for a while, too. that's why i'm including all of this here. enjoy.

It is a spanish editio

I liked this book. BUT I would like to say, to ANYONE, that Ann has no idea about Aus. I have never in my life heard anyone say "Bonza Sheila" or "laid one on" so, if you read a BSC book about Aus, we are not the cave people they make us seem.

Along with "Stacey and the Bad Girls," this is perhaps my favorite BSC book. I must say I still love this series even though it is old now and many of the books are hard to find-in new copies, anyway. Farewell, Dawn is sad, but somehow I like sad books. The cover is cool. (I love Dawn's outfit!) Dawn is one of my favorite (if not my actual favorite) baby sitter(s). She is very excellent (very excellent? does that sound right? I like to say it anyway.)...She was one of the best characters in the whole series...

I love Dawn and this book.Dawn has been missing california more than ever.Especially now that her best friend,Sunny in California needs her.Dawn must face the facts,while she loves Connecticut,her heart is telling her to return to California permanently.But it sure isn't easy.It is tough to hear her friends talk about replacing her in the BSC.Even worse,Dawn can't figure out how to break the news to Mary Anne.How can she tell her best friend and stepsister that she wants to leave,forever?