For me chapter one alone is worth the price. As a group facilitator, Hellinger's insight on the how the system balances and how to approach it from the practitioner's point of view reveals a lot of system thinking in family/group situation. I particularly appreciate he sees his role as a Tao Master, which is really doing something by doing nothing. This book is now in Chinese and we have a study group and an on-going practitioner's group around the topic.

With the wisdom of a sage, Hellinger takes on psychotherapy, conventional beliefs about relationships and what is commonly accepted between family members and lovers in their relationships. Hellinger's message is one of humility in accepting what is, especially the natural order of relationships. For instance, rather than bemoaning an abusive father, Hellinger will stand by the victimizer and have the victim, a son or daughter, humbly acknowledge the father for being the father and to place the circumstances as secondary. In this action, the natural order of the relationship becomes untangled. Hellinger is more interested not in details but in finding what works in resolving problems. The past is past, he seems to say with each page's turn, and focusing on making things right is his intent.

From my personal work, I have seen how this work is indeed powerfully effective, and because of Hellinger's non-linear, often intangible approach, he is a controversial and immensely popular figure in psychotherapy. This review does not do this book or Hellinger's work justice. In reading Love's Hidden Symmetry, I found myself reading only a small section, then putting down the book to sit with whatever I had just read. Each section is worth more than the space on its page, in other words. It took some time to complete it, and a better understanding of what he says will probably only come in time and in multiple readings. Hellinger's work talks precisely about being humbled by each other and our processes and how things work as they do. Moreoever, through his readings and family constellations I have discovered how powerfully my lineage influences who I am. The brilliance of this work is in its systemic significance: how noted events, such as war or murder, can have lasting effects transgenerationally.

My only criticism his is limited inclusion about environmental factors and the role of civilization in contributing to individual psychological problems; this area is not seeming to be his focus. Instead, Hellinger, a master psychotherapist, appears more interested in redirecting our entangled relationships with each other. I leave my first reading of this book still intent on people finding healthier ways to live, rather than just necessarily focusing on their healing; at the same time, I am blown away by what Hellinger does for the individual and family end of things. It is simply unlike no other I have been exposed to before.

Love's Hidden Symmetry is a book that will change your life. Bert Hellinger's wisdom, the love that shines through everything he says and does will touch the reader's soul. His work with family constellations is the most effective, gentle and graceful tool for re-creating harmony in our troubled family lives. A must for anyone interested in therapy and personal growth.

Frank Arjava Petter, author

I am a grandmother of sixteen grandchildren,eight boys and eight girls ranging in age from newborn to ten years. I just completed a two month journey through twenty two states reading Louella May She Run Away to my grandchildren, their parents and to their young friends. From the East Coast, through the South, the Mid-West and across North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and home to California, this story was a huge success. I watched young and old alike fall into the rythum of this tale and cry out the rhyming words as the pages turned, hoping they had said the right word. They found the illustrations to be eye catching and in harmony with the search for Louella May. The story brought laughter and also a happy surprise at the ending. The story has it's own spacial place in our family and will join other favorites, such as Dr.Seuss books, The Bernstien Bears, Beatrix Potter's books or Charlotes Web and the Wizard of Oz.

I have read this book aloud numerous times at toddler and preschool storytimes and it has been a hit each time. The text lends itself well to a loud southern accent and expansive gestures plus there is a delightful "surprise" ending for the kids. It doesn't disappoint!

Well, another discovered hit for my 5 year old daughter and me. She enjoyed finishing the clever rhyming as the characters looked for Louella Mae and much to our glee, the ending was not what we expected...Yahoo!

I'll keep this brief. The stories in this book are terrific.
Some creepy, some scary but all are just extraordinarily well written stories. It truly is a shame this book is out of print. Fans of horror, sci-fi and just plain well written short stories will eat this up. Someone re-print this !!!

Charles Beaumont was a visionary unappreciated in his time and unlikely to be appreciated since his passing. His mastery of short fiction characterization and plot is unparalled by Stephen King and is only approached by the Short Fiction in Orson Scott Card's Unaccompanied Sonata.

The Howling Man and other stories in this collection are outstanding. Beaumont is a great talent of the writing craft and writers like King and Straub stand on his shoulders. He's the most gifted and least recognized writers I've had the pleasure of reading.

Jeanne Marie Beaumont's Placebo Effects is one of the best books of poems I have read in recent years. Beaumont's work is intelligent, experimental, playful, and always satisfying. She is a poet to watch. I predict that we'll be hearing much more about her in the future.

It is rare to come upon a contemporary collection of poetry, let alone a first book, that is as intelligent, exquisitely crafted, and profoundly moving as Placebo Effects. Any reader who loves poetry and is disappointed by the proliferation of ordinary writing will be thrilled with this splendid book and will instantly become a fan of Jeanne Marie Beaumont. Highly recommended.

Ms. Beaumont has risen to the challenge of documenting the postmodern of our everyday lives in this intelligent and profound book. The poems in Placebo Effects will reverberate through the centuries. Buy this book and be blessed with a unique inspiration!

This is a good book with good information. The book was received in excellent condition (new) and in a very timely manner.

I have raised pigeons for over 45 years and have read most everything avaiable about them, This book is a very good one and has lots of pictures that give the reader a clear picture of what he is describing in the text. There are not many good books on the racing side of the sport so this one should be welcomed. I would highly recommend it to anyone that has an interest in learning more about raising or racing pigeons.

An amazing book! Excellent. Brilliant. Inspired. This book is brimming with wit and humor and is a wonderful example of the genius that sprouts out of the European people on occasion. A book like this is as rare as they come... Glover and Beaumont are surely paving the way for a new breed of comedy. Keep an eye out... this book is sure to win a Pulitzer. I can only hope to hear more from these outrageous new authors in the future. Truly!

If you want to read a "take-your-breath-away" romance novel that makes you feel as if you were in Venice, then choose "The Shadowed Heart."

Nina Beaumont captures the reader from the moment her characters make their grand entrance onto the page. Also, if you like to lose yourself in steamy love scenes, and want to tell the "real world" to go away, then make sure you don't have any appointments in your day planner . . . because you won't be able to put this one down!

If you want to read a wonderful romance, this it IT. The chemistry between the main characters sizzles and I mean SIZZLES. The descriptions make you feel as if you are in Venice, one of the most romantic places on this planet.

This is the very best kind of romance novel. I wish there were more like it.

Two men share the same face. One is good and kind, the other is evil and sinister. One shines with light, the other casts only darkness. When one woman is destined to encounter both men, can she tell them apart? Which one she will spend the rest of her life with? I found myself unable to put this one down, and just had to find out what happened next. Nina Beaumont's adept talent for adding twists and turns to her stories leaves the reader breathless, longing for more. She uses the knowledge and experience of her exotic background (born in Austria, she is of Russian parentage) to give spice and excitement to her writing. An experienced author of seven other romantic historicals, Nina Beaumont's The Shadowed Heart is a great romance to look for.

This is by far the best book on the subject of 'Beauty and the Beast' ever written. Betsy Hearne takes an insightful look at the fairy tale and its many versions throughout the centuries. Unfortunately its time span is only from the 1700's to the early 1980's, thus excluding any discussion of the Ron Koslow television series or the 1991 Disney animated film. But even with this, the book is well worth several readings if you are at all interested in studying this 'tale as old as time.'

I found this book serveral years ago, and bought it becuae, well, I love Beauty and the Beast (with the possible exception of the Disney verson....) and this was reccomended as one of the better basic resources. It was originally writen as a thesis , so basically it's all that research available without the bother of looking it up yourself. She discusses the shift of the story from the folktales to the novels and other adaptations of today. Unfortunately it was written BEFORE Disney, but I found a review she did of the movie later. It was pretty funny. It has a copy of one of the oldest printed versions (Mme Le Prince du Beaumont) and a transcription of a French folk version as resources at the end. (I wish I could read French.)

I was going to write a huge review to get you excited to buy this, but I see that there is already an exhaustive review. So I will only say that this book could not be better for anyone interested in eastern orthodx art of the coptic/ethiopian/egyptian sort. It is very very richly illustrated with dozens of full page full color icons. It is fantastic! Enjoy!

You may also enjoy: The Resurrection and the Icon for more material on eastern orthodox iconography/theology

Mahmoud Zibawi, Eastern Christian Worlds, trans: Madeleine Beaumont, The Liturgical Press (Collegeville, Minnesota : 1995), ISBN 0-8146-2375-1, 272 pp., Price: $US99.95

(Review extracted from the Glastonbury Bulletin #100 {the Journal of the British Orthodox Church}. Reprinted by permission of editor.)

We in the West seem to be experiencing a renewed Orientalism, with few more obvious signs than a singular fascination for the eastern iconographic traditions. Where icons were once assumed to inhabit the domain of populist piety or were relegated by many art historians to a developmental phase of religious art (playing, if you like, the Baptist to the messiah of the Italian Renaissance), the Orthodox icon has now come to occupy the long-vacated space of spiritual art in the popular imagination.

As with all rediscoveries, however, the western appetite is highly selective and the palette likely to be attracted to those images for which it has been preconditioned. Such has been the case with both the popular and scholarly approaches to the vast heritage of iconography of the ancient world. Ten years ago, while studying icons intensively for a degree, I noted a eurocentric bias - seasoned with a hearty dose of racism - which underpinned the curriculum; indeed, more often than not the 'naïf' images ('images', we were told, not 'icons') of Ethiopia, when seen at all, were juxtaposed against the glittering domes of Daphni, Hosios Lukas and Nea Moni, to predictable effect. Icons were considered synonymous with Byzantium, not - significantly - with Orthodoxy. Thus those families of Orthodox existing on the geographical periphery of the empire, or whose confessions differed in substance or terminology from the prevailing Constantinopolitan conviction, were marginalised or ignored altogether.

Mahmoud Zibawi's Eastern Christian Worlds succeeds brilliantly in enlivening our knowledge of the Christian religiosity of the East by focusing our attention onto the largest of such groupings, the Non-Chalcedonian Orthodox. Following upon his well-received The Icon: Its Meaning and History (The Liturgical Press, 1993), Zibawi's recent book manages the difficult feat of appearing compendious and yet comprehensive. Zibawi's book must be lauded primarily for its erudition and comprehensivity, but praise must also be accorded the author for his courage in presenting his work from an unabashedly religionist standpoint. By gathering together so many examples from the kaleidoscopic and prodigious output of the Oriental Orthodox, and then conveying the dynamic piety of the images through exuberant, if occasionally breathless, commentary, the author establishes what Olivier Clément coins in the preface as 'the ecumenism of beauty'.

Zibawi begins his analysis with a welcome historical introduction to the genesis of the Oriental churches. Starting, appropriately enough, with the Great Commission and Pentecost, Zibawi documents the growth of levantine Christianity (with the aid of useful maps) up to the time of the Arab conquest and Islamic hegemony. For those of us who have searched for a concise overview of the historical circumstances which conspired to effect a break in communion between the Orthodox, look no further; in the space of a dozen pages the author presents a clear synopsis which will prove of interest to historian and general reader alike. It was with relief that I noted Zibawi is not one of those who concentrate on the discordant, but rather on the unitive: "Crucible of schisms, the Christian East is also the world in the middle, the place of exchanges, and the heart of communions. (p.19)"

The second and third chapters illustrate the extraordinary cultural and artistic conversations between Oriental Christianity and Islam. Thankfully the author, though obviously a devoted Christian, is possessed of a mature and sympathetic attitude towards the Islamic faith and is thus more interested in documenting the interchange between the two than in sponsoring some sort of aesthetics-based polemics: "In contradistinction to the doctrinal objections and violent aversions attested by history, Islam often appears tolerant, transparent, and prone to sympathy. (p.21)" One suspects that Zibawi, Lebanese by birth and resident in Paris, and a painter himself, is in an ideal position to analyse this extraordinary encounter between faiths; one iconic, the other aniconic. For all of the evident differences, Eastern Christianity and Islam share a conviction that that which is properly Beautiful is inseparable from that which is Good, and that contemplation of the invisible encourages the eye to strain towards the transfigured visible. The recognition of this empathy allowed for an ongoing artistic partnership that enriched the output of both communities. Zibawi's enlightened analysis of these shared influences puts paid to the strangely pervasive notion that the arts of the Non-Chalcedonian Orthodox were somehow hermetically sealed before the Arab invasion and remain unaltered to this day. The fact remains that Oriental Christians were, and are, heavily influenced by Islam, just as both were inheritors of hellenism: Stoicism, Aristotelianism, Platonism and Neoplatonism entered both Christianity and Islam, were sacralised, and then refracted endlessly from one to the other, and to the benefit of both.

Chapters four through seven examine the arts of the Syrians, the Armenians, the Egyptians and the Ethiopians, respectively. I confess to be almost wholly ignorant of the artistic heritage of Armenia, but felt overcome by its achievements, particularly in the fields of manuscript illumination and the relief carvings of the church of the Holy Cross in Aghthamar, built a thousand years ago by Gagik I. It seems to me that a good percentage of the literature on the Armenian Apostolic Church seeks either to disavow or to exaggerate Western influence: here the Seljuk, Mongol and Frankish influences upon the Armenian religious arts are all given their proper place. (Indeed Zibawi's thesis, in this as in other chapters, seems to be that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts - a welcome lack of reductionism for an art historian!) Nevertheless the author doesn't shirk from deeming unsuccessful those Armenian artists who, from the seventeenth century, begin to emulate Renaissance and Baroque models. It seems that Dürer doesn't cross the Black Sea entirely successfully.

The chapter on Syria emphasises, rightly in my opinion, the pivotal place of the Rabbula Gospels of 586 in the subsequent development of Byzantine iconographic types. The plasticity of the forms (indeed the most arresting image of the Virgin extant, if you ask me), the unfolding of space, the immediacy of emotional force, and the employment of formal devices to exaggerate a theological program all coalesce in such a fashion that much subsequent Byzantine iconography often appears little more than a footnote. Zibawi then traces the cross-fertilisation between Byzantine-oriented Syria and Persian-oriented Mesopotamia - indeed the Abbasid Caliphate appears to have sponsored something of a mediaeval iconographic renaissance. Unfortunately the latter part of the subsequent Ottoman dominance ushers in a period of stylistic confusion, inaugurated in major part by the intrusion of Catholic missionaries and the installation of Eastern Catholic rites. The later Aleppo icons are all rather stolid affairs, not quite icons and not quite Western devotional imagery. The presence of rosaries and the preponderance of such types as the Immaculate Conception all speak to an art bereft of identity.

Nowhere is the magnificent imagination of the religious artist more obvious than in the land of Cush. Ethiopian icons, until very recently all-too-often regarded as animism with an overlay of Gospel, are incontrovertibly confronting to the Western eye, conditioned as it is by Masaccio's one-point perspective and Michelangelo's (deceptive un-) naturalism. The assault of colour, the confidence of execution, the rejection of tonality and the sheer modernity of the images all conspire to elevate Ethiopian icons from any historical context and place them squarely in the realm of the eternal moment. One cannot but feel the image occupies some sort of dreamscape otherwise only accessible to the saint or ascetic. This said, I can only be thankful that Zibawi didn't fall prey to the common temptation to reduce his discussion of the Ethiopian icon to its 'painterly qualities' or to its (groan) 'child-like innocence and naïveté'. If anything his examination of the rigorous theological underpinnings of such works is more sustained here than anywhere else in the book, thus providing a welcome relief from the rash of recent studies which concentrate solely on formalist and stylistic traits to the expense of the mature theological dimensions of the works. One suspects that however well-intentioned the desire of the recent generation of art historians to reclaim Ethiopian religious imagery for the dubious honour of proto-abstractionism, there is still an unacknowledged debasement of Ethiopian Christianity at its c

This book is evidence of Larry's Biblical expertise and writing skills in one book. This book may not be popular yet, but once the right people get their hands on it, Amazon won't be able to keep in stock!

E. Larry Beaumont is a consulting engineer whose career has made it necessary to be away from his Denver, Colorado home more than he would have liked. He realized that many other traveling businessmen must face the same boredom, loneliness, and temptations that he did, so he spent his otherwise idle evenings and airport layovers writing "Faith in Motion." In 365 daily devotions, Mr. Beaumont points out that God is along on the trip...that He cares...that He understands...that He guides...that He gives the itinerant businessman the opportunity to witness to others along the way. The reader will be refreshed and inspired on a daily basis through Mr. Beaumont's personal anecdotes (sometimes humorous, sometimes heart-rending). He asks, "Does your job serve God or just you? Are you letting Him down because you don't have time to do 'real' ministry? Do you wonder if there is a God at all?" Whether or not you are a traveler, you will be a more enlightened person a year from now from having read, "Faith in Motion" -- or perhaps you won't be able to put it down and will finish it more quickly. I did!