A warm, compassionate and loving reflection of how true love in marriage can be. Tom Mullen's words inspire and encourage commitment, acceptance, understanding, forgiveness and Love.

First I read this book to myself and then my husband and I read it aloud following meals. Tom Mullen's faith, common sense, dedication to his wife, Nancy, and willingness to work with her to grow together through out their long, happy marriage sets a good example for all of us. The book documents how two people found joy in daily life, supported each other during illnesses, and other challenges. The author's sense of humor helps the reader find things in his/her own relationships about which to laugh. This book is a "good read" for all. It will be of interest and helpful to those just contemplating marriage as well as those who have lived many years together.

In the wake of sadly epidemic and chronic divorce statistics, A Very Good Marriage is a memoir to be treasured. It is the compelling and inspiring story of a Quaker husband and wife who stayed together and earned happiness through two careers, four children, and chronic health difficulties. Written by Quaker pastor Tom Mullen after the death of his beloved wife Nancy Mullen, A Very Good Marriage is a story of hope, of life, and of facing challenges united. Very highly recommended for anyone seeking a true story of lasting and meaningful marital love in a challenging and complex world.

Is it a book about travel? Is it a book about cooking? Yes, on both counts. James Haller's "Vie de France" tells of his experiences living in a rented house in a village in the Loire valley for a month with a group of friends. Like any good travel book, it leaves the reader with a strong impression of the countryside and the people, the culture and the atmosphere - with memories, as if you had spent that month there yourself. Better yet, the impression is of laughter, or at least smiles, and not tears. It also leaves you with memories of food prepared with care, even with love. Not classic French cooking, but Haller's personal style of cooking creatively yet simply. There is also the sense of adventure that comes from visiting a new place, with a foreign language, new towns and roads, restaurants that run on an offbeat schedule, and supermarkets that have a fascinating combination of the familiar and the strange. To emphasize the point that cooking is a major theme, the book has a table of menus, not a table of contents. Certainly a book about the joy of cooking, of travel, of friends, and of life.

This delightful book brings you to a place many of us want to be- in a lovely house nestled in a charming village, amongst good friends and family, sharing wonderful food and wine. In the US, food, wine and conversation are too often just brief pauses in the real business of life- work and getting ahead. James Haller's narrative reminds you the French have an alternative, a more balanced pace and focus where work is a necessary interlude between great meals and the cameraderie of friends. The experience in the Loire Valley rejuvenated a life-weary chef and the book reinvigorated me- it got me back in the kitchen to cook creatively for friends and reminded me that I had let work once again overshadow my real business of life.

In 1996 having celebrated his sixtieth birthday in Maine, renowned chef James Haller, wary of the kitchen, decides to R & R in the French Loire Valley. He and friends rent a seventeenth century home in Savonnieres. Six people including James would stay the entire month that they have leased the property for while other friends will come by for shorter duration.

The house combined the best of history with much of modern day convenience. The company was companionable both those staying in the house and the locals whose fresh foods at the markets provided James an invigorating regeneration and though he planned not to cook one meal the motivated chef was soon doing all the cooking.

Though the recipes are what readers might expect from the author-chef, the key to this uplifting biographical month is how important friendship is to the human condition. France furbishes the atmosphere that rejuvenated a tired James. VIE DE FRANCE: SHARING FOOD, FRIENDSHIP, AND A KITCHEN IN THE LOIRE VALLEY is an inspirational toast to the stimulation of camaraderie that is a human need in order to live precious life to the fullest.

Harriet Klausner

This book and the Author really lays it all out for you and is very insight full. It is easy to read and understand and I got a lot out of it.

I have read a lot of self-help books on success over the years and this is one is a keeper. You definitely want to add to your shelf and reference it often. The material is both timeless and fresh and the author writes with a very unique style that made the material easy to understand.

I must say that I am also very impressed with the author's attitude and drive. The accomplishments he has made are inspiring and the stories he shares about his life really touched home for me.

The author may take some flack for putting his beliefs out in the open like he does in this book and for taking a no-excuse position with personal responsibility, but the people that will grumble will be those who will never step up to the plate and take a swing.

Take it from someone who has read the book from cover-to-cover and can honestly and objectively comment on the content: it is an excellent read full of very insightful information. I highly recommend it.

James L. Clark's book WADING THROUGH THE CRAP is excellent! When I first read the title I laughed out loud and just had to find out what was inside. I was not disappointed. The author uses his well developed wit and intelligence to convey, in plain speak, effective tools to taking immediate control over your life. It is simple but powerful guidebook that is an essential part of anyone's library that is serious about success.

In particular, I really liked the chapter on emotions. It is tremendously insightful and filled with all kinds of information about how our feelings work and how states are created. Best of all, the author provides examples and tools of how to manage them to prevent being controlled by them.

In my opinion, this book is top notch.

Written by James R. Mancham (the founding President of the Republic of Seychelles, a small island nation in the Pacific), War On America: Seen From The Indian Ocean is a cold, hard, factual look at American foreign policy and its ramifications since the 1960s, from this island nation's point of view. Covering events up to and including the September 11 terrorist attacks, War On America is a straightforward, candid, outside perspective that reveals the sometimes arbitrary and self-serving aspect of America's view toward the world, and its repercussions. Informed and informative, War On America is strongly recommended as a very insightful book and important, timely reading for students of contemporary international studies in general, and the non-specialist general reader wanting background information on how we as a nation became embroiled in a long term war upon "stateless" terrorism.

In a letter dated 31st March addressed to the author President Chirac of France wrote " It is with great interest that I have noted your analysis of the international situation against the background of your experience and wisdom. Like you I aspire that be built, from day to day, a world which is more balanced, equitable and peacful. In this way, France contribute, where ever she can, to promote priciples essential to peace and to the well being of our humanity."
Weekend Nation Seychelles 4th May 2002.

I loved your book!

It is a masterpiece of inspiration, historical relevance, and the candid reality of post modern politics.

War on America As Seen from the Indian Ocean is a must read and must be discussed handbook for every Academic Honors Program student and demands its own course within America's High Schools and Universities as a study of Global Politics, Global Economy, Global Human Rights, and the Global cry of a people through her founding President and impassioned leader...my friend, HE Sir James Mancham.

At times I cried as I walked through the pages of your experience...

Unless our nation's Honors Students comprehend the complexity of a visionary's role in making history with desirable outcomes for the greater good, and step into that role, even to make a brief wrinkle in the fabric of time, our students are destined to repeat small town thinking, small town politics, small town isolation...and end up somewhere that is called nowhere with no one to care...

Wars and Peace is the work of a Vietnam Veteran, Rory Quirk, whose father, James served in WWII and later Korea, as a behind-the-scenes major player. For a seemingly humble, low-keyed guy, James is an eloquent writer as is his wife, Elizabeth; although we see far too little of her work, since it was apparently difficult for James to hang onto her letters as he traveled the front with the likes of Generals Bradley, Paton and Ridgeway. James' letters offer never before published insights into these leaders with some comical anecdotes about Paton that suggest we heard more of Quirk than Paton in earlier press releases, in stark, often amusing, contrast to post-Quirk Paton statements. The Korean letters, researched painstakingly by the younger Quirk, reveal frightening historic events that need to be responded to by those who might still know the truth. Matthew Ridgeway, about whom I read nothing in my history books, is depicted as an incredible leader and strategist deserving of great recognition and adulation. On the other hand, General MacArthur; about whom we spent so much time; comes off as an egotistical, narcissistic insubordinate. Go figure. It would have been good to hear and know more of Elizabeth Quirk, whose letters on VE day and the first birthday of their son, Rory, portray an intense love and loneliness that suggests that perhaps this is all we need to know. This is Elizabeth. Quirk brings us through the third family war with the devastating effect his service in Vietnam had on his father, the loyal patriot. Contrasted are his views of this war then and now, through his memories of 3 former college classmates who died young for something we either don't understand, or worse, for nothing at all. Quirk's father wrote his letters almost 60 years ago and they are remarkable if one thinks of his writing them late at night after, harrowing experiences. We are fortunate to read them unedited. It is uncanny to detect the similarity of style if not language, between father and son who have not exchanged a word in over 30 years. Quirk connects these human stories with flawless historical research, offering a context to the events depicted in the letters. I still don't know how I missed this when it came out. I hope it will be out in paper soon and in print large enough for seniors. It should be on tape for the visually impaired who may well hear this as their last human connection to their past. And if they haven't yet, and I believe I would have seen it, The New York Times must review this important work. This would be great book club material for serious readers interested in the human impact of war beyond the obvious.

This is a family memoir, in the form of parents' letters and a son's narrative, gracefully written by three individuals who lives were touched by World War II, Korea, and Vietnam: a father, who served with Bradley, Patton, and Ridgeway; a loving and supportive wife who served on the homefront; and a son who served as a U.S. Army Ranger in Vietnam. It's a fine memoir of an American family's courage and sense of duty during this American century.

A great inspirational book for young and older families. After all is said and done, whether success is achieved through financial rewards or attainment of immense power, the most cherished parts of our life are, and should be, our loved ones.

Junior High's a crazy place. James Herndon made me see that craziness clearly, since he tells it like it is. The conflict he dramatizes- between the kids' interests and possibilities for learning on the one hand and the administrators' desire for order-- is real today, too. Today's administrators call it "data-based decisionmaking" and "scientifically-measured results" but it still just means order-- a number next to every kid's name (now, they call it "progress towards standards" instead of IQ, and make a colorful bar graph out of it) that tells you who's better than who.
The world will be a better place if you do what Herndon did, but you'll get fired just as fast now as then.
This book makes clear that you don't need anyone to believe literally in racism in order to perpetuate a racist society.
All you need is to make conformity to white culture the sole entryway to all achievement, respect, income, and education, and then punish all those who fail to conform by putting them in the basement.
All you need is to establish the teacher's role as a manager of papers and people rather than as an educator.
All you need is to believe that we are test-takers first and human beings last.
All you need to is to put 1,500 youngsters in one brick building and expect all of them to toe the line.

Herndon wrote in a moment when America thought that its institutions could be healed, that its oppressions could be undone. Now, everyone thinks that the institutions would be fine, except that Somebody (terrorists, Republicans, homosexuals, rich people, poor people) has sat in a closed room somewhere and figured out how to sabotage them. HErndon reminds us that we have done it to ourselves.

This book has always rung true for me. The author seems to be to be an honest and observant man. That the picture of children on the paper mural painted by the all-black students is done in bright white paint, that the children are obsessed with their tennis shoes and drop themselves backwards onto the floor when frustrated, that students learn very little in school, and what they do learn are often lessons that are unintended and inconsistent with the school's purported objectives, that the protagonist's best friend is a lascivious racist, and that doing what you can, with what you have, to do what you think is best by the students will get you fired, all of these were consistent with my experience, and led me to trust the author, and made me willing to try to learn from him.
Other books in this honest, subversive vein are: The Student as N****r by Jerry Farber, John Holt's books, especially How Children Learn, How Children Fail and Escape from Childhood, (I notice that the editor of this edition of Herndon's book is also editing at least one of Holt's books.), and Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Postman and Weingartner.
This kind of book needs a corrective- one of Neil Postman's later books was called Teaching as a Conserving Activity, which is a good choice, also The Irrelevant English Teacher by Josiah Mitchell Morse and Decadence and Renewal in the Higher Learning by Russell Kirk.

The author writes of his first year teaching, which happens to be in a 98% black urban junior high school. I found this book captivating and could not put it down. It is a quick and easy read although its' contents will keep you thinking for a long time.

The author begins with his first day of school and takes us through the end of the school year at which time he is fired for being incompetent in the eyes of the administrators and other teachers. Chapters are written almost as short essays on a single topic, moving through the school year. Herndon introduces us to his 7th and 8th grade students with humor and sincerity. Many of these children, to my horror and amazement, can't even read their own names let alone anything else. Herndon discusses what school policies are and how other teachers "control" the class by restricting their movement and even in one case, not allowing the children to utter one word to the teacher during class. Absurdities in school policy and administration come through to me very clearly as I read these stories. The style of writing is one of storytelling rather than a book discussing why school reform is needed, but you will clearly come to your own realizations of what the problems are by simply reading these stories.

Half way through the school year, Herndon decides to do whatever it takes to get these children to learn. In some cases he comes up with innovative teaching methods and in other cases he allows the students to find their own way of doing things, and guess, what? Learning happens! Success! Well, the success is in the eyes of the students and in the eyes of this schoolteacher (not in the eyes of the administration). There is mutual respect between students and teacher but the other teachers and administrators think Herndon is an incompetent and that his students are out of control, so they fire him.

I figured out the year was 1959, but this could just as well take place today. Herndon's epilogue, written six years after this year of teaching, is brilliant. This is a short book and an easy read. As you read it your mind will be reeling with emotions and ideas about public/government schooling and who are they really serving?

What a beautiful story! It's so nice to see a well-written book with a good message. I'm sure that we can expect great things to come from this author.

With understated simplicity, Morano's wonderful characters provide insightful commentary on religion, gender, race and other social issues. "A Wing And A Prayer" is a beautiful story for all ages...I was unable to put it down until I had finished it. It has forever changed my view of nature and of animals...I wonder if they're not like Lupe and his friends, with beliefs, hopes, and dreams...

No matter what your age, you will find yourself caught up in the life of Lupe. The wonderfully three-dimensional characters will make you laugh and cry as you find yourself being drawn into the story with each chapter. Despite the suggested age range, it's a page turner.

Great book covering many aspects of go-slow, go-far boats: what to look for, how to test salesmen, how to check some basic designs, what to do while underway and how to do it, routines, etc with lots of personal examples. If you are interested in this topic and what it requires, this book is just about a "must." My only complaint, and I've only seen the 3rd edition, is the book smacks of Nordhavn advertising. Don't get me wrong, I've been on both the Nordhavn 40 and the 46, and they are unbelievably good boats. Personally, I like the 40' better even if it wasn't $120,000 cheaper than the 46: one head (if they aren't friends, don't let them on your boat!) with more headroom, better engine room, appears to need less elbow grease given the more industrial trim, and (personally) I like her looks better. Robert Beebe may have built Passagemaker for $43,000 in 1962. Nordhavn wants $429,000 for the 40 and $549,000 for their 46. The kicker? They suggest you tack on an additional $100,000 in "options" (half of which I don't really consider optional). Also recommend the "Troller Yacht Book" (ISBN 0393047091)

Voaging under power is the best naval book I ever read. It is a must to all interested on passagemaking.

I had heard this was the best book on the subject of trawlers. The book exceeded myexpectations. While Beebe's original formulas and examples stillwork, I especially appreciated the update, and references to current boats being built.

Excellent!

As a professional singer, I greatly enjoyed the chapter on arranging. What a unique concept for a book.

What sets this book apart from the rest is its motivational style. When I Sit Down to Play not only gives you the tools to learn how to play the piano, but it convinces you that you can do it.

This book packed so much information into 166 pages. It was great - concisely written.

I'm a writer in L.A. and needed to do research on the ARC LIGHT bombing campaign. Jim Hooppaw's book has a lot of great background on the operation. What struck me about this memoir was the reality Hooppaw infused in his prose about the day-to-day life of pilot in SAC. While the actual writing was somewhat dry at points, if you use your imagination, there's a lot of exciting--and funny!--stuff in here. Recommended for anyone interested in military aviation, military careers, Vietnam and the Air Force's role in it, and esp. the B-52.

It's difficult to add to the previously written reviews of this book, since those reviewers already said it all. I can only concur with their opinions and thoughts, and add that the book brings back a flood of memories. Since my particular experience was mainly with the BUF, I immensely enjoyed reading this book. From the boredom of alert duty to the tedious flights from Anderson to SEA during Arc Light, all may not have been glamour or glory. However, excitement and drama certainly did occur during those war days. The camaraderie and friendships that developed were deep and lasting. It's a "must read" for any former SAC mamber, especially B52 personel.

I'll have to second the comments the other reviewers have made in that this book is a must for all B-52 fans and military aviation enthusiasts. A thrilling book that cost me more than a few hours sleep as I simply could not put it down. As a former enlisted maintainer, I initially got the impression that Col Hooppaw didn't care much for us non-flying types but soon enough, I learned that it was imcompetence (no matter what rank) that he despised. Just wish he'd have made that clear earlier in the book. Absoutely a 5 star book that everyone with any interest in the B-52 should read!