This volume is, in my opinion, the most comprehensive and accesible available in English. I can't remember a single time that this failed to illuminate the obscure asides and references in Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, and the Tragedians. So, as far as the Greeks are concerned, this is the one to have. I'll leave it to someone else focused on the Romans to offer that perspective.

Have you ever had been in a situation and had that horrid little deja vu feeling of, 'I've been here before, and I didn't like it then. Why on earth would I like it now? Oh dear God please make it stop'? Yeah, me too. Have you ever noticied that those horrid little deja vu feelings seem to repeat themselves like you were in some sort of cosmic feedback loop? Maybe you always have the same kind of miserable dating relationships that end the same rotten way or maybe you always end up in a job where you feel like a victim or prostitute. Or maybe it's not work or relationships but something else, perhaps many things, but the KEY THEME is that you ALWAYS feel like you've been there before. Welcome to the wacky and wild world of your EGO, where history is destined to repeat itself unless you process it so it won't. Leslie calls these cycles energy patterns, and I tend to agree with her mostly because when I'm in one of these deja vu hideous moments I feel like there's a vortex that I'm getting pulled into. (You know that feeling, don't you? We all do!)

This book will show you how to process these energy patterns so that one day you'll be at the great precipice of one of those deja vu moments, and you'll look down into this canyon, knowing that you've taken that leap oh so many times before and it never ends well... AND you'll say 'NO THANKS! Not this time!' Then you'll hear your thoughts bouncing around your mind as if you had actually taken the dive, but you're in an ascended state of consciousness where you are peaceful and even amused at your (ego) thoughts though you aren't reacting like you usually do. Instead, you're watching everything around you like you have fallen into the parallel universe of 'what ifs.' Yes, I've been to this place. It's amazing. And yes, you can make a choice to not repeat those deja vu moments that suck you in like a black hole! We don't have to live a deja vu life. We can process and choose to NOT go to those ugly places ever again. Really!

This book will give you the key!

Leslie Temple-Thurston has added something new - and in my opinion much needed - to the spiritual literature, a manual for dissolving the samskaras. Samskara is a sankrit word that refers to all those tendencies and bad habits that sabotage any efforts at achieving anything, such as losing weight or becoming enlightened. It is otherwise known as our patterns, and makes up our conditioning, or patterned behavior.

By thoroughly eluclidating on the subject of polarities and their effects on us personally - and she is working on the level of clearing the personality or ego throughout this book - you first begin to understand how energy has been routed and patterned throughout your system over the years (and lifetimes.) Once you clearly see the problem, you can begin to do something about it. But it all begins with being aware of the problem first, and Leslie gently brings our awareness to this, beautifully.

Then she has a series of exercises designed to bring out the polarities in any situation - again, to become aware of the problem further - and other exercises to help you to neutralize them so that the energy they have been using up for so long can be freed and reclaimed for your own use. Do this long enough, and you are completely free of any energy stealing habits, patterns and conditioning. Voila - liberation!

Sound good? It is. But this is not your father's Jonathan Livingston Seagull. You gotta work at it. I myself have shied away from the material, only to come back to it again and again. Each time I work with it, I come away with a greater awareness of my own conditioning, via the polarities they use. Little by little, I think I am getting it. It is a work that demands your full attention and whole-hearted devotion, but you will easily see rewards comensurate with the time you put in. Even your first little "ahas" of recognition will be very exciting. By then, you'll want more, and it won't seem like work anymore, just thoroughly satisfying self-discovery.

Most of it is readable to undergraduates. Its target audience, though, is beginning graduate students in mathematics. If not already familiar with hyperbolic geometry, you might want to get an introduction to the subject first. Once with this background, though, you will discover there is another level of understanding of hyperbolic space you never realized was possible. One imagines Thurston able to skateboard around hyperbolic space with the kind of geometric understanding he conveys here.

What made Thurston so famous and successful as a pioneer in 3-d topology and geometry was his other-worldly geometric intuition. This book takes the reader along the first step of the 10000 miles of getting to that intuition.