This book IS different. I came across it when investigating a completely different thing from the computer field: data mining. And, well, this book is not so far from that. It is just like gold.

Most people have problems, of one sort or another. Life is never so easy. Many people try the typical self-help books and believe that they found a way out. Only to discover later that things have not changed a lot, apart from the good feelings that these self-help books gave to them (probably the only major benefit and the reason why many are best-sellers!). Yet the problem endures and these people will suffer from it further.

These books will tell you that you should need to overcome your problems and get to the magical solution (repeated over and over again in about every self-help book): check your values, decide what you want, from what you want make a list of achievable and measurable goals, and make an action plan on how to achieve each of these goals. Some books will add a little variation and tell you that you should not forget to set your priorities right in your action plan or that you should examine your values well. And that's about it. Your problems will be solved and you will be successful like the author(s).

"The fear of a certain consequence leads to behavior that virtually assures the consequence. This is the way in which self-defeating behaviors are born and nourished." "At each moment of life, an individual faces a choice between a road that ends in self-defeat and one that brings him or her closer to a breakthrough. We realize that this statement may seem dramatic, but we stand by it nonetheless."

If you have not noted it by now, the language and style of this book is different from the great majority of self-help books. Precise, clear and concise language describes a behavioral problem affecting millions of people and shows how this problem can be solved. Unfortunately solutions to most problems are too often hard to find. To understand yourself, your family, or your friends in trouble, you would better understand this book first.

The theory developed and applied by the authors may be wrong or not completely accurate. But if it is just about right, then you may be just a little more than satisfied:

"It is extremely unlikely for the results of a single self-defeating behavior or life-enhancing behavior to be alarming, exhilarating, or even noticeable. But a series of life-enhancing behaviors will, over time, lead to the sort of breakthrough that comes when our minds, bodies, attitudes and actions are integrated into the wholeness that is the source of our creativity, insight, usefulness, and contentment. On the other hand, a series of choices in favor of self-defeating behaviors will, if left unchecked, bring on physical illness, nervous collapse - and, in extreme cases, even death."

if you have ever emotionally fought yourself ( or are doing it now), in your heart you feel wrong but you stubbornly won't quit, get this book. I know what it's like to just feel like some puppet being thrown around by the tides of the outside world when you used to be in complete control and sure of yourself. This is the only book I've seen on this particular subject, and it's a great one. It shows you what you've done,what you're doing, and what you can do to stop yourself in your tracks and think about the big picture. This is a book that should be manditory text for psychologists everywhere. I also believe that SDB's are ultimately stemmed from the INFERIORITY COMPLEX, and after your done with this book should read up on this strangely obscure subject . which to quote Oliver Brachfeld's highly recommended book " Inferiority feelings in the individual and the group ", " It is interesting to note how little study has been made in the past of this complex, which is so fundamental an element in our psychological make-up. "

What is your life like? Is it a relentless procession of empty days, an endless cycle of meaningless, frustrating work and unrelaxing sleep? Do you repeat the same pattern of joyless days and empty nights ad nauseam? Do you bounce out of bed eager to face another exciting day filled with opportunities for enjoyment, human contact and personal growth? Has the memory of the irrepressible you faded into dust? Has your life become an arduous and repetitive ordeal? Do you keep hurting yourself, and does this recognition keep haunting you, day and night? Are you acting on misguided choices, doing and saying things that virtually guarantee dissatisfaction and unhapppiness? If you answered "Yes" (or even "Maybe") to any of those questions, have I got good news for you! The best book I have seen that specifically addresses how we can reclaim our mental, emotional and spiritual power from the traps we ourselves have built and continue to nourish is "Self-Defeating Behaviors" by Cudney and Hardy. On second reading, it is a truly phenomenal work. I have already purchased and distributed over two dozen copies. It provides a dynamic model of the way we construct, defend and nurture our self-defeating behaviors, while we simultaneously minimize the real pain heaped upon us and the people around us, and abdicate responsibility for the whole thing! We are each of us presented with a continuous stream of new moments of life, in which we exercise choices. Each of these choices can lead either to a self-defeating behavior or to a behavior that affirms and honors life. At certain times, we "learn" (i.e. we make an invalid association) that we can avoid work/pain/criticism or other fear by choosing a certain escapist behaviors or thoughts. This choice, expressed through various internal and external techniques, results in various prices that we must pay. In order to continue avoiding our fears, we proceed to minimize the prices (by saying, for example, "It's not all that bad; I can stand the discomfort"), and finally, to disown the choice we made ("It's not MY fault; it was my parents/teachers/bullies/social conditions/the government/ghosts/the voices/..."). That cycle, from our choices of developing internal and external techniques to avoid some (mythical) fear(s), and then refusing to pay the price, results in a full-blown self-defeating cycle, which feeds on itself, getting worse and worse, engulfing more and more areas of our lives. Even when new techniques are learned (such as NLP!!) which appear to offer the promise of positive growth, they quickly and effortlessly become swallowed up in the seething vortex of self-defeating behaviors, making it even bigger than ever! This black hole effect can easily escalate from disappointment to depression, food/alcohol/drug abuse, violence, murder and ultimately, suicide. Unless we recognize and terminate this vicious cycle, ALL of our other efforts can lead to naught, mired in our old habits of thought and action.

But it is definitely worth locating. The deck is oversize and filled with amazing color, detail, verbage, etc. Even if you are not a fan of Shakespeare, the pure beauty of the cards in relation to tarot make this deck worth getting. Being out of print, I haven't seen it listed in many of the online tarot resources for purchasing decks....

....a nicely illustrated deck with quotations from various plays, compiled by a Shakespearian actress.

This tarot deck and book are both beautifully done. The art is simple, yet exquisite. The book very nicely gives a summary for each card's quote's play. The quotes and styles of the cards are very well chosen for the theme of the cards. I consider myself very lucky to now own this deck. If you can get a hold of one, grab it immediately, no matter the cost. This deck is priceless!

The South has all the sun herbs need, however, we have soil that is not naturally conducive to the health of these wonderful plants. The authors have been growing most herbs for many years, and have created a book that addresses all the dilemmas that we face here in the South. If you love herbs and want to be successful with them, do yourself a favor and have this beautiful guide handy at all times. The authors show the gardener how to prepare the variety of soils that can be found in our region. It is essential that herb growers follow these procedures. Don't try to cut corners with this issue. The book illustrates and describes the necessary conditions for a huge selection of herbs. They point out very important information about what to do and what not to do. Since they are so wonderful, don't do things that the herbs won't like! A nice selection of herb gardens are displayed beautifully. The gardner may want to try the variety of knot gardens or a less formal approach. The authors give us a wonderful feast to choose from. There is a wonderful selection for drying and preserving, crafts and decorating, oils and recipes. A lovely book that offers gardners of the South a guaranteed opportunity to relish a beautiful herb garden and the delectable gifts it has to offer us!

This book has been my learning tool for years! I've lived in the upper south and the lower south. The info in this book applies to both! I recently met the authors and heard them speak about herbs. They also cooked with herbs and let us try the fare. They really know their subject!

Breaks the topic down into designing your garden, fixing common problems before you start, recipes, and types of plants to grow in the South. More important, it lists plants NOT to grow in the South, or to try with caution.

Culture requirements are detailed, and this to me is the true value of the book.

Valley of the Shadow is filled with action and captivating struggle between good and evil. Fun and fast to read, I'll keep this one on the shelf for another read later, I don't do that with many books. I found myself wanting more or another or the next, hope I don't have to wait too long. This book would be a great study for any junior high or high school English class, or conversion to a movie script! Thank you Earl and Naoma for money well spent

From the moment you start reading Valley of the Shadow, until the very last page. you'll be engrossed in it. A dark and sinister mood engulfs the characters, the towns, and the countryside throughout the entire story. This is a terrific book to curl up with, on a warm bed in a dark room, just make sure there's no black crows sitting outside your window.

Valley of the Shadow is a page-turner. The story grabs yourinterest from the first page, where you meet Jerod, the youngidealistic preacher who finds his world and everything he believes in shaken to the very foundations by the untimely death of his new wife. The setting is the Old West, in the time of horses and wagons and dust covered towns separated by miles of wilderness and beauty untamed by man. These authors skillfully lay out word pictures that create rich visual images in your mind of the surroundings, the people, and the events. You feel like you are there. In the midst of his confusion and pain Jerod finds himself propelled on a mission, to gather together an unlikely team of men, all sensing they are about to face one huge and very threatening challenge from the dark realm of the supernatural. His first pick is John Sheppard, an older former sheriff, forced into retirement after suffering near fatal gunshot wounds that left him with a crippled gun hand. The second man is Clifford Washington, a black man, a one-time deputy turned bounty hunter, refusing to accept the inferior class status inflicted on other members of his race by white men. Then finally there's Frank Meadows, a hardened cold-blooded killer whom Jerod finds and rescues from the swinging end of a rope. These four men come together to do battle with the unknown, with their lives and those of many others hanging in the balance. As the reader you go on the exciting and hair-raising journey with them, through richly detailed and descriptive narrative of every turn of events. The collaboration of Earl Hardy and Naoma Hardy has produced a fascinating story about an old theme, the battle between good and evil, in a fresh combination of two totally different genres, old-time western adventure and modern science fiction. This book is entertaining and interesting, with a surprise ending you do not expect and cannot anticipate. I highly recommend it.

this is one of the finest stories read by me of f.w.dixon. i was really inquistive to know it's contents as i am from mumbai. the story is centered around the movie sets of bollywood. it is an very intresting book that can captivate the hearts of all it's readers!

One of the best I've read.The Hardy Boys come to Bombay to investigate sabotage in a movie set.Explosive action and a mind-bending plot will keep the reader hooked.

There are lots of good books about Art Deco as an overall art style but Patricia Kery seems to have corned the market with this title covering graphics. Large size, 320 pages and with 476 illustrations it will most likely be the standard reference for many years. The first chapter, 'Foundations of Art Deco graphic style' is a lucid explanation and the following chapters (printed on light mauve paper) expand on this excellent start. The illustrations are fortunately printed on glossy white paper.

Good as the book is though I was rather disappointed with the presentation. All of the spreads with several pictures have them deliberately unaligned and where there are only two images to a page they are usually the same size with a lot of white space and I mean a LOT. I think one of the images should have been big and the other smaller, thus reducing all the white space to a minimum. Typography on the mauve text pages is a mess, various sizes are used and the caption size is really too small. The left-hand page numbers are on the inside of the page next to the books spine, this seems a silly bit of designer whimsy.

The book is very comprehensive and rightly shows how the creative output of mostly European artists was used commercially. For an American perspective have a look at this beautifully designed paperback, 'Streamline: American Art Deco Graphic Design' by Steven Heller and Louise Fili. This has excellent illustrations showing how the style was adapted (those famous three speed lines) by American creative folk to sell products rather than a European fine art genre.

Art Deco Graphics is about graciousness of form. An unmatchable book that can be read five, ten times and still sift up new baubles. Brief-lived, yet timeless, like the then-young artists' cheerful way of navigating into the future using no compass or ancestral guidance. Like office girls who adored the little black dress, but were informed they could liquefy, rather than dump, themselves, into it, and so did.

The drifting directionlessness of France in the 1920s when film and poetry were all but the same thing, a nostalgia for what always is because it never was. It was time for something new.

New . . . and yet . . . more: Modern. Diverting. Striking, startling, disharmonious, direct. Everyone saw the need: Art of street to challenge art of salon. A merger between middle-class decorative taste and the revolutionary's love of the outré, the young artist's love of the avant-garde, the liberated career woman's preoccupation with the suave and the elegantly insolent. By the time the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes opened in Paris, the masters of modern art-Picasso, Braque, to skim for the moment the mythic cream, Klimt, Léger, Kandinsky, Magritte, Modigliani, Duchamp, Ernst, and Toulouse-Lautrec-had already transformed the fine arts. There seemed no new territory to explore.

Then the newbies discovered graphic arts.

There was no "Art Deco" then. Indeed, that appellation was not used until 1966. But artisans embracing a handful of ideas loosely bundled as "Style moderne" borrowed bits from Cubism, Russian Constructivism, Italian Futurism, the Vienna Secession, Bauhaus, then added techniques of their own: abstraction, distortion, oversimplification, geometric solidities reinforced with intense colors. They used these to celebrate the rise of commerce, technology, and (thanks to the auto and airplane) speed. The ensuing volcano spewed simultaneous views from several directions: hypercontrasts of color and arrangement, transformations of reality, personality, eccentricity.

These inspired a new kind of fine artist, the illustrator. Names like Cassandre, Jean Carlu, Herbert Bayer, and McKnight-Kauffer began to turn up not merely on posters, but magazine covers, stationery design, advertisements. A kumquat of Orientalism was squeezed out of Diaghilev's sensational Ballets Russes. American jazz, native American and African art, Egyptian glyphs, these too. And above all the discovery of personal power in the power of machines. All these contributed to an aesthetic confluence from which has flown the sociological art theme of our times: graphics, commerce, private purpose, public event, and social attitude are all immersed in one. Art Deco Graphics is like looking at the wedding pictures of one's grandparents.

Almost all these images are standouts, but a few are unsettling, and breathtakingly so. On page 89 is an ad for Herkules Bier "aus dem Hasenbrau-Augsburg." The sinister, leviathanic, muscle-bound, fist-clenched figure uses one of the hallmarks of Art Deco-deep shadow to enhance contrast-to convey a message as self-contradictory as it is threatening: Drink this and it won't go to your belly, it will build the muscle of Germany. Rage is power,too.

That was 1925. Five years earlier Ludwig Hohlwein design an ad "Tachometerwerke" for a Düsseldorf maker of the eponymous instruments to clock engine revs. The vehicle, with its riveted sheet metal body and upjutting phallic levers for gears and brakes, all done in a dark drab befitting military maneuvers in the slime, is not a Gay Paree streamlined beauty with chauffeur and mink-trimmed consort. It is a tank. The vehicle alone says, "We're coming, out of the way." But it is the driver who truly frightens. Garbed in the thick leathers of automobiling at the time, gloved hands gripping-no, choking-the wheel, his face is of such grim, hating, enraged determination that one cannot think of similar malevolency in all of art history except perhaps for Meiji-era Japanese prints extolling the glories of battle. Even in 1920 the omens were shrieking, and by 1925 they were building muscle.

Yet for the most part Art Deco was sweetness and elegance, if not light, and a kind of innocence during the days when modern commercialism was being established. One can see editors exploiting inner fears on behalf of ad sales even then: the Vogue and Vanity Fair covers depict improbably slender women draped in the silks and furs of unattainable wealth, their eyes of steel willing and able to stare down an amorous tycoon (page 143). Book publishers were right alongside them: A book cover by a designer pseudonymed "Fish" (in reality the British caracaturist Ann Sefton) proclaimed, "High Society-Hints on how to Attain, Relish - and Survive It; A Pictorial Guide to Life in Our Upper Circles." Powerful "Fortune" covers (whose ultra-simplicity and unusual view angles could inspire cinema students even today). They also were the days when "Fortune" had taste: A 1941 cover was graced with a Fernand Léger graphic.

Mallory Carson plans to make her establishment, Bad Reputation, a success by serving "Screaming Orgasms". She also figures having her barmaids dancing on the bar will encourage males to populate her tavern and spend plenty of money. Her brother Dave worries about his sister so he sends his buddy, Shay O'Connor, to check the joint out. However, Mallory and Shay end up making love, but he acts like it was nothing.

Mallory is outraged because men don't leave her. Shay feels guilty for having sex with his pal's sister and though attracted plans no repeat. Mallory does not want Shay's interference about the way she runs Bad Reputation. When she learns who the best lover she ever had even with a one-night stand is, Mallory decides to teach her sibling and a man she could fall in love with a lesson on playing with a woman's affection.

Mallory is the key to the fun AS BAD AS CAN BE as she uses her bad girl image as a defense mechanism to cloak her insecurities. Shay is the first male to penetrate (no pun intended even if this is a Blaze) her barriers. The secondary cast especially the wild B-girls add depth though Dave needs to chill out a bit. Fans desiring a torrid yet humorous romantic romp will appreciate Kristin Hardy's engaging tale.

Harriet Klausner

Serving Screaming Orgasms and encouraging barmaids to dance on the bar, Mallory Carson intends to make her new business Bad Reputation a success, despite brother Dave's interference. But when he sends his friend Shay O'Connor to spy, things go too far. Especially since Mallory and Shay find themselves alone in a very compromising position before either learns the other's identity. Worse, Shay walks away like it was nothing.

Men do not walk away from Mallory Carson. She does the walking on her terms and when she is ready. Unfortunately, her body does not seem to remember her own rules. Shay does not want to seduce his buddy's sister; Mallory does not want Shay's interference about the way she runs Bad Reputation. So when she learns Shay's identity, Mallory decides someone is playing games, and she is evening the score. She proceeds to show Shay just how bad she can be.

Author Kristin Hardy's rising star continues to dazzle with AS BAD AS CAN BE. Mallory conceals her vulnerability behind a bad attitude that intrigues Shay even as her walls keep him away. Indeed, sensual moments threaten to make the pages spontaneously combust with scenes filled with spontaneity and naughtiness as Mallory's bad girl attitude and Shay's good guy persona clash. I admit to falling in love with Mallory's bad girls and their love for dancing on the bar, resulting in a tone that is both exhilarating and seductive. Consequently, AS BAD AS CAN BE comes very highly recommended.

It was a book that had so many twist and turns i couldn't set it down!!!! If you wont a book that is cool, this is the one that you should get! I give it FIVE stars all the WAY!!!!!

neat book good oringal style and all in all a good book

This book was the second I've read of the series, and it's one of my favorites. Nancy Drew and George Fayne travel to Oklahoma to help find a thief, and the morning after they arrive, one of their information sources is found dead! Nancy and George investigate the murder while Joe and Frank Hardy are searching for a missing truckload of uranium that has been traced to Altus, Oklahoma. Nancy finds that she has a lot of suspects, and Frank and Joe have a lot of people involved in their case too. Are their cases connected? And will they find the murderer, thief, and the uranium before an even more drastic event takes place? Carolyn Keene's Buried in Time is a great read, with many guesses, suspects, and even a secret romance! This book is great for anyone who is a fan of mystery and detective stories! This is definitely a must-read book!

This was the first book I read out of this series. I wasn't sure if I would like it.Once I read it I was hooked on the series. The way Nancy thinks about her feelings for Frank is great. There should be more romance between them in the series than there is. I've read this book twice, and the second time I liked it even more. I would recomend this book to anyone.

This is probably my favorite book by Franklin Dixon. The book is a complete hoot, except for the lack of murders. That would have kept you up the whole night until you finish Castle Fear, which takes place in London. Jillian Seabright disappears and along with her perhaps, maybe?, the emeralds belonging to heiress Emily Cornwall, who has also disappeared. I'm not telling why, that you'll have to find out yourself. Jed Shannon has got Frank and Joe looking for Jill when he also disappear. Searching for answers, Joe gets involved with an American reporter. That's as much as I'm going to tell you so read the book yourself.

While this book may not have been up to the caliber of some ofthe other books, it is still a very worthwhile read. The part inside the castle is best. The only way this could have been better really is if a murder had taken place. Oh well.