This is one of the best books I have read about relating to kids. As a school psychologist it is a landmark book in making the shift away from using punishment and consequences to a mindset of working with kids in more positive ways to facilitate responsible behavior. I highly recommend this book to parents and educators.

I began using Marvin Marshall's "Discipline without Stress" behavior plan even before the book went to press. It completely revolutionized my classroom. Before my eyes students turned from disruptive, uncooperative, discipline problems into caring and cooperative responsible citizens. I am no longer a stressed-out teacher. When other teachers see the results, they ask "what are you doing?", "how do you manage your classroom?" and more often than not, "tell me about the plan."

I love Marv's ideas. I pass them on to my students studying to be teachers at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, CA. I also pass them on to my MA candidates who are already successful teachers. He offers a wealth of ideas and puts a positive spin on that precious component of success -- attitude!

I love Edward Lear's story and James Marshall's illustrations are magical. I don't like the version with Jan Brett's illustrations. I've never liked Jan Brett's illustrations. I've spent hundreds of hours looking at children's books and I always pass over Jan Brett's books. Her illustrations just don't appeal to me. Her illustrations are distinctive and I can always recognize her work but I don't like them. There is just something missing--they don't have any life to them or something. I can't explain it. I have always loved James Marshall. His genius transcends understanding. His illustrations complement Ed Lear's beautiful tale perfectly.

A very good illustrated version of the classic poem- the pictures are beautiful with a distinctly exotic flavour, great for all ages!

This book is just so cool. Longing for a trip to the tropics? Read this version of the book to your little one and you can at least feel like you are there. The illustrations are really sweet. They have a lot of details so that kids kind find new things with each reading. My two-year old loves this book. It is a great twist on an old tale

This book was one of the best I have ever read. It was a ride on an emotional rollercoaster until the very end. Jim, the teen from a broken home was a lovable and amazingly developed character. He had amazing relationships with his friends and sister. This book made me laugh, cry, and scream. You felt hatred towards his father. Sympathy for his sister, Mandy. Love for Leslie. You want to reach out and touch Jeremy, mend his heart. Cry out to Philly; tell him that he can have a future. And hold Jim. It makes you want to heal the world. It makes you cry for all the people who have to go through what they did. I believe Daniel Grey Marshall is an AWESOME writer, and can not wait until he finishes his second book. I'm telling you . . . this book is worth every page.

This novel was the probably the best book I have read. It was written with nothing held back and the climax is so sad, yet ineveitable and somewhat neccessary. Jim, the protagonist goes through so much and as you read about him, you go through it too. I HIGHLY recommend this unforgettable read.

This is the best book I have ever read. I have never felt so connected with the characters in a book as I have here . . . I have never wanted to hold and kiss and wipe away the tears of a character as much as I wanted to for Jim, the narrative in this book. This boy goes through everything. It's amazing how Jim & his friends change in ONE year. I have never laid awake at night, sobbing for one character before. But I guess I wasn't really sobbing just for Jim. I was sobbing for Philly, and Jeremy, and Mandy, and Leslie, and and all the other kids just like them out in the world, and the hellish life they are forced to live. And hell is what Jim goes through.

The book is funny though, too. It is also heartwarming. I'm not lying - there are parts when I definitely went "aww" and smiled a bit. This book is great for EVERYONE.

I love Daniel Grey Marshall. I am very anxiously awaiting his second novel.

The mustered letters in this book are wonderful. In fact, they are a great delight. This is what we need to see in today's children. All of them touched my heart with laughter but not just that. The questions, innocence, and wiseness of the children (all under ten) are dominant. It shows for once that children may know better than their elders (sometimes). Particularly one letter stays in my mind:

Dear God,
I wish that there wasn't no such thing of sin. I wish that there was not no such thing of war.
Tim M. age 9

If only it were that simple. It makes one wish to never grow up. "Children's Letters to God" is splendid and is an inspiring gift for anyone who has had the pleasure of being in the presence of a child's smile.

This book had me laughing out load on a bus to the point people must have thought I was crazy. The questions these children ask are truly the most cleaver and honest thoughts that seemingly only a child can think of! It will bring back your childhood and allow you to feel the pure wonder and discovery of your youth! A MUST READ...and a wonderful gift!

This is a MUST READ for everyone who wants to tap into the pristine wonder of children. I always include this book as part of a baby shower gift for someone who is having her first child to let her know about the priceless joy they are about to experience. I can't think of any other book that forecasts that joy so accurately.

Marshall's Lakota Way is a wonderful book that I found to conatin bits of wisdom that can benefit all of us, no matter who you are or where you live. The book examines Lakota perspectives on life and how it relates to modern society. I would highly recommend this book as well as Marshall's "Winter of the Holy Iron".

I was truely swept away by this book. All the different stories relating to the Virtues are wonderful. I would recommend this to anyone that shares a love for Native Americans. Their beliefs really come alive in this book for dreamers and romantics like me.

I borrowed this book from the library and
when I started reading it, I couldn't put
it down. I finished the book that same night,
it was great.

This book is based on reality. All these virtues
are based on pure common sense principles.

I will buy this book and a couple more for my
family and friends.

This book really opened my eyes. My boyfriend and I have lived together for 3 years, and I couldn't understand why he didn't want to get married right away. I found this book, and it really helped me understand his perspective. The book is very helpful. Each chapter is very informative. The book includes how to answer questions about your relationship, important legal issues, and a guide that tells you how to do something whether you are married or unmarried (i.e., changing your name, custody of children, etc.) A good read for any couple - living together or not, considering marriage or not, same-sex or different-sex couples.

I was half way finished with this book, when I realized how thankful I was for the intelligent perspective and reporting of this alternative lifestyle. I have been in an unmarried relationship for twelve years. We have attempted the engagement and planning of a wedding twice. Both times the decision was made to call it off.This book helps me understand and accept our unconventional relationship and the reality that marriage may not be in our future. It helped me tremendously with the anger, sadness, and disappointment associated with the decision not to marry. Thank you to the authors for tackling this topic with humor, insight, and a lot of great information!

It is a good resource which discusses all kinds of reasons that people decide not to get married and includes all kinds of different relationships. It discusses financial and legal issues. It is a book that made me feel more confident about my ability to make this important change in my life, that the risk might be worth it.

I am so glad that I read this book.

Bev Marshall's first novel, WALKING THROUGH SHADOWS, is a breathtaking creation. Set in a small town in rural Mississippi just before World War II, the story's obvious center is the murder of a young woman, Sheila Barnes. Sheila is one of the most unforgettable characters I've run across in recent years - just seventeen at the time of her death, married for around a year, Sheila is uneducated but full of unconventional wisdom, which she bestows gently on those around her as their needs dictate. She is a gift in their varied lives - and they all come to realize it in their own time.

Sheila comes to work at the dairy farm run by the Cotton family, and soon becomes the Best Friend of ten-year-old Annette (her caps) - the two girls grow as close as family, and at one point Annette's mother, Rowena, comments that 'Annette loves Sheila like a blood sister'. Sheila is seemingly completely without a formal education - she comes from a family of numberless children, loomed over by her brutal father. The beatings - and other abuse - she receives from him on a regular basis are the central reason in her leaving home, to seek work and shelter at the Cottons'. She is also possessed of a physical anomaly - a hump on her back - although she never lets it interfere with her image of herself or the way in which she attempts to live her life. It is at the Cottons' dairy, where she works, that she meets Stoney Barnes - despite her 'deformity', he falls in love with her (and she with him), and after a short courtship, they marry. The abuse she suffered at the hands of her father continues sporadically - and Stoney is guilty of inflicting physical pain on her as well. When he reports Sheila missing early one morning, and her body is found in the Cottons' cornfield, the investigation that ensues reveals things about almost everyone involved that each one would have most certainly preferred to be left in the dark. The revelations strain friends and family and community - the outcome is both expected and surprising, and soul shaking.

The story unfolds gracefully through various viewpoints - a technique that Marshall employs extremely well. The author endows each of the characters with a distinctive personality and - even more importantly, I think - a unique, completely believable voice. Rather than simply describe each character to the reader, the author skillfully allows them to illuminate not only themselves but also each other. Their narratives - which vary in length, but grow shorter and switch back and forth more in the second half of the book - overlap in both subjects and time frames, much as if the reader were privy to individual tellings of the same story, walking from room to room, eavesdropping. There is a subtlety in Marshall's method here that is a wonder to behold - things are revealed to the reader as they are revealed to those in the story, allowing the mysterious aspects of Sheila's brutal murder to be opened like a flower. The suspense is palpable and deftly controlled.

There are lessons to be learned here - as well as a story that entertains - about a plethora of subjects: love, honor, family, pain, abuse, friendship, faith, race, healing, and more...including magic. I'm not speaking of the type of magic that is performed on the stage - I'm speaking of the more indefinable magic that lives and breathes in the touch of a friend's hand, in the stories they share that delight and instruct, in the pain that we cause each other and in the healing we can inspire. If this leads you to believe that this is a soporific tale, don't be deceived - this is fine writing of the highest order, and a story that reveals not only the innermost workings of its characters, but of all of us.

This wonderful southern novel details the circumstances surrounding a young woman's brutal murder on the Cotton family's Mississippi dairy farm in the mid-1940's. Events leading up to and following the murder are told and retold in distinctive but believable voices by a number of primary characters,providing insight into the flaws and strengths of each person and reinforcing the fact that people see and remember common experiences very differently. This
poignant coming of age chronicle/gripping murder mystery had me pulling the book out of my tote whenever I had a spare moment during the day, and reading well into the wee hours of the morning. What a find!

Walking Through Shadows tells the story of Sheila Barnes, a very unique seventeen-year-old girl who has a profound effect on the lives of the people around her. The novel is set in a quiet little town in Mississippi in 1941. Sheila, who has suffered from brutal abuse from her father, is invited to move to Lloyd Cotton's dairy farm to escape her horrible situation and work for him. Everyone who comes into contact with Sheila grows to adore her and the town is astounded when Sheila is found dead in the cornfields. All the characters are suddenly forced to deal with perplexing circumstances. But those who knew Sheila well and grieved the most would come to find that they have learned many lessons from her that would help them to deal with the tragedy of her death.
Bev Marshall created an enthralling world that I was eager to visit each time I opened her book and sad to leave when I had to put it down for a moment. She has an extraordinary ability to allow the reader to hear each character's voice clearly. All the different accounts given by each character of the events in the story help the reader to see all the sides through many sets of eyes and commiserate with everyone involved. The story is beautifully crafted and undeniably magical. I identify with the young girl, Annette. I can relate with her innocent ways of viewing the world and how they caused her deep torment and confusion in trying to deal with the realities throughout the book. I believe everyone can find a character, if not several, to which he or she can relate. I'm glad Bev Marshall is sharing her story with the world. I strongly urge everyone to pick up her book and enter this world she has created and be as enchanted as I have been.

David Kaplan and Andrew Marshall obviously have an amazing amount of knowledge to share when it comes to the underworlds of Japan. In this book, they do an outstanding job of telling the true story of AUM. Whether you like fiction or non-fiction, you will be capitivated by the story of this Doomsday cult. I give it 5 stars on a 5-star scale.

Kaplan's book about the Yakuza was very well written, but this book was an eye-opener. It was among the scariest tales I've ever read, and it featured lurid stories about Master Asahara's cult apparatus. This is a story every public security official should read, one about a ruthless group of religious fanatics who went the whole nine yards in their attempt to murder 90% of the Japanese peole so as to launch a holy war between Japan and the United States, and to bring about the end of the world. The accounts of the physical and mental abuse to recruits may stun even the most seasoned reader. It reminded me of the Holocaust. But most important is Kaplan and Marshall's exposure of Japanese society, which many of us view as a utopia. In this book and in "Yakuza", we see Japan as it really is, enslaved by corruption, hiding abject poverty, and losing many of its children to fanatics like Chizuo Matsumoto.

Like all of the other people who read this book, I had to keep on reminding myself that it was real and a lot of people did actually have these thoughts and intentions. The thing that really got me was how recent it all was, I'm 17 and I'm so used to everything like that being ages ago - world war 2 for example. After I had read the book I realised that it was only written in 1996 so I searched to find some recent news on them only to find that Shoko Asahara's trial is still going, the cult have relaunched themselves and they even have their own website. They managed to do all what they did 10 years ago, technology has moved on a lot since then and I dread to think what they are capable of now. If you do buy this book, I would recommend you read the last few pages carefully, its like reading the terrorist forecast of New York, very scary and yet very true.

I read this book so fast the first time that I had to read it again a week or so later. The action and plot moves so fast that I couldn't put it down. When I went back to read it the second time,this time for the language, I discovered a book full of rich prose and deep meaning. The characters are fabulous. I want to hear more about them, maybe in the sequel. I shared the book with five friends who also loved it,and now I am telling you about it on line. Read it! I can't wait for the movie..Mel Gibson would be perfect.

Wow! What a blast this book is! It made me so excited that I was getting sick with worry over what would happen to the characters!

It starts with a sort of crash-landing on Earth of long-lost relatives. Then it develops into a romance. Then it develops into suspense the typs of which I have never seen rivalled. As I said, I was sick with worry!

Well written, exciting, yet highly under-read. Do yourself a favor, and enjoy this exhilarating novel!

I bought it for the cover, but found the plot riveting. Once in a while, you are lucky enough to come across a book that will keep you hoping long after you close the cover. This book moved me to question things that I stopped believing in long ago.

Editors Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith and Richard Beckhard present a series of short essays by 39 authors describing the structure of tomorrow's organizations. The essays, which are introduced by Peter Drucker, are organized into six main themes: shaping future organizations, new models for working and organizing, organizing for strategic advantage, working and organizing in a wired world, leading people in future organizations and understanding and improving organizational health. Given this approach and more than three dozen authors, some repetition is inevitable, so we [...] wonder if readers will prefer to dip in and choose articles that appeal to them the most. Generally, the book explicates broad trends in structural thinking, almost like a survey of organizational forecasting by top philosophers, authors and leaders in the field. This is sure to intrigue the executives charged with steering large organizations to and through this complex future.

'The Organization of the Future' is an outstanding integration of much of the current thinking of leadership, organization, strategy, change, and innovation. Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Beckhard (editors) have gathered together in this collection remarkable 49 thought thinkers.

Charles Handy suggests in his chapter that "Margaret Wheatley, in 'Leadership and the New Science,' has written of the danger of believing in Newtonian organization in a quantum age. Newton wasn't wrong. He just wasn't right enough to cope with the dilemmas of science now. Similarly, the old way of looking at organizations wasn't wrong; it just does not capture the real essence of what it means to organize today." On the other hand, Peter F.Drucker notes in his introduction, "...now a totaly different approach is emerging, not replacing the older approaches but being superimposed on them: it says that the purpose of organizations is to get results 'outside,' that is, to achieve performance in the market. The organization is, however, more than a machine...It is more than economic, defined by results in the marketplace. The organization is, above all, 'social.' It is people. Its purpose must therefore be to make the strengths of people effective and their weaknesses irrelevant."

In this context, the editors divide this book into six parts. They write in their preface, "throughout the chapters in this book, the need for organizations is unquestioned. The authors provide a variety of forms and operating plans for organizations today and tomorrow; at the same time, each recognizes the indispensable role of organizations to human accomplishment and achievement."

Highly recommended.

I am using this book for courses in a degree in leadership. This book is a definite plus! It is a compolation of 28 essays from different scholars and executives and is must read for MBA students and business leaders alike.