A college applicant allegedly wrote the following one-word essay to describe himself: "Concise." While I was tempted to coopt that entire essay as a review for this book, ultimately I decided to be more verbose: first, some general remarks about the relevance of this book, then a summary of its content.

I often lament that the mythical "average person" does not appreciate what counts as evidence, nor distinguish between prejudice and rational conclusion. This is particularly evident in the realm of politics, where inflammatory rhetoric is the rule and rational argument the exception. If this tiny book (or its equivalent) were required reading for every high school senior, or college freshman, I wager there would be a wholesale shift in the texture and value of day-to-day discourse. No longer would we hear "Don't vote for that crook!", but the more sober, albeit prolix, application of modus tollens, "Public office requires honesty. Jones is dishonest. Therefore, Jones should not be elected to public office."

Of course, "Don't vote for that crook!" will never be abandoned for the simple reason that it is good tight prose. Yet, wouldn't it be grand if it were crystal clear to everyone that it is simply shorthand for the more prolix version? I claim that it would, for then we would be apt to challenge such a remark with "What evidence do you have that Jones is dishonest?", rather than "Would you rather I vote for that child molester, Smith?" The latter invites further character assassination of Jones, if not impeachment of his entire lineage. Perhaps I'm just a stuffy academic, but I can't help thinking that the introduction of a bit of cool logic into every-day discourse would lower our collective blood pressure and maybe, just maybe, allow us to occasionally see beyond our prejudices.

This wonderful little book lists 44 specific suggestions, or "rules", for injecting much-needed logic into argumentative discourse. In the author's words, each rule is "illustrated and explained soundly but above all briefly"; Hence, to Weston the book is a "rulebook" not a textbook. Weston continues "In this book, 'to give an argument' means to offer a set of reasons or evidence in support of a conclusion." This is in contrast to the variety accompanied by loud invective and broken china.

Throughout the book, Weston offers advice that we would all do well to remember. For example, he reminds us that one can neither craft nor analyze an argument by merely consulting our prejudices, and that "it is your reasons, not your language, that must persuade." With regard to language, Weston asserts that prejudicial or loaded language "preaches only to the converted, but careful presentation of the facts can itself convert." Moreover, "It is not a mistake to have strong views. The mistake is to have nothing else." Well put.

Weston also injects some broadly applicable principles of critical thinking (although he does not label them as such). For instance, in contemplating possible solutions, explanations, or causes, he urges us to continually look for more options, rather than immediately narrowing them. In so doing, we can state our case more fairly, and possibly head off objections more effectively. But perhaps the most important admonition is this: "If you can't imagine how anyone could hold the view you are attacking, you just don't understand it yet." Imagine a world in which all disputants took this to heart!

Beginning with short arguments consisting of a sentence or two, Weston builds to a chapter on crafting effective long arguments. As usual, Weston anticipates common blunders and warns us, for example, to first "find out what each side considers the strongest arguments for its position." He then prepares us for the inevitable process of rewriting and reorganizing our arguments as we accumulate evidence and analyze positions on all sides. He coolly advises us to adopt a different strategy, or even a different conclusion, should we discover that our initial inclinations are not adequately supported by the available evidence. While this may seem obvious, it would be wonderful if everyone actually did this.

Weston provides some concrete advice on writing, such as developing one idea per paragraph, getting to the point quickly, and stating the conclusion clearly and directly. According to Weston, you ought not "fence more land than you can plow. One argument well-developed is better than three only sketched." To do otherwise would be like "preferring ten very leaky buckets to one well-sealed one." Finally, Weston urges us to preemptively raise possible counter-arguments and to develop them in sufficient detail that our readers will fully appreciate the position we are disarming.

The book includes a short but helpful chapter on fallacies, focusing primarily on the two "great fallacies" of generalizing from incomplete information and overlooking alternative explanations. One angle that I found illuminating is that several classic fallacies are in fact species of "overlooking alternatives", such as "affirming the consequent", "denying the antecedent", and "false dilemma". Several fallacies were discussed in this chapter that I have not encountered elsewhere, at least not by these names: specifically, the fallacies of "persuasive definition", "poisoning the well", "provincialism", and "weasel words". All are tersely but amply illustrated. Weston concludes with a brief chapter on definitions, of which there are several varieties: stipulative, operational, essential, and genus-and-differentia. I found these distinctions to be equally illuminating. As Richard Feynman said, "To name a thing is not the same as to know a thing", yet it is often a step in the right direction.

In summary, I found this book to be an excellent guide to crafting effective arguments. Although I have studied formal logic fairly extensively, and even informal logic to a lesser degree, this book left me with many new ideas, and made familiar old ideas suddenly more cogent and relevant. And, it's concise.

This book is an excellent primer and reference book for basic logic, and only takes a few hours to read. It explains clearly and with good examples how to think and write logically, and also includes a short section on fallacies. I would especially recommend it to anyone who is in college or university and wants to increase their grades, especially on term papers.

This book is a great tutorial in argumentation, and for 6 bucks (less used), it cannot be beat. A must read (or something similar in its place) for any educated mind. Really!

This book was a funny look at the practicalities of planning/having a baby. Although the author really has an "ideal" job for having a baby, I still appreciated the troubles, frustrations, etc that she had. Perhaps the whole event went a little to easily and she does seem to have a perfect child and a perfect life after baby, it still inspired me that this may not be such a bad thing. A definite change from the horror stories one is so used to hearing!

Charming, funny, honest. Reassuring and encouraging for us less-than-perfect moms. Reads like good fiction, but we believe every word.

I was pregnant years ago, and boy was I afraid. From here to maternity by Carol Weston helped me greatly and made me become the wonderful mother that I am now. It gave me practical and down-to-earth advice about being a mother. I have a wonderful, smart child now, and I am the best mother I can be because of Carol.

The reality: The kit is worth buying after reading "The Pathway," by Ms. Mellin, but PLEEEEASSSEEEE DON'T get DUPED by the "you need to buy all 6 kits" and "you need to purchase our Basic Support training" and "you need to spend more on coaching" and "you need to call strangers on the phone" etc., nonsense that 'The Institute' would like to convince you of once you buy Kit #1!

The reality: plenty of people can find ALL the help they need in The Pathway and this ONE kit without buying another thing and without joining "Solution Circles." Most people simply do NOT need her entire program to get the 2 skills it teaches - to learn to love yourself by feeling your deep feelings and then figuring out 'more reasonable expectations' for people and events in your life, although Ms. Mellin would like you to believe that you just can't do it 'properly' without ALL of her products.

So, beware, because once you get onto the members' web site - 3 months of which comes with the kit - you WILL be bombarded with all of these pitches. You will be told by 'the providers' that you NEED the entire program.

Watch out what you choose to believe!

Kit #1 is really all most people NEED to learn these skills - the rest is simply practice!

This book helped me in so many ways, it was worth every cent and more. I have lost weight without trying and kept it off. I have taken control of so many aspects of my life just by learning these principles and applying them every day. I don't think about what to eat 24 hours a day any longer. I exercise regularily and I love it. I think like a thin person and I eat that way as well. I don't feel deprived at all. I started journaling as part of the program and I use it every day to find out who I am, what I'm feeling and grow more. All my life weight has been an issue and I believed there was something wrong with me. I had tried every program out there and nothing kept the weight off without medication till now. After working through this program I was relieved and overjoyed to know there was nothing wrong with me. The only thing wrong was that I never learned the six valuable principles in this book till now. If there is one thing you do for yourself this year, it is to buy this book and work through the program.

I've been working on this program since January 1. I have to say it is changing my life for the better. I am learning the skills to turn off my drive to overeat, overspend, over people please, and over think, as well as keeping busy busy busy.

This is a simple method, but it is not easy.

I first read Laurel Mellin's book "The Solution" when it came out in 1998. I used the journals and the feelings letters to get rid of a lot of trash. I lost weight. I felt great.

I felt so good, I quit using the skills, and I'm having to relearn them. I am a person who takes time to change. It's far too easy to want to lose the weight NOW, to get the skills NOW. God, give me patience and give it to me NOW!

It is easy to be dismayed by the price of the book, the kit, and the support. There are six kits total, and this kit gives you the grounding you need to continue this work. Not everyone needs all six kits. Not everyone needs to take a long time to do this. It is just that the support is there if you need it.

This kit is the first step to a new life. I invite you to take it.

The book is based on the Tomb Raider movie starring Angelina Jolie.Like most movies based on books,they have many differences.The movie was excellent and the book had some different parts and words which would have made the movie even better.Overall,the book is must-read for Tomb Raider or Lara Croft fans.

This is a really interesting companion book to the movie. It includes information on all sorts of things from the major characters and their backgrounds, interviews with the actors, and chapters on set design and location stories. The interview with Angelina Jolie is quite fascinating and shows in part her own complexity and depth, and it's quite enjoyable reading about the other actors such as Noah Taylor and Daniel Craig (Bryce and Alex respectively) and hearing how they view their characters.

Beautiful pictures (although clearly marketed to the boys with a few too many close up pics of Lara C), especially the ones of Cambodia, make this an attractive book, and the history of Lara Croft (originally Laura Cruise) from idea to computer game heroine to big screen personality is again a good feature of the book. Admittedly, this movie companion book falls flat in the face of other movie books such as the ones for "Moulin Rouge" and "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon", both of which are beautiful examples of how to give viewers something to remember the movie by, something to really capture the essence of a movie. This one doesn't do it, with no screenplay (not much of one to start with anyways) and not much thought put into it, although to be fair the essence of this movie is probably a couple of guns and a skimpy wardrobe; not the easiest things to market in book form!

The best part about this book is that it hints at what the screenplay fails to do: it gives some idea of what the producers might have been hoping to achieve with the movie. Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie or I wouldn't have bought this book, but there's no doubt the storyline in the movie is thin and at times utterly confusing and odd. This book by containing a few more of the ideas and storyline behind "Tomb Raider", really points you towards a more complex storyline, one that actually makes sense.

But Angelina Jolie's comments alone are worth the price of the book, in her interview she says that after making the movie she was left with a sense of adventure, that we should all be going out there and experiencing life, travel, the world, for ourselves. Not just living vicariously through books and movies and computer games. That's definitely something for us all to keep in mind!

Lara Croft, adventurer, wakes up on the night of the first stage of the alignment of all nine planets, to the ticking of a mysterious old clock hidden in a secret room. She finds out that the ancient relic is called the All Seeing Eye, which will lead to the whereabouts of two pieces of metal which, when put together, forms a triangle. When these pieces of metal are put together at exactly the right moment, the pocessor will have the ability to control time. But Lara's clock is stolen by Manfred Powell, a member of the Illuminati, a group who has a diabolical plan to use the power for themselves, steals the clock. Now its up to her to find the two pieces of the triangle before Powell does, with the help of gadget whiz Bryce and sort of boyfriend/enemy, Alex West.

As always, the movie and the novelizations are different which is the case of the movie and this book. But both are good in different ways. This book was great because though it didn't have as much action as it did in the movie, it had plenty of explanations to some parts you wouldn't understand watching "Tomb Raider", and there's also more conversation and humor. But the movie is better in that it has more action, though not so much conversation.

Enjoy! This book is lots of fun to read and can be enjoyed by both kids and adults. I'd also like to try to get the adult version of the book "Tomb Raider", written by Dave Stern.

This is a catalog for a show currently at San Francisco MOMA, launched in Chicago last year. (Weston came from Illinois and did most of his work in California.) It is essentially a re-edition of Weston's My Camera On Point Lobos, published in 1951 and again in 1968. The major change is text by David Travis replacing excerpts from Weston's daybooks in the original.

The text is intended to humanize someone who is mostly mythical by describing and interpreting events in the last years of his life at Point Lobos. It presents the author's analysis of Weston's career, state of mind and the evolution of his late style. There is little or no new material here and the analysis is strained, but thoughtful.

There are some intelligent comparisons presented of Weston's late and early views of the same subject. As a collection this is not a good introduction to Weston. It is a good final chapter to the Daybooks and a beautiful collection of reproductions. It is also a good companion to Ansel Adams at 100, showing how these two friends viewed many of the same subjects so differently. It would be a good addition to reading Charis Wilson's Through Another Lens, showing many pictures of domestic life including Weston's children, cats, and many of Charis Wilson. There is a lot of "inside baseball" here, both explicit and implied.

There is at least one important image in the show that is not in the catalog and there are many important omissions from the show itself, which make this a poor place to start studying Weston's work. For the record, both Weston and Adams experimented with color in the late 40s, shooting the same images in color and black and white. The color images aren't good but they are a very good way to show why their respective monochrome images are so strong.

It is worth repeating that while the printed images are as good as any you'll see, they are not even close to the 8X10 contact prints in the show. This really matters in Weston's work. If you have a chance to see the San Francisco show, before it is put away for another 10 years, you will also see additional earlier prints from SFMOMA's outstanding permanent collection which put the theme of the show into context that is missing from the book.

This is Weston when he was only satisfying his own search for meaning, not making statements or presenting his vision to the world. These are his final meditations and he knew it. They are by far his richest and most abstract work and worthy of a lot of study.

Edward Weston was one of the most squirelly, yet most talented photographers in the history of the medium - he rarely smiled, wore women's clothes, never learned to drive, married a woman 30 years his junior, lived in a shack in Carmel and loved philandering with Tina Modotti and others. He died with $300 in the bank in 1958, yet his photograph of a Circus Tent went at auction a few years ago for $266,000. His influence on photography and photographers was immense. Two of his four sons, Brett and Cole, became accomplished image makers and his grandson now carries on that same tradition, even living in the same shack on Wildcat Hill in Carmel. This book covers roughly the last 10 years of his photographs 1938-1948. The images are superbly produced and well-chosen but the text was a bit overbearing and heavy on the theory that in the last years Weston was overly concerned with death which was represented in his images. Certainly his images of Point Lobos are a bit dark and morose with pictures of dead trees and pelicans, but that's Point Lobos! During this period he also made whimsical images of his wife wearing a gas mask in the nude and playing a flute while a cat looks on with a surprised glance. Weston was full of LIFE, not death. Thirty years before his death in 1958 he made an image of a corpse at a time when his relationship with his future wife was rosy and he was spending time with his beloved sons. His final work does not seem any more concerned with death than it was in his earlier years. But, forget the text! Photography books are similar to Playboy magazines anyway - we buy them to look at the pictures, not read the text!! This is a terrific book and I can't wait to view the actual images at The Art Institute of Chicago.

A finely printed book that features more than the regular images that every other book has. The essay is a very worthwhile read. It offers wonderful insites to the photogrpaher at the end of his working career.A real must to any Weston colection of books.

This book is the best! It is a MUST for all teachers! It covers ways to really reach your students as well as keep your sanity. I cannot say enough... It is invaluable! Do not hesitate to purchase this incredible book. I cannot believe this is not mandatory to all educators!

I loved this book! There is so much talk today about discipline and consequences. It was great to hear about warmth and rapport in teaching. If you use these techniquese you'll find students are naturally more cooperative and positive. I like the practical approach---lots of ready to use ideas, and meant to be copied, pages. A wonderful side benefit is that it makes teaching more fun for the teacher too.

I met one of the authors at a conference a couple of years ago, and was enchanted with her style so I bought the book. It is wonderful! Great ideas and practical games that teach lessons with multiple target educational objectives. I'm a motivational speaker and a theatre teacher. Working with the kinesthetic learner is a challenge. These exercises help make learning fun!

Dining At The Lineman's Shack by academician and novelist John Weston is a memoir of 1930's Arizona, about growing up in a lineman's shack, coping with the difficulties of rural family life, enduring tough times with the comfort of a mother who can cook miraculously well with next to nothing for ingredients. A compellingly personal story, and one which is vividly descriptive to such an extent that it virtually transports the reader through time and space, Dining At The Lineman's Shack is exceptionally well written and very highly recommended reading.

I have just finished a week of savouring "Dining..." bit by bit, bite by bite, many unexpected meals of great enjoyment. The work is compelling from the cover to the end, which of course begs a sequel. It is so like a novel, yet better than a novel with its many surprising branchings and final lingerings, the true stuff of life. And so erudite. And so generous with its scattered recipes for life. I feel richer having the book hand, both for its range of insights and its range of yummies. I know of no other memoir that yields this particular mix of pleasure.

I've just finished a week of savouring "Dining..." bit by bit, bite by bite, many unexpected meals of great enjoyment. The work is compelling from the cover to the end, which of course begs a sequel. It is so like a novel, yet better than a novel with its many surprising branchings and final lingerings - the true stuff of life. And so erudite. And so generous withi its scattered recipes for life. I feel richer having the book handy, both for its range of insights and its range of yummies. I know of no other memoir that yields this particular mix of pleasure.

Wasn't too impressed with this one. Having moved around much of my childhood I can understand Shelley's desire for security and roots. Even though Cain didn't feel the same way he should have made more of an attempt to work through the way she felt and been more understanding.

I guess I have the be the party pooper,but I didn't think the book was that great. I felt that there wasnt enough suspense until the very end of the book. Up until that point, I found it kind of average and boring. This is the first book that I have read by Elizabeth Lowell, but I will read one more before I make a true judgement on her books. However, I am glad this book was a freebie because it wouldnt have been worth the money.

I've read this book about 15 times! Elizabeth Lowell previously wrote this under a different title - this time it has been added to and the story line is that much stronger. It is a wonderful book, full of excitement and love with the female character resisting all the way!

In this work of pop-anthropology from 1920, Jessie L. Weston puts forth the idea that the romance of King Arthur and the search for the Grail is no mere fairy tale, but rather a mythos that goes back to earliest man's fertility rites and the annual rebirth of the land after winter. Most nowaways would look to this book for anthropology or to help understand the poetry of T.S. Eliot. However, this tome of outdated early-20th century thought is useful for neither purpose.

In FROM RITUAL TO ROMANCE Ms. Weston presents, like Julian Jaynes in his book THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND, a theory that once sounded revolutionary and a great solution but has since been superseded. Late in her life (she was 70 when she wrote this book), Ms. Weston become enamoured with the vegetation ceremony theories of Sir James Fraser, and indeed this book is based upon the ideas Fraser expounded in his multi-volume Victorian work "The Golden Bough." Nowadays Fraser is only mentioned in anthropology courses to give an idea of how the science started and nearly everyone understands now that his is not a valid view on early man (much like Freud, heavily discounted after his death, is presented to psychology students to only show them how pyschology started). If the base upon which FROM RITUAL TO ROMANCE is built, i.e. Fraser's theories, is disproven, Weston's thesis comes tumbling down like a house of cards.

FROM RITUAL TO ROMANCE probably reminds in print because T.S. Eliot, in the footnotes to his great poem "The Waste Land", claimed that the book was a key inspiration for that crucial event in 20th-century literature. However, since the discovery in 1967 of the original manuscripts of "The Waste Land", it has been generally understood that Eliot's footnotes are a red herring, that the poem's source was really his emotional turmoil and despair in 1920 and 1921, and that the footnotes were added only to make the poem large enough to be published in its own volume and to clarify some of the more obscure literary references. Thus, any fan of Eliot searching for illumination on "The Waste Land" in FROM RITUAL TO ROMANCE would come away with less than if he had just read any of the extant biographies of Eliot (and his mentally-ill wife of that time, Vivien).

So, FROM RITUAL TO ROMANCE does not help one to understand either the anthropological source of the King Arthur mythos (which probably doesn't go back very far anyway, says modern archaeology), or Eliot's "The Waste Land". Should one want to understand that work of Eliot's better, I'd recommend getting a copy of the original manuscripts in THE WASTE LAND: A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound.

this book is a must for anybody interested in the tales and legends centred upon the Grial. It is also very pleasant to read. The author presented here the (then, that is 1920) revolutionary theory that most elements in the cycle of the Grial stories are actually the remnants of incredibly old fertility rituals that, somehow, survived in remote parts of the Roman empire. It is extremely interesting to see how the author reached this conclusion and how she was prepared to defend it against the campaigners for the christianity of the Grial. And on top of everything, she writes in a deliciously archaic English, sprinkled with French and Latin (mind the quotations. They are not translated)

This book, published in 1920, was a seminal influence on both T.S. Eliot in "The Wasteland" and Ernest Hemingway in "The Sun Also Rises". Eighty years later, it's still easy to see why. Although the book is short-just over 200 pages-it is almost unbelievably wide-ranging. As she deconstructs the elements of the various versions of the tales of the Holy Grail, Ms. Weston takes the reader globetrotting and time-traveling, from Vedic India to turn of the century Africa and Japan, with stops in between in Europe and the Middle East from antiquity to her own time. She relates the Grail stories to archaic sacred kingship, fertility rituals and dances, the rites and myths of Adonis, Attis and Mithra, as well as Gnostic Christianity. If you're interested in the Grail, the history of western culture, the history of religious ideas, or the transmission of myth and ritual into literary forms, "From Ritual To Romance" is truly a revelation.