Dr.Budd has brought forward a powerful program, which enables all that are open to it, to find a new way to experience life, health, and a spiritual awakening. The clarity with which he articulates his ideas, as well as those of his esteemed colleagues Maturana, Flores, and others, has the ability to open places in all of us that too often lay dormant. In reading Dr. Budd's book I have experienced the "light bulb going off", whereby I had to put the book down for periods of time and really think about how I lead my own life. I found Chapter 4 particularly helpful, as Dr. Budd quite eloquently outlines how we generate the life we live through our own language use. His description of "The Ten Linguistic Viruses" impacted me deeply, having the same sort of power as that of The Ten Commandments (religion aside). I found the comments of his four very diverse patients, which he weaves throughout the book, very interesting and helpful. It encouraged me to look again at how I experience and lead my own life. Yet, I never felt confused or overwhelmed as to how to make changes. The exercises at the end of each chapter proved to be an enormous help. I felt I was given the tools to journey to new places in my own inner life with great care and guidance. Dr. Budd's deep insights, concern, and practical help communicate hope to all that are willing to look, listen, and learn again.

In this book Matt Budd produces the magic of poets, artists of the first rate, and a few others: he gives us fresh access to ourselves as the material for making a life, and contributes to our skills for designing our lives.

Inevitably, and by design, this book appears in the tradition of "self help." It is that, and the combination of experiences, explanation of phenomena, examples, and exercises that the authors use to bring us the help is effective and beautifully done. However, the book is a lot more than that at the same time. For example, I put it alongside the great plays and the great poets as a source of reflection, insight, and inspiration into what I am doing with my life, and alongside meditation and prayer for creating space in my life to consider what is important, be grateful for life, and get ready to take action on what I am not satisfied with.

And there is more: the authors give us access to a group of thinkers who are not accessible to the general public today, because the foundations of their thinking are so recently built that they aren't even taught at most universities. The best examples are the radical new interpretation of language and action of Fernando Flores and the biology of Humberto Maturana. Each has written, but their books are difficult. Budd does a beautiful job of taking us simply and clearly into these new worlds.

A book not to be missed! Thank you, Matthew Budd, and thank you Amazon for making this kind of conversation possible for all of us.

Finally, a clear and concise exploration of the power of language and the connection that our language has to our body AND our health. Matt does a great job of synthesizing the work of Flores and Maturana with his own learning journey and medical background. He presents very powerful ideas and exercises in wonderfully simple terms that any lay person can understand! I recommend this book to anyone looking to make shifts not only in their own health, but in the results they are producing in life.

I first found this book as part of a Psychology research project.
The research that founded this book has influenced the way that government systems deal with divorcing families across America. It is one of the best resources I can think of for families that are going through divorce. Though the title states a decade after divorce the follow up has gone well beyond this. I have been divorced for 15 years - today I am purchasing a copy for my sister who is getting divorced after 18 years of marraige - This is one of those books that I have loned out and lost and loned out and lost repeatedly - they keep getting passed forward. Well worth the little investment of money and time.

It wasn't until recently (I'm almost 40) that I began to look at my parent's divorce as a source of some of my behaviors. I'm very functional,even successful, but sometimes wonder if I haven't been undercut by the blow of losing "home". This is an interesting read, and worth exploring by those who share my suspicion about their own lives. Knowledge is power. Good luck.

I found this book in a second hand shop during the time that my husband and I were considering seperating after an 18 year marriage. I found the book amazenly insightful. I saw the truth in what really happens to children after a divorce and not what the public portrays and "something they will get over." This book made me cry on nearly ever page. I was able to identify with many things, myself as a child of divorce. I did go ahead and get a divorce but this book absolutely changed my life and my actions. My ex husband read the book and we attended classes on how to behave and raise children in THEIR best interests. It has been three years now and even through there have been struggles, I feel I have done the best that a parent can in this situation. My exhusband and I are very amicable and cordial to each other. His child support is never a day late. He calls several times a week because we live in another state. He flies to see the children on spring break and they spend Christmas vacation and summers with him. We never bicker or fight or ever use the children. This book helped us see how parents can fall into patterns of destruction. We are both parents of our two children, and we feel that even though we are divorced we still need to co-parent. We discuss their future and make plans together for them. We owe this to our children. Our children have the right to two loving parents. Because of this book, we have been able to see better ways to raise our children with as little trauma as possible and give them a brighter future. I HIGHLY recommend this book to any couple considering divorce. You OWE it to your children.

This book is awesome. Not only does it have wonderful recipes, especially desserts, which the Amish are famous for, but also has so much wonderful info. on the Amish people and their culture. I own several books about the Amish, and this is better than those other books even though this is a "cookbook." And the pictures are marvelous. Other than general info. on the Amish, my favorite part of this book is the fact that she divides the food into many different chapters and has a little story about each. An example is Baking Day, Lady Food, and the lunch bucket, as well as many other. This has info scattered throughout it about gardening by the signs of the moon, how to bake perfect cookies, and how to bake an angel food cake. I would highly recommend it.

I discovered this book over a year ago, at the public library. I read through it, and after I returned it I would find myself thinking: "I wonder about ", and either my wife or I would have to go back to the library to check the book back out!
When I realized I was getting the book almost monthly, AND it stayed at the local branch because that's where I last returned it, I realized it was time to buy it!

With that little story, the rest of this review is simple: This is an excellent cook book. This is not a 'healthy' cookbook. There's no focus on lean, loosing weight, or heart-happy cooking here! This is good, rich, smother-it-in-gravy country cooking.

If you know the Amish, and you have visions of the men coming in at dusk from working the fields all day to a kitchen table stacked with fresh, home-cooked *American* food, this is your cookbook. It simply doesn't get better than this.

Originally from the heartland of Amish Country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I found this cookbook outstanding. It bring's back many memories as a kid with it's recipes. I live in the sunshine state now and sometime's miss the great food I was raised with. To have found this book and have been able to make the recipes for my family has been great! I hope Marcia Adam's plan's on writing more like this one.

Naturally, my favorite Richard Adams' novel is Watership Down, but the next favorite has got to be this book, Traveller. It is the simple of a horse who lived through horrible times. But this horse does not know why - because for the simple reason - he is just a horse.

He tells (as only a horse can) of the Civil War (or is it the War of Aggression?). He does not know. He is a horse. He does not understand why men are doing these horrible things to each other. Why they are killing each other. Why there is so pain and blood. Why there is no food. No water.
His only concern is his owner, the tall man in grey. It is his duty to carry him safely everywhere and without fear. Traveller does enjoy despite the hardship when he is allowed to parade with his rider in front of the many men who cheer - are they cheering him or his rider. He wants to do a grand job whatever.

It also tells of the horse and his owner - the bond they had for each other. Traveller's wanting to do as good a job as he can for his owner because of this bond.

I really enjoyed this book as it tells of the war without taking sides. Of course, Traveller cannot take sides. He is just a horse, therefore, he can tell of the war without being prejudice to either side. Just the facts - all the blood, the gore and the questioning of why.

If you can get a copy of this book, read it. It is a great novel.

General Lee was a great man so he should have a great horse to go along with him. We always read how bad war is on human's well after reading this book I learned that war was just as bad for the horse. My heart went out to Traveller when General Lee died he just could not understand what happened. I know that you will come to read it time and time again, just like I have.

Traveller is in plain-speaking a magnificent masterpiece that is copacetic in bringing forth a new hero to the American Southern states. Traveller's views of war and its after effects are some of the best I have incurred. There is no one that can tell a story like Richard Adams. I wish he could write a new one each year. Why Traveller is out of print and all that trash still sits on the bookshelves in stores is beyond me. It is worth the read just to see how a horse views the white surrender flag!

I'd say that the Horseclans novels are some of the best action fantasy ever written. I'd put the Comming of the Horseclans as the best of the series. I found the characters to be well developed, the pace to be fast, the plot both exciting and engaging, and finaly the action to be non-stop and realistic. If you can find it get it.

Robert Adams really knows how to build a complete world all his own! A post-apocalyptic realm of nomads and Ehleenee lords, he brings it to real, and sometimes all too graphic life. A wonderful escape into a strange and almost familiar world. If you ever find a copy of this book, HOLD ON TO IT!

The horseclan series books are among my favorite books in the world. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good read, it is fantasy at its best, immersing the reader in realistic detail in a world where anything is possible and science has gone wrong.If you need more try David Eddings!

This book was very helpful on my recent trip to Beijing, but only because I've had a few years of formal Mandarin classes. If you've never taken any Chinese, this book, or any phrasebook for that matter, may not be of much help simply because of the difficulty of the language. Believe me, even after 3 years of Chinese I still had trouble getting cab drivers to understand me!

Even if you've been studying Chinese for a while this phrasebook will be a great resource for a multitude of day to day words and phrases. In fact, I often just read it page to page as sort of an interesting textbook. I love that it includes both the pinyin with tones and the characters side by side. Unfortunately, there are more than a few editing errors with the characters which could cause problems if you're using the book by pointing at phrases. Another issue is that the pronunciations often include the "er" ending on words which is only a Beijing thing, not heard much in the south.

Overall it is a great book that managed to survive being thrown around in my backpack, and now that I'm back home it will be useful as a textbook as there are still MANY words in it I have yet to learn.

This little book is filled with phrases one may encounter daily during travel to China. It is also small and compact so that it won't add bulk to your backpack or purse. I recommend getting familiar with the layout of the book before you go.

I'm not a scholar of Mandarin although I have completed the Pimsleur Mandarin course level 1. My experience as a relative novice was that this book was extremely useful.

Every Chinese person that I showed it to, when trying to communicate, also thought it was very good and several asked where they could buy it. I looked in Beijing and couldn't find it.

Chinese pronunciation is fairly difficult although grammar is straightforward. I've got by in Vietnam in the past with the Lonely Planet's Viet phrasebook without any previous tuition. If you can retain phrases and remember to transliterate words down quickly before you forget then even this book on its own would be very handy. Pinyin is frequently not pronounced how a Westerner would expect from its spelling. For example the word "wo" for "I" is pronounced like "war" and not "woe".

In "Mister Satan's Apprentice," street musician extraordinaire Adam Gussow has left in just about everything, and it's about 40 percent too much; the book would have read far better at a sleek 250 pages. But the good stuff is really good, and the book is well worth reading despite its distractions and digressions. In his early 40s, Gussow is currently a doctoral candidate in Princeton's English department. But thousands know him as the harmonica-wielding half of the "progressive gutbucket blues" duo Satan and Adam -- three-CD recording artists, photogenic subject of any number of newspaper and magazine features, and cameo stars of the U2 movie "Rattle and Hum."

In his autobiography, Gussow gets deep inside blues, and his relationship to it, and manages to successfully translate the music into language. "Blues harmonica played well was a miniature tongued slalom, a tornado swallowed and contained," he tells us, and his words capture every bit of excitement that the grooves and notes have to offer. "Mister Satan's Apprentice" is about much more than the blues, though -- it's a provocative meditation on race from a white man immersed in a traditionally black genre, neighborhood and world. Playing around with his first harmonica, in 1974, Gussow contemplates the subtleties of playing blues. "It had something to do with being a black guy," he muses.

As the protagonist in his narrative, Gussow pales (no pun intended) next to two marvelous characters: his two mentors, Nat Riddles and Sterling "Mister Satan" Magee. Twenty-two years older than his protégé, Mister Satan is as colorful as they come. He's a visual artist and apocalyptic numerologist with a murky music-industry background, and a font of, if not wisdom, then brilliantly idiosyncratic aphorisms and soliloquies. A Harlem fixture when Gussow approaches the guitarist to jam along, he shouts and hollers, runs hot and cold, towers over other men. Mister Satan looms larger than life, but harmonica player Nat Riddles is entirely real, an odd-job taxi driver with a dazzling smile and soulful tone. "He was perpetually on the verge of becoming the blues world's Next Big Thing," Gussow writes. "A young black harp-player with the Sound." Riddles flits in and out of fortune, showing up unexpectedly to astound a New York club, phoning from somewhere in the South, destitute and desperate, surviving gunshot wounds only to eventually succumb to a cruel wasting disease.

It's the music, finally, that counts most -- Gussow gives his story its own soundtrack, one of restlessness and yearning, of his struggle to capture the Sound: "The Sound was Southern-bound, it was cocky, playful, manic, chucking, resentful, edgy, comforting, relentless. It took incredible lip strength and finesse to produce. It was sexual. It was the haunted, restless feeling of a guy's apartment late at night after the woman who used to live there had moved out. It was whatever nasty things she was doing with the other guy-a virile sensitive soulmate-this very minute. It was the best way of beating those visions back into the ghoulish cave they had crawled out of. Working hard at the Sound was a socially acceptable way of sobbing, raging, and primal-screaming from a hot heart while pretending merely to be practicing." A little of this kind of writing goes a long way, and there's an awful lot of it here. Granted, it's a real challenge to maintain a level of excitement in writing about music page after page, particularly about blues, a genre built on the same few chords locked in a repetitious groove. So it's forgivable that Gussow often leans out a little far: "The sidewalk scene dissolved; I was wandering in a garden of earthly delights, hands cupped against the sweet cold fluid air. Every bent note was a pitch-perfect arrow puncturing the gray dusk. You only live now. Blue notes danced and spun, lines endlessly unfolding like so many wrapped gifts laid bare." You have to remind yourself that he's talking about a harmonica, one of the more prosaic of instruments.

For all Gussow's breathless adjectives and action verbs, he's frustratingly vague about the technical aspects of the duo's "huge raw perfect sound." The book's photos show Gussow with effects pedals at his feet, but he makes no mention of them; he doesn't mention the basic information that he plays in "cross harp" style until page 386; Mister Satan's "phase-shifted guitar wash and deafening clatter" is described pretty much only in metaphorical terms, as, for instance, "an endlessly unrolling Persian carpet with gristle and clanks added." Gussow is so good at getting inside his playing that the narrative sags whenever it moves to other topics. A hefty amount of the bloat deals with his failed relationships. We meet mercurial crackhead Robyn and inconstant ex-fat girl Gail, but mostly there's erratic, irritable hyperfeminist Helen. Gussow tells us on page 30 that Helen left him back in 1984, so we're predisposed to dislike her, and we indeed do. "Most men had a girlfriend," he writes. "I had Aphrodite crossed with Kali the Destroyer, She of infinite ravenous limbs." Worse, the book's artfully jumbled narrative, with short sections ordered sort of sequentially on several tracks, dooms us to read about Helen over the entire course of the book. We think we're finally through with her, and then: "1983. Things with Helen had turned out surprisingly well . . ." Enough already!

In the late '80s and early '90s, a period when racial violence kept flaring up in the outer boroughs of New York City, Satan and Adam's young-old, white-black novelty made a splash, but momentum slipped away. "Minor celebrity beckoned, then faded," Gussow writes. And despite the book's vibrant cover photo of the pair, they no longer perform, according to an e-mail Gussow sent me. "[I]t's impossible to keep the act together," he wrote, noting that Mister Satan now lives in south-central Virginia and has no telephone. That's a real shame.

I could hardly put this book down to perform activities of daily living, let alone going to work. "Mr Adam" has created a masterpiece of American musical literature. Being a blues lover of many years, I was bored to death by the almost clinical approach of most writers on the subject. Not so, Mr. Gussow! He delivers a passionately honest and heart felt memoir filled with wonderfully alive and vibrant individuals, sharing with us the one true American music, the blues.

Recently it was my privilege to see author and harmonica player Adam Gussow at my local huge independent bookstore here in the Eastern US. I rarely do commercials, but if you can't catch Adam, you can check out his new novel "Mr. Satan's Apprentice". Adam calls it "a blues memoir", and so it is. The guy is a no-shit, kick-butt, street-smart harp player! FYI, I have fairly high standards in this realm. If you've seen or heard the New York duo "Satan and Adam", you'll know what I mean. The guy is ALSO a juicy and creative, energetic, sexy writer - something I'm also picky about. Princeton Ph.D. candidate - English.

Adam's book describes a journey that a few of us know, but most do not. The musician in you will relate to the tale of the emergence of deep and powerful music from the little instrument - and the romantic in you will throb with the ways the emerging harmonica player and boundary-crosser discovers the things he needs to grow musically and personally - and then sometimes fearlessly, sometimes not, sets out to acquire them. You'll meet his teachers and mentors, and like it or not, you'll see life through the eyes of this seeker of musical and personal connection. You'll go with Adam on the romantic roller coaster as loves come and go - and you'll travel with him to Paris to play in the Metro and on the street; to the American South, and to other places exotic and otherwise - including a hitch with the road company of Broadway show based on Mark Twain's Sawyer and Finn. Later we get into the recording studio with Mr. Gussow and Mr. Satan - the Harlem street mystic and one-man band who becomes Adam's main-man mentor and muse, the Mr. Satan of the book's title. Throughout the book you'll find Adam the street intellectual examining his position as a white man among black men (and black women) in this blues-filled world - an examination in which Mr. Satan plays a key role.

A book for players and lovers - of the spirit of the music, of the street; of the endless forms of beauty and love, as they are found ALL over the place. The author is one who knows, and magically, describes, many of the gut experiences we players know; to my knowledge no one's ever written quite this way about these things before. Like the performing moments, the pulling out of all the everything you've got and then some, when the audience is on it's very EDGE, right there with you; when you are truly and purely the great IT! Blowing and drawing deep, and deeper, and then high and higher; and the room is all whoops and smiles, and all there in your hand. A good player knows these things, and believe me, in a blues band, nobody gets that kind of juice but the harp player.

OK, so maybe you don't know the peak of performance grace and light - but you know your peaks, and Adam's telling can stir it back into view...

Adam Gussow writes of music, romance, conflict, and awakening in an intimately physical and heart- connected way. As a player, I'm rocked. -"Harmonica Jack" Merrylees (JMerrylees@aol.com)

I have heard this advice before: If you want to be successful
at something, find the most successful person you can in that area, listen to what they say, and try to follow it. Well, its hard to imagine a football coach more sucessful than Mike Shanahan. Here's a guy who started with a dream: to be a head football coach, started as an unpaid volunteer for a college team, and worked his way to be one of the best, most respected, coaches in the NFL (winning 2 consecutive Superbowls) at a young age.

The great thing is, he has written a book that is designed to help people win beyond football, in any area of life. Shanahan breaks it down for you: the way he prepares, some struggles he's had, some ways he motivates people (including the little things that we learn are so critical), very good wisdom concerning life, and a lot more. Also very critical is the fact that this book is very easy to read and understand.

You even get a bonus section in each chapter written by some of the greatest people and minds in football: Paul Tagliabue, Jerry Rice, Bill Walsh, John Elway, Deion Sanders, Steve Young, George Seifert, Joe Montana, Marcus Allen, Al Michaels, and more. They give their own take on the subject being discussed in the chapter, which is not only informative, but like the book itself, filled with wisdom.

The chapters consist of 16 basic areas to focus on to become successful, things like: Preparing (all of life is preparation, and not preparing is preparing to fail), Sacrificing (don't expect to get anything good done without sacrifice, if it was easy, everyone would do it), Learning (without learning, you will be hopelessly stuck where you are), Detailing (the devil is definitely in the details and that's where things often break down). This is just a taste of the wisdom in this book. Highly recommended for people looking to improve themselves.

A die-hard Broncos fan from the days dying watching those ridiculous striped socks and watching Fran Tripuka get killed, what a job Shanahan did turning it around into two Super Bowls in a row.

Learning of his background and his principles makes me now not only a more avid Bronco fan, but also a Shanahan fan as well. His perseverance from the days of his kidney injury to how he became part of Sooner coaching staff till today is truly one of principles of success through hard work, not gifts or who you know or any of the other myths most people who never get anywhere fall for and are unmotivated. Most of them just don't ever want to work hard at anything, but have it handed to them. Shanahan disproves all that bunk and shows how it came to be. Unbelievable that when given the Raiders head-job, didn't even have the downpayment for a house.

This guy is very endearing to so many of us who never had the backgrounds for those connections, but wanting something bad enough, and always believing it, achieve it one goal at a time.

Great advice, especially appreciate his concern for balance.

Excellent read. Thanks, Mike, from a new fan and admirer.

Straight-forward, crisply articulated and with practically no unnecessary fluff, Mike Shanahan's book, "Think Like a Champion," compellingly argues that the game of life is basically won or lost before the "players" take the field. Shanahan asserts his point of view over sixteen easy-to-digest chapters (each about ten pages or less) on the diffent tenets of becoming the best at what you do.

What I liked about this book is that while the author culls specific examples from his football career, the "moral of the story" is clearly applicable to ANYONE seeking to become the best in any endeavor. Offering an excellent, enjoyable read to both sports enthusiasts and non enthusiasts alike, the author's writing style is to neither excessively arm-wave nor make unsupported generalizations.

In fact, part of the Shanahan's credibility here is in his willingness to name names when providing examples of people living up to a credo espoused in a given chapter or more dramatically, falling short.

Written with humility, Shanahan's book leaves the reader feeling that there is nothing magical to becoming a huge success -- other than having a plan and putting in the blood, sweat and tears required to make that plan a success. Or as the author concludes, citing legendary coach Vince Lobardi, "Your quality of life is in direct proportion to your commitment to excellence." So true.

This collection of Phoebe Gloeckner's comics is definitely not for the faint of heart, but it's worth a reading. If you haven't read her novel, Diary of a Teenage Girl, I think you will find this book a better introduction to her work. The themes are much the same and the comic art is very well done.
The subject matter is pretty bleak.

I can't say enough about this author/artist. I've just finished reading the book and am almost speechless. For anyone out there still dealing with demons of their own less than perfect childhoods, this book takes on the feel of a close friend in the same situation. The author, in a semi-autobiographical fashion, recounts a childhood of sexual abuse, drug abuse, and general coming-of-age well before it ever should. Full of amazing illustrations (Gloeckner is a lauded medical illustrator as well as excellent cartoonist), this book is sure to please anyone looking for something different, and in my case, cathartic. I don't think I could begin to recommend this book highly enough. I'm just glad that I live in a day and age where this book is not only allowed to be published, but can earn accolades as well (the least of which is from me). Thank you, Phoebe!

A Child's Life is hard to read but even harder to turn your eyes away from. Her child-like drawings combined with adult events and content perfectly express the difficult adolescent limbo between girl and woman.

UNDO THE DEED is a bold and unique first novel. Even more importantly, it is a true resource for sufferers of domestic abuse of all ages. Although the storyline is rooted in many hallmarks of science fiction, I believe it is more properly appreciated when approached as a contemporary fantasy. Not to imply that the story is in any way wispy or easy, as it is anything but that. AMJ deals unflinchingly with the abusive episodes, and in the resulting emotional turmoil that all the characters feel. I would also particularly recommend this book for young readers - the teen and young adult, whom I think would find a particularly empathetic connection to the lead characters and the teenage centered storyline, and would be most likely to derive and apply the important messages this book has to offer.

A fantastic story line that many people can,
unfortunately, relate to. All of the details well
placed and in the proper sequence. A hard thing to
do properly. Looking forward to his next offering.

To the general public, science fiction is about science: stories not so much about people as about gadgets. But Adam-Michael James knows that good SF uses its suite of very special literary tools to explore what it means to be human in ways other forms of storytelling simply can't. His novel Undo the Deed is a classic example of this, using time travel not to illuminate logical paradoxes, but rather to let an abused woman meet her abusive father when he was a child. The result is gutsy and heartwrenching, and, as with all good SF, it wonderfully illuminates the human condition.