DiLeo does a great job of treating the subject matter of the interpretation of children's drawings. This is thorough work which gives the reader insight into such crucial aspects of interpretation as development, content, and projective uses. This is a "must read" for any therapist intending to elicit and interpret drawings from child clients.

The book is very helpful to me in my job. It serves as a very helpful reference material, just short of a handbook. It provides clear and concise explanations on topics you need to know. Even layman, with a minimal technical background, can easily understand the terms and concepts.

I enjoy this book very much. The characters are human-like in nature which gives the book charm. Lionni captures the essence of siblings in the cute frog characters. The moral is easy to understand and something to remember for all ages, not just children. A definate must have.

This book has beautiful fold out pictures of James Rosenquist's most famous paintings. There are also aticles that give a little background into each painting as well as an interview with the artist at the end. This is a good book to get an introduction to James Rosenquist. However, if you really want to delve into his art I would chose a more all inclusive book that traces his work from beginning to end.

This book is fun *and* educational. On one hand, you can use it like an encyclopedia, to find out, say, what Yom Kippur celebrates. On the other hand, you can use it to acquire a set of one-liners, catch phrases, and plain old jokes, mostly groaners. You'll also find out what are true Yiddishisms and what are mangled versions, and what the proper use of some common terms is. Neat book to dip into now and then.

(The only trouble with it is that once you start reading you tend to keep reading past the point where the jokes make you laugh and the serious entries stick with you. It's best absorbed a little at a time, if you can force yourself to do it that way.)

Oh, and don't kvetch the peaches. (p. 310)

If you want the definitive account of Kelly Johnson's life - this is the book. If you're looking for detailed technical information on the various aircraft he designed, look elsewhere. In my opinion this is the only real problem with this book - there are not enough details. Too many subjects that should warrant complete chapters are only mentioned in passing. This book would have to be over 1,000 pages to really do justice to Kelly Johnson's achievements. It's too bad that this book was written before the major declassification reviews of the past several years. With the passing of Kelly and Ben Rich, many interesting details have been lost forever.

This is a collection of essays about Chinese impressions of America over the last 150 years. We know what Americans thought of the Chinese when they first arrived -- this is a rare opportunity to learn what the Chinese thought of Americans. Topics include helpful suggestions concerning American ettiquite, essays on American women, black Americans, and the various problems in America (too much traffic, excessive consumption, etc.). This book will allow the American reader to examine his/her own society from a different perspective.

It would not matter if Jay Parini writes about a bowl of soup, let alone the great Leo Tolstoy, Parini's writing is simply eloquent. I read Parini with a highlighter in one hand.

Henry Bettenson, a teacher in Patristics and Classics has made an important contribution to the students who wish to delve into the Fathers of the Church. The present book provides an introduction. The book deals with the Church Fathers from the council of Nicea to Pope Leo the Great. This period from 325 to 461 is called the golden age of patristic literature. The Fathers represented here are Cyril of Jerusalem, Hilary of Poitiers, Basil of Caesaria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Theodore of Mopsuestia, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret of Cyrus, and Leo the Great. It contains short biographic sketches of the Fathers represented here and citations from their writings carefully categorized under different headings.

The great contributions of the post-Nicene Fathers of the Church in the direction of the development of dogmas on Trinity, Holy Spirit and the nature of Christ are well brought out. A thorough study of the contexts in which these patristic writings appeared, is essential to understand the texts. Bettenson is short and sketchy in these contexts, since the book is intented to be only an introduction.

Commodity Futures have been called "The Last Great Frontier of Capitalism". A characteristic of frontiers is that they produce interesting people. But while we know a good deal about the interesting people in other industries - Bill Gates in software, for example, or Peter Drucker in management consulting - until recently the public has heard little of the human side of the futures business.

A few years ago a remarkable book was published by the options trader Jack Ritchie called God in the Pits - Confessions of a Commodities Trader. The book had much to say about author's spiritual journey and little about the financial markets in Chicago, but he described his motivation for writing the book as follows: "...the common stereotype is that integrity and commodities trading go together like Al Capone and Mother Teresa. While they are seldom accurate, neither are common sterotypes completely erroneous".

Escape to the Futures goes a long way towards dispelling that stereotype, and therefore is a most overdue book. It is the memoirs of Leo Melamed, a former Chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (known in the commodities world as simply "the Merc") and one of the more important figures in the Chicago financial markets. As well as being better known than Ritchie, Melamed has more to say about his industry. One comes away from the book with an impression of the heroic qualities of the markets as well as an appreciation for the pioneering men who made this new frontier possible. The book's title refers to Melamed's origins. Like that other well known investment figure, George Soros, Melamed is of European Jewish extraction - he was born in Poland. His family managed to escape the Holocaust by fleeing, first to Lithuania, then, barely escaping the Nazi occupation of that country, emigrating to the United States via Japan (pre Pearl Harbour) after a long train ride across the Soviet Union. The twists and turns of this exciting story hints at the origins of Melamed's succ! ess. As Soros has said, describing his experience in the Budapest of 1944: "I learned the art of survival...that has had a certain relevance to my investment career"

Like many careers prior to the arrival of post-industrial society, Melamed's began by accident - he answered an advertisement for a "runner" for what he presumed was a law firm but was in fact a member firm of the Merc. He quickly fell in love with the market: " I was enthralled with the open outcry system of buying and selling contracts, with the speed at which things happened, with the colorful players in this arena of capitalistic hope and sweat." (p.88). This appreciation of what Keynes called the "animal spirits" of capitalism seems to be decidedly lacking these days. In the 1990s, if one want's to be a "player" in the financial markets, the correct route seems to be via a bachelor's degree in business followed by some high-priced graduate study, an MBA or something. Contrast this with the advice the young Jimmy Rogers got in the 1960s: "Go short some beans and you'll learn more in just one trade than you would in two years at 'B-School.' "

Now, reading Escape to the Futures will not give you many trading "tips". Great traders are not going to give away their secrets like that. What it will give you an insight into is how an industry gets built. Melamend himself illustrates the phenomenal growth of the futures business in his preface to the book: "In 1971...14.6 million contracts traded on US futures exchanges. Twenty years later, in 1991, the total transactions of futures and options on US futures exchanges was 325 million contracts." How did it happen? Your average B-School guy would attribute the growth to the US dollar de-valuations of 1971 and 1973, to the commodity price booms of the 1970s, and the financial de-regulations of the 1980s. What he is missing is the role played by men like Melamed who had a vision about what they wanted to achieve with thei! r organisations. Reading his book one is struck by how his working days were more those of a politician rather than a trader.

But I use the word politician to mean "statesman", or "leader". One characteristic of such men is vision. Look, for example, at the Merc's International Monetary Market, the futures market for currencies: "Of one thing I was certain by the mid-1970s: agriculture was never going to be the future. But finance was. If the Chicago Mercentile Exchange had any future, it was on the back of the International Monetary Market. But that was something I couldn't prove in 1975 because the currencies and financial futures still had a long way to go. One had to believe" (p. 242).

One of the downsides of financial statesmanship is that you don't get to concentrate as much on making money yourself. For instance, Melamed would show delegations of visitors to the Merc how a trade was executed, but the trade lose money! It is no surprise to learn, at the end of the book, that Melamed is now concentrating more of his efforts these days on building up his own firm, Sakura Dellsher.

In Melamed we get a picture of a man who allied vision with an ability to persuade people of the virtue of his ideas, who knew how to cultivate relationships with people, and who knew how to effectively use his time and resources to achieve his organisation's goals. I commend this book to everyone interested in capitalism as people and not as abstract concepts as taught in the textbooks. Like another great book written by a trader but not about trading - Bernard Baruch's My Own Story - you will get an idea of how one man made things happen..