I would recommend this book for anyone interested the native American medicine path in particular, and metaphysics in general. The writer shares a selection of her personal experiences, each illustrating an aspect of the life of a working shaman. One of the underlying themes is how to learn from guides and fellow-beings in all their forms, including humans, animals, insects, trees, stones, forces of nature such as thunderstorms, and even unseen intelligences. She provides valuable tips on how we can to contact our animal spirit guides. Emphasizing that we should not over idealize people who teach us, she points out that we all possess human flaws. Many seekers seem all too eager to give away their personal power.

One of the most dramatic incidents she recounts is a potentially fatal encounter with a jaguar in Brazil, giving her access to jaguar medicine. (You have to sympathize with her long suffering husband, when she insists on communing with this dangerous animal in the wild!) Nothing in nature is too frightening or too humble for a shaman to learn from e.g. she also explains lessons from apparently insignificant or annoying creatures like ants. Also impressive is her shamanistic work with the dying and berieved, facilitating a peaceful passing for them and their families.

If the book had been longer and more clearly structured, I would have rated it 5 stars. However, I find Ai's writing to be much more down to earth and less ego-inspired than many other books on shamanism. Her work deserves more attention.

Most Chinese textbooks that I have seen focus on grammar and writing Chinese characters. This is fine if your focus is academic. However, for those who simply want to acquire useful phrases via short dialogues, Putonghua: A Practical Course in Spoken Chinese would probably be useful. Dialogues are presented in pinyin, with the hanzi (character) equivalent at the end of the book. There are also short lists of related vocabulary opposite each dialogue page.

The weak point of the book is that there are almost no grammatical explanations. You have to induce grammar rules from the dialogues. Also, since the book is called Putonghua, the characters presented are the simplified hanzi, not the traditional forms used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Anyway, for the price, it's not a bad book.

Emily Hahn was an American expatriate in China during the 1930s. She came to know the Soong sisters, who in their day were among the world's most famous and powerful women. This book, written in 1939-40 is an entertaining, informative introduction to the Soongs. At the time it was published, The Soong Sisters created a storm of controversy and provoked powerful emotions. It was one of the first biographies of the Soongs, and it continues to be one of the best. Critics charged Hahn had "gone easy" on the Soongs; Soong supporters said the book was a "hatchet job." The real truth lies somewhere in between. Hahn is a witty, engaging and perceptive writer. For that reason, The Soong Sisters is still good read, and it provides a contemporary perspective on three of the personalities who shaped post-war China.

Easy to follow pictures with each step summarized and detailed for Tai Chi idiots. This book was wonderful to use and I have been using it for my class outline that I will be teaching at an Adult School, in Fresno, CA. View

Crompton takes an evenly scientific point of view in this book he discusses the workings of Tai chi chuan as applied to combat. However this book is only based upon Mr. Cromptons experiences, though these are quite considerable. An excellent book for the westerner coming to Tai Chi combat for the first time.

I like Paul's discussion of taiji tuishou (push hands) and some of the suggestions he makes for developing one's tuishou abilities. However, I would not particularly recommend this book for beginners for two related reasons: first of all, the pictures are dark, and its hard to see where the arms and hands go sometimes. An experienced practictioner can make it out, but I doubt most beginners could without feeling really frustrated. Secondly, it lacks what I would call "transitional pictures." A beginner can easily wonder how one gets from one picture to the next. Again, an experienced practictioner can figure it out, but most beginners won't have the knowledge base to get past this structural difficulty. The book would have been much better with at least double the number of pictures for each illustration.

That said, Paul's discussion of tuishou is very good, and reveals him to be both knowledgable in taiji tuishou and a mature individual. He doesn't especially blow his own horn, and also makes a point stressing the fact that tuishou is primarily a learning tool meant to develop one's taiji fighting ability and not a vehicle for competition in and of itself. To get hung up on tuishou is like Earnest Hemingway getting hung up on calligraphy and never writing a single story.

This is clearly one of the better taiji tuishou books out there. Hopefully one day they'll supplement the pictures.

This somewhat autobiographical sort of a novel, first published in French in 1986, won the Black Humor Prize. The most interesting part is a sketch of the author's background--as a child of a Sephardic Jewish family that had been in Morocco for four centuries. He assumed he was destined for greatness (as a writer) and sees this as a sort of ontogeny for the phylogeny of the Chosen People. Both as a 20th-century Jew and as someone who (like Camus) feels lost the paradise of living under the North African sun (living in the dingy, gray Paris of the 1950s), he believes he has a duty to remember.

His later book _Jacob, Manahem, and Mimoun_ fulfills that duty in a fuller way, though that book, too, is about the failure to create the literary masterpiece he always expected from himself. Bénabou (and/or his narrator) has conceived many masterpieces, but shied away from apprentice works, or, indeed, from writing more than a few pages of any of his grand designs. "What had been a confident wait imperceptibly transformed itself into torpor."

The book about his nonbooks (the books he didn't write) starts over and starts over and starts over, but, aided by some very apposite quotations about writing from myriad other writers, details the ultimately impossible love of an author who can not bring himself to besmirch beautiful virgin sheets of white paper even to create the literature that would redeem his claim to be a writer.

In addition to the universal reasons for putting off writing (especially the ease of reading instead: Bénabou characterizes his compulsive reading as a form of bulimia), a French writer has to beware the "reigns of theoretical terror which generally crop up in the most protected circles and make of reality the negligible byproduct of a few concepts."

Many people have realized that being unsuited for writing and even unable to string more than a few words together does not remove the desire to be a writer. Without venturing beyond the struggle with writing (to the absurd lot of blocked writers such as Anthony Burgess' Enderby or Michael Chabon's Grady Tripp) Bénabou makes being a writer who does not and cannot write archly funny and even poignant.

I characterize it as a "sort of novel" because nothing happens, not even a change of consciousness of the narrator. The "somewhat autobiographical" links to the lost Moroccan Jewish world, and, perhaps, to not being able to write anything remotely conventionally a novel. However, Bénabou, who has earned his living as a professor of ancient history, published a book in 1976 on African resistance to the Roman Empire, and had published another eight as the 'Definitely Provisional Secretary' of Ouvroir de Littrature Potentielle (the Workshop of Potential Literature founded in 1960 by the playful Raymond Queneau and of which the master of metafiction, Italo Calvino, joined), so was not so blocked as the narrator of _Why_.

This book breaks away from the formal movements that we see so many people associating with Tai Ji. It actually explains the philosophy behind the movements and what each movement represents. It is not necessary to do the movements in any particular sequence and the reader is given the freedom to express themselves in an individual way. The ancient Tao text translations are excellent and awe inspiring. Al Huang himself is charismatic and has a wonderful, dramatic, and inspiring presence. I highly recomend this book.

This is a book that does not teach T'ai Chi, but gives you a feeling for the world around you as experienced thru the practice of this form.Through his words you can feel the peace and humor in his "dancing" and you begin to wish that you could just join in.

As a new student of Tai Chi (really new) I want to learn more than just the moves. I bought this book because of previous reviewers' comments and I am eternally greatful to them and to my wisdom in paying attention. If I never took that first step, I would still know the essence of Tai Chi. It is in the words of Al Huang. Surely a man who speaks like this will be immortal through his gifts to the rest of us.

one of the strongest, most dynamic poetic voices i've ever encountered. i love writers that go into the dark without fear. ai finds america in many voices; he strongest assets are her knack for imagery and details. she also knows how to create personas that cause you to become engrossed in their lives even if you don't like them. critics who claim ai's poetry isn't " poetic enough " are helplessly bound to their own rigid definitions of poetry. this woman " goes there " over and over again...

Narrative, unique, and some of the best poetics being written today. Ai proves once again she's a force to let sweep over you. An work of infinite virtue & genius.

Of course these hard, odd, daring poem-stories make people mad. They're about real things and real people, not just the poet thinking deep-thoughts-with-metaphors at her studio window. Ai sympathises with bad characters, has no patience for prettified lyrics or faux deep-thinking, talks fast and colloquially, with intrusions of odd syntax. The imagery is full of startle and reality; the language is harsh, the poet's heart big. This poetry is a whole other world, outside of anything anyone else is doing. If you don't like this stuff you really don't like poetry.

Historically, Crichton has been one of those authors to whom I'll give the benefit of the doubt, and buy his books without too much premeditation. Never again.

In TIMELINE, International Technology Corporation, headed by a brilliant jerk, Robert Doniger, is doing research in advanced applications of Quantum Theory. Among other things, ITC has succeeded in creating the world's first quantum computer.

In southwest France, ITC is sponsoring the archeological excavation of a site that encompasses the ruins of two castles on opposite banks of the Dordogne River, plus those of an adjacent monastery and river mill. The excavation team leader, Professor Edward Johnston, begins to suspect that ITC knows more about the site than it's sharing, so he flies back to company headquarters near Santa Fe, NM, to demand answers. Within a couple days, the rest of the team loses phone contact with the professor, and (conveniently) discovers objects belonging to or originating with Johnston amidst the ruins, including a note that says, "Help me!" Trouble is, the objects can be dated as contemporary with the rubble in which they were found, i.e. mid 14th century. Upon reporting this to ITC, several members of the team are flown back to company HQ ASAP. There, they learn that ITC has achieved the capability of sending people between the parallel universes postulated by quantum mechanics, and that Johnston was transmitted to the Dordogne parallel, or "back in time". Unfortunately, ITC has since lost track of the professor, and a search team must be dispatched. (Up to this point, TIMELINE is marginally interesting. From here on, it degenerates.) The search team includes several members of Johnston's archeological crew: Professor André Marek, Chris Hughes, and Kate Erickson. André is the professor's second-in-command, a man obsessed with the Middle Ages, even to the point of being trained in the use of period weaponry. Chris and Kate are graduate students, i.e. upscale gofers.

There's so much wrong with this book, it's hard to know where to begin criticizing. First of all, André, Chris and Kate remain unsympathetic characters. As crafted by Crichton, they're nothing more than functional warm bodies with names used as vehicles to advance the action. Within the storyline, they could be interchangeable, especially Kate and Chris. Second of all, the action itself seems so purposeless. All three, plus Johnston, have been dropped into the year 1357, during which time the castles, monastery and mill are the focus of a local war between two knights, neither of which are very nice men. The professor plays a hazy role as the ally or prisoner - it's not always clear which - of one of the two. (Indeed, Johnston remains an enigma from beginning to end.) To rescue their mentor, our three heroes spend their time confusedly scrambling over, under, and through the various buildings that they'd previously been excavating in the 21st century, all the while fending off assaults by assorted armored and chain-mailed thugs, or escaping imprisonment. Finally, there's the hint early on that ITC has a secret, menacing agenda. (After all, what red-blooded American corporation doesn't?) However, once revealed, this reader yawned and thought, "OK. So?" Bill Gates and Microsoft have been painted as more sinister.

Not to put too fine a point on it, by the end of this novel I just didn't care if Johnston and his rescuers made it back or not. As a matter of fact, I say toss 'em in a dungeon and swallow the key. Even the comeuppance visited upon Doniger is anticlimactic and hardly worth the page space it occupies. Hindsight tells me that I wasted my money.

The premise of Crichton's novel 'Timeline' is pretty out there: Twentieth century historians working on the excavation of a medeival castle in France are invited to go back in time to search for their friend by a powerful corporation. I've always been weary of time-travel stories as they can be so easy to screw up. Even one of the best time travel novels ever written, Harry Turteldove's 'Guns of the South,' handles the time travel aspects in a less than stellar way. Nevertheless, Crichton's believability factor soars as he explains in exhaustive detail the method by which quantom mechanics is applied to time travel. Aside from that, the basic story is a little weak. While Crichton's research of fourteenth century France is austounding, it often feels as though he's writing the story to fit his research instead of using the research to support the story. The characters are two-dimensional and not very interesting, with the exception of the company CEO, whose cold blooded attitude makes for great conflict. If you're a fan of Crichton you should enjoy 'Timeline.' Fans of the techno thriller may also enjoy Leonard Crane's 'Ninth Day of Creation,' which is written in a similar style but gives the reader better developed characters and a more interesting plot.

In another blend of super science and a long lost age, Michael Crichton marries quantum physics and Camelot in a way that is exciting and believeable...to a point. One question I had throughout was why everyone in the present was so freaked out about what was happening in the past. As they already had the power to travel through time, why not just rebuild the machine and go back to right before all the bad stuff happened? That issue aside, Crichton paints a riveting portrait of modern man suddenly thrust into a Maedival world. A world complete with damsels, knights, brigands, and despots. The characters were all fairly two dimensional (I can already picture Jeff Goldblum as Chris) and recognizeable. Probably the hardest stretch was Marek - who just happened to be skilled in the ancient languages and the martial arts of the period before going back. The most interesting character was the CEO genius who founded the group and the time travel machine. His comments at the end regarding modern man's need to avoid boredom as a primary motivation were thought provoking and all too true. That said - this book will not bore you. It is a great beach/plane read that will take you away to a swashbuckling time and force you to ask on some level, "what would I have done?". Crichton's formula, like Grisham's, is entertaining but ultimately predictable (and this time almost seemed written with the movie in mind). Don't think too much about the man behind the curtain and you'll really enjoy it.