'Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...' if your memory just went into overdrive, bombarded by visions of a tall, lanky gentlemen with distinct, chiseled features that border on freakish and a familiarity about him, when in profile... associated with integrity, cherry trees and the Civil War, then you might be intrigued by this little book from Peter Pauper Press.

A Whig turned Republican, Abraham Lincoln, [born on February 12th, 1809 - buried on May 4th, 1865], became the 16th president of the United States on November 6th, 1860. The beginning of his famed speech, the Gettysburg Address, that I've implemented as the introductory sentence for this review, was enunciated on November 19th, 1863 when Lincoln dedicated the Gettysburg battlefield to the Civil War soldiers who had died there.

April 11th, 1865, two days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, indicating the close of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln addressed the public outside of the White House, indicating that he would support the voting rights of blacks... racist and Southern sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth, was in the audience. On April 14th, 1865, hating everything Lincoln stood for, Booth entered Ford's Theatre, where the President, accompanied by his family, was watching a play ... he then shot the president in the back of the head, finishing Abraham Lincoln's strikingly successful existence and completing the first Presidential assassination in our history.

Abraham Lincoln: Wisdom & Wit, a petite volume of 61 pages from Peter Pauper Press, is filled with intriguing & exemplary morsels spoken by Lincoln during his lifetime... it is a book of, indeed, Wisdom & Wit, with quotable insights & prudent statements left behind from a great philosopher's lifetime. One of these insights into a subject most of the Epinions Community can relate to goes: [taken from page 25]

'Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the greatest invention of the world. Its utility may be conceived by the reflection that to it we owe everything which distinguishes us from savages. Take it from us, and the Bible, all history, all science, all government, all commerce, and nearly all social intercourse, go with it.' - Abraham Lincoln

This miniature publication, a lean and compact, emerald-green book, with rectangular [as Lincoln's features] illustration of Lincoln's silhouette on the cover jacket, is chock-full of philosophical and enlightening insights from 'Honest Abe', who was recognized to be one of our history's great thinkers. Created in the image of an exclusive gift book, the first page provides its purchaser with a 'For' [insert gift recipient here] encircled by a decorative double border.

Abraham Lincoln: Wisdom & Wit [ISBN: 0-88088-359-6] edited by Louise Bachelder and illustrated by Jeff Hill, is Copyright (C) 1965 by Peter Pauper Press... I bought this little book for my husband, who has always appreciated anything relating to Abraham Lincoln. If you know someone who admires Lincoln, a history buff or quote enthusiast, you might consider this addition to their book collection. It's a quick and interesting read that offers substantial perspectives from one of our country's great minds.

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...” if your memory just went into overdrive, bombarded by visions of a tall, lanky gentlemen with distinct, chiseled features that border on freakish and a familiarity about him, when in profile... associated with integrity, cherry trees and the Civil War, then you might be intrigued by this little book from Peter Pauper Press. ....

Abraham Lincoln: Wisdom & Wit, a petite volume of 61 pages from Peter Pauper Press, is filled with intriguing & exemplary morsels spoken by Lincoln during his lifetime... it is a book of, indeed, Wisdom & Wit, with quotable insights & prudent statements left behind from a great philosopher’s lifetime. ....

This miniature publication, a lean and compact, emerald-green book, with rectangular [as Lincoln’s features] illustration of Lincoln’s silhouette on the cover jacket, is chock-full of philosophical and enlightening insights from “Honest Abe”, who was recognized to be one of our history’s great thinkers. Created in the image of an exclusive gift book, the first page provides its purchaser with a “For” [insert gift recipient here] encircled by a decorative double border.

Abraham Lincoln: Wisdom & Wit [ISBN: 0-88088-359-6] edited by Louise Bachelder and illustrated by Jeff Hill, is Copyright (C) 1965 by Peter Pauper Press... If you know someone who admires Lincoln, a history buff or quote enthusiast, you might consider this addition to their book collection. It’s a quick and interesting read that offers substantial perspectives from one of our country’s great minds.

Abraham Lincoln - Wisdom and Wit is a great little book from the Peter Pauper Press Pocket Gift Edition, "Wisdom and Wit" series. The book contains Lincoln quotes under the categories of, 'Lincoln, The Man','Lincoln, The Philosopher', 'Lincoln, The Wit', and 'Excerpts from Lincoln's Speeches'. Here's a great quote from 'Lincoln, The Wit': [Lincoln had been called a two-faced man by Douglas] "I leave it to my audience, -- if I had another face to wear, do you think I would wear this one?"

This is not a bad book, and in fact offers a solid description and assessment of the Lincoln Administration.

Paludan describes the working of Lincoln's government well, including the personalities and major policy issues they faced. He does a good job in explaining the manueverings between Salmon P. Chase and Lincoln for dominance of the Administration and later for the 1864 Repbulican Party nomination. Also described thoroughly is Lincoln's Louisianna reconstruction plan, which gives a pretty plausible map to what reconstruction could have looked like had Booth not intervened.

I found the writing average. While the book explains the subject well enough, the prose is more workmanlike. It didn't reach the level of engrossing style other chronicler's of Lincoln and his government have.

Overall, not bad.

As the title indicates, this is not a biography of Abraham Lincoln. It is, instead, a narrow, but detailed and incisive study of Lincoln's exercise of executive power between his election in 1860 and his assassination in 1865. This is important because, as author Philip Shaw Paludan explains: "No president had larger challenges than Abraham Lincoln." And Paludan proceeds to state the obvious, that Lincoln was "responsible for two enormous accomplishments that are part of folk legend as well as fact. He saved the Union and he freed the slaves." No other president did so much in so little time, and Paludan explains why. As a result, within its limited confines, this book is excellent!

Paludan demonstrates in the chapter entitled "Assembling the Cast: Winter 1860-61," that Lincoln, as president-elect, was a shrewd politician. According to Paludan: "Lincoln could be effective only if he unified the six-year-old Republican party," so one of his first appointments was "his strongest party rival," William Seward, Senator from New York, as secretary of state. As political payback for delivering Pennsylvania to the Republicans in 1860, Lincoln was obliged to appoint the notoriously-corrupt Simon Cameron Secretary of War. To counter that stench, Lincoln named as his secretary of the navy Connecticut newspaper editor Gideon Welles, who "had a glowing reputation for honesty." Within a year, Cameron also proved to be incompetent, and, in 1862, Lincoln replaced him with Edwin Stanton, who proved to be not only a man of great integrity but a very capable manager as well. It proved to be one of the most talented cabinets in American history, although Paludan makes clear that its operations were not always harmonious, most notably during the "cabinet crisis" of December 1862.

With most of the executive departments in capable hands, Lincoln "involved himself actively in matters of strategy," claiming "'war power' authority to use his office to the limits." Lincoln's focus on military affairs was essential because the Civil War generally went badly for the Union for the first year. Paludan ably demonstrates that even while Lincoln struggled to find generals who had both the talents and temperament to be successful, the Union was "forging the resources of war," which eventually proved decisive. Gen. George McClellan was a brilliant military administrator but proved much too cautious in the field, appalled by the "mangled corpses and the poor suffering wounded. Lincoln eventually lost confidence in McClellan, and he had to be replaced. One of McClellan's eventual successors, Gen. George Meade, won the great victory at Gettysburg in July 1863, but the Union did fully gain the initiative in the field until Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who won an equally great victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi almost on the same day, was appointed general in chief in March 1864.

Lincoln's original war aim was merely to restore the Union. But the costs, human and material, of the war's first two years, made eradication of slavery a necessity. Following the battle of Antietam in September 1862, which was a "tactical draw but a strategic victory" for the Union, Lincoln announced the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The issue then became: What was to be done with the former slaves? In December, Lincoln proposed a constitutional amendment for the federal government to pay to colonize any blacks who wished to emigrate, but blacks "rejected it, abolitionists had condemned it," and this "doubtful solution" was beyond the practical realities of the time. Even while the war continued to rage, the prospective problems of reconstruction never were far from Lincoln's mind, and, according to Paludan, this difficult issue increasingly divided the president from radical Republicans.

Paludan writes that, while the radicals favored confiscation of land which had prospered from slave labor, Lincoln believed in "peaceful, gradual, compensated emancipation." Lincoln opposed the harsh remedy of confiscation and believed that the Constitution permitted him to free the slaves only "in places where war was being made." The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 potentially freed 3 million slaves but did not mention colonization or compensated emancipation. Nevertheless, the emancipation issue proved controversial. Solidly Republican New England remained largely committed to the war, but, according to Paludan: "Especially in the regions of the Middle West settled from the South and in cities where job competition existed between the races, people resented the idea of fighting in order to free blacks."

Equally controversial was the Emancipation Proclamation's "arming of black freedom fighters." According to Paludan, "Lincoln and his party clearly were committed to Union and to emancipation and to the belief that the two were linked indissolubly by the need for black soldiers." Almost 180,000 black troops were serving in Union armies by the end of the war. Lincoln was very conscious of the importance of maintaining the national moral, and, in Paludan's view, northern whites increasingly recognized the benefits of having black soldiers defend the Union.

According to Paludan, the Union's victory was in large part a result of Lincoln's "devotion to and mastery of the political-constitutional institutions of his time." Some Civil War buffs and many general readers are likely to find this book rather dry because it focuses on the science of politics. But, as Paludan writes, the preservation of the Union "was achieved chiefly through an extraordinary outreach of national authority." This book is an exceptionally thoughtful account of the exercise of executive power during the most serious crisis in American history.

Like one of the previous reviewers, I too have been a previous student of Professor Paluden at the University of Kansas. I count him as one of the instructors that have fueled a passion in me to study the civil war period. Unlike the previous reviewer, I have had the benefit of having read this book before offering an opinion. Prof. Paluden offers an extremely well researched account of the civil war presidency of Lincoln. This work includes statistics and facts you simply cannot get from documentaries or other accounts. He correctly paints Lincoln as a master politician and cuts through the mythology of the man. Was Lincoln morally opposed to slavery...yes. Was he willing to run on an abolitionist platform?? Hell no, not and get elected during that time period. Paluden's real gift is painting a picture of the period and making folks realize just how important politics was in the 19th Century to all Americans (80-90% voter turnout). Unlike the previous reviewer, I have never noted the negative side of Prof. Paluden. He does have an ego, but, like has been said of his subject "no great man was ever modest". Thanks for a wonderful book professor. (Jayhawk Class of 1995).

The book gives exercises at the end of each chapter, but does not give the answers to check by. Some of the Exercise questions are so difficult to find answers to.

A good introductory O/S book for undergrad/beginning graduate students. Well-designed and straightforward. Good examples of Java code.

The one drawback is a tendency to get rather wordy in some sections and ramble on a bit. Taken as a whole, however, this is a very worthwhile textbook.

I have taken many courses at both undergrad and grad levels and in doing so have come across books that left me wondering. This book in contrast is wonderful! It is excellent at covering the full spectrum of various operating system issues. I doubt I'd pick it up if I were intently interested in Macs, though. It does a good job of addressing UNIX/Solaris issues, JAVA, and of course Intel-based OS's. Was an easy read.

Freud was doubtlessly a seminal thinker who shaped the way 20th century man saw himself and his relationship with the world. Together with Marx and Darwin, Freud created the modern worldview that only recently has begun to crack. These books, then, are a great introduction to Freud's thought. Freud's thought, however, is what concerns us.

It's safe to say, in 2002, that Freud was wrong about virtually everything. Not only were his theories and methods ineffective in treating mental illness, they actually made many illnesses worse. Due to the prevalence of Psychoanalytic assumptions in popular culture, people with biologically-based mental diseases such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Tourette's, Schizophrenia, and Bipolarity are treated as weaklings who can't control their emotions rather than as sick people deserving compassion and medical care. All progress in Psychiatry since Freud's day has pointed to the biological basis of mental illness - which is far more sensible than thinking that your entire outlook on life is determined by potty training accidents. Not only has Psychoanalysis failed people with severe mental disorders, it has put some people in great danger. Psychoanalysts "prep" people with severe Body Dismorphic Disorder to undergo sex change operations rather than curing their BDD. Psychoanalysts teach sick people to blame their parents and strain family relationships rather than addressing the neurological roots of their conditions. It is high time for all therapists using Freudian methods and theories to be deprived insurance compensation and expert standing in legal courts.

Freud, Marx, and Darwin deserve to be studied together because all shared a common approach: they promoted unverifiable theories that could be used to predict any possible behavior or outcome, and therefore were really only cleverly posed tautologies without real insight or substance. Consider: a patient goes into a Psychotherapist's office complaining of hypochondria. The therapist asks, "How's your relationship with your family?" The hypochondriac says, "My father was a bit of a jerk." Viola - the patient's disease obsession is explained as repressed childhood angst. But MOST people's fathers are jerks, at least part of the time. There is absolutely no proof, merely the arrangement of events in chronological order. The same is true of Darwinism, which talks of "evolution" without really giving us any insight into what rules really govern the creation of life (why was the alligator fit to survive? Because he was the most fit, of course!), and Marxism, which explains any state of affairs as the result of "class struggle" regardless of whatever the situation is. For most of the 20th century, the West's intellectual culture was bogged down in clever word play. It's no wonder the arts, philosophy, ethics, and literature have ceased to offer insight into the human condition. I blame Freud and co.!

The reader from Boston, while on the money on Freud and Marx, doesn't have a clue as to Darwin. Considering the impact of Darwin on modern biology and related sciences, especially after the evolutionary synthesis, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

My favorite part of the book is the fourth major topic, "Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious." The jokes might seem a bit stale. My printing of this book is copyright 1938, and comparison of its index with the online version of pages shown indicates that the newer version is not quite the same number of pages, but the book itself is the same as the original. For people who have trouble remembering psychological concepts or intellectual approaches to anything, but who never forget a joke, Freud's ability to keep referring to the same joke in different contexts offers an ideal opportunity to see how an expert in a field can intertwine basic concepts with known ideas to create the sensation of intellectual progress. Speaking of experts, the index has 16 entries for Heine, the first of which is merely a footnote on how dreams might work like Heine, who was famous for making the bad poetry of the King of Bavaria (Herr Ludwig?) ridiculous, in THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS. The poem is only in German in the edition I have, so the comment, "He does it by using even worse rhymes," might only be funny for people who know what German sounds like. The final mention of Heine, which might be to a joke that Freud had not told before, is to a verse in which he complained, "until at last the buttons tore from the pants of my patience," in Freud's discussion of the various forms of the comic. You might not appreciate how big this book is until you have read it.

The book definately strips away the mythic status that has been bestowed on Lincoln over the years. However, it tends to go the opposite way too far and villifies him mercilessly. The tome becomes a constant, annoying barrage. The book does make good points, however, about the Lincoln-Douglas debates and Lincoln's failures in life up to that point. Serious students of Lincoln and the Civil War should read it. The author could have been more balanced, though, and admitted that Lincoln wasn't a slobbering buffoon. Also the author would have been well advised to leave out the obsence anti-religious tone that infected many pages.

Mr. Masters has written a biography that definately tarnishes the mythical image of Abe Lincoln. An exhaustingly researched book, it falls into the trap of constantly deriding Lincoln for everything he did. In Mr. Masters' mind, Lincoln was a devil incarnate (which was not the case) who didn't do anything right. Anyone who reads the book should keep that in mind. The book, however, is worth the time to read in order to learn more about the 16th president of the U.S.A. Be prepared, though, for Masters' bizarre anti-religous rants.

Scully and Moulder rejoice, because this book proves "The Truth is Out There". I strongly recommend this book to anyone who yearns to understand why our country is currently in such terrible shape. You will never refer to Lincoln as "Honest Abe" or "The Great Emancipator" ever again after reading this work. I pray that the history books do not lie to our children and revere Clinton the way they do Lincoln. Hopefully, historians will have the same guts that Masters had in 1931 and tell the real story about Clinton.

This is one of the worst of Merritt's books, though Black Wheel wasn't his fault--it was completed after his death. Although Metal Monster has some interesting ideas, Merritt failed to bring any of them to life.

This is one of the wildest and most imaginative of the early pulp novels. Though it suffers from various plot weaknesses and simplistic characterizations (I've docked it one star for a somewhat racist caricature), the visual descriptions of this hidden world and the geometric shapes that form and reform into various entities are the most mind-blowing this side of a tab of blotter acid. With the advances in computer animation today, someone could do this novel justice and make a stunning movie.

When Dr. Walter T. Godwin sets out to study a rare flower in Tibet, he has no idea of what adventures await him. Meeting old friends in the secluded Himalayas, he quickly finds himself fleeing from the descendents of a lost Persian Empire city right into the domain of a seemingly omnipotent metal intelligence. This extraterrestrial metal intelligence is made up of a collective composed of living cubes, pyramids and spheres. Even stranger, the intelligence seems to work through a human woman of great beauty, Norhala. This metal intelligence is beyond anything that Godwin and his compatriots can even understand--is humanity about the be replaced as the ruler of the Earth?

OK, this book is a little bit odd at times. He keeps bumping into old friends in the Himalayas, there are descendents of the Persian Empire (a whole city, in fact) that no one knows about, and the ending is something of a deus ex machina. However, for having been written in 1920, this book is quite good! Though the storyline needs a fair amount of suspension of disbelief, it is quite entertaining. Also, when the metal intelligence forms shapes out of its cubes, pyramids and spheres, I couldn't help but think that modern special effects would turn this into quite an excellent movie.

So, overall I do recommend this book.

I lived in the Bahamas for 8 years and traveled to Normans Cay several times and explored the island after Carlos Laeder left. After I read the book I went there two more times and looked through the "Ruins" that his group left and could almost relive the book. Although the island paradise that he built at the club has been devestated, the rest of the island has been slowly retaken by new inhabitants. I believe that Mr. Novac told a very true story and I only wish that I hadn't given away my hardback copy of the book. I would like to buy two copies again.

A very good, exciting account of two risk-takers who went to great lengths in the pursuit of their dreams, the people who got caught up in the swirl of their dreams, and how their dreams came to clash on an island in the Bahamas, Norman's Cay. The two principals in this true account, college professor Mr. Novak and the leader of the Medellin drug cartel, Carlos Lehder-Rivas, both seemed to have missed opportunities for personal fulfillment and contribution to humanity: the former by circumstance, the latter by choice. It's sad that Mr. Novak's dream for a Marine Biology research center and his dive shop on Norman's Cay never came to be. It's sad that Carlos Lehder-Rivas misdirected his charisma and tremendous organizational abilities towards trying to establish an island kingdom and trafficking drugs, and not to, say, organizing relief missions for the United Nations. A thrilling ride. Good work, Mr. Novak and son, and Mr. Kirkpatrick!

I grew up cruising on a sailboat in the Bahamas with my dad and remember Norman's key before and after Carlos. I find that it is a real shame that the island is in ruins now when it was once so prosperous. It's too bad that after Carlos was brought down, they couldn't have saved the island's beautiful houses. It's quite a mess now, everything has been picked over and trashed. I find that this book really makes the island come alive. You can walk on the island today after reading the book and picture what it was like back then. It's fascinating and a shame that there were ever drugs involved with such a beautiful island.

This treatment of Lincoln is inadequate at best. I've read other biographies in the "Penguin Lives" series (e.g. Jane Austen, Napoleon) that were fine within the scope of the series' purpose, but this one fell short. For example, the author seems to be projecting his own religious views on Lincoln when his characterizes Lincoln as an agnostic without much proof . This is reminiscent of how Lincoln was characterized as a kind of stain-glassed Evangelical for so many years by writers of that persuasion. Lincoln is more complex than this in his religious perspective. Likewise in the evolution of his views on slavery. My suggestion is not to waste any time or money on this volume, but instead to pick up a much better one-volume biography: "With Malice Toward None" by Stephen Oates. In his source notes at the back, Keneally himself states that this is his own favorite book about Lincoln.

It is not clear why Keneally was chosen to be the author of this bio on Lincoln. I would have thought that there would have been many other more notable and capable historians to whom the publishers could have turned.

The series is deliberately designed to present deliberately short biographies of famous figures. Always a tough job and the decision tree of what to exclude, and in turn what to include would be very difficult.

Lincoln was a very complex character, complete with faults, but also stunning personal gifts. His life was full of failure, up until the time he became president, when he found his true calling, and skill sets.

Keneally tries to paint a picture of Lincoln that really doesn't grab the reader. It's not a bad effort, but neither does it grab the opportunity that this form of biography allows, particularly to people who are looking for an entry point into Lincoln, but don't want to (as yet) tackle a many hundred page biography.

A fair effort.

Lincoln and the Civil War are complex subjects and Mr. Keneally did a superb job of describing both in a concise manner. Although the book was primarily factual it was a pleasant read and it increased my sense of awe for Lincoln.

An interesting but ideologically-driven work. I had hoped it would give me more insight into the Abraham stories and, particularly, the Binding of Isaac (who--at least according to Jewish sources-- was a consenting adult in his thirties at the time of his "sacrifice,"). I would have liked to see some discussion of how this story, which seems to the author to indict the Patriarchal God of the Torah/Quran (though that same Deity ultimately makes it clear that He does NOT desire the sacrifice of Abraham's son) relates to the feminist willingness to actually sacrifice untold millions of unborn children in the service of their own ideology.

Not exogesis. Delaney seems to conceive her conclusion about the story of Abraham first and then read this conclusion into all the texts at her disposal. However, she does raise fascinating questions regarding the formative and constitutive aspects of myth and stories. One quibble is her constant insistence that this Abraham story is "THE" faith model for the three Abrahamic monotheisms. However, the primary model for a certain number of Christians in virtues including faith is not Abraham but Mary; and her arguing that it is only because Mary is Jesus' mother biologically that she is not considered co_Creator is patently shortsighted. Her assumption hehind this argument is that God himself is only Creator because he is the father of Jesus. That is NOT why God is creator. Perhaps Delaney should have swallowed her evident distaste for so-called patriarchal institutions for the sake of academic honesty or at least precision.

Using anthropological insight, Carole Delaney raises serious questions about the faith foundations of the world's three major monotheistic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She sees notions of exclusive, patrilineal generativity underlying male conceptions of God and male dominance and/or ownership of family. Women are lesser creatures, fertile ground (sometimes) for growing a child (the seed and life being supplied by the father) but contributing nothing to the biology and value of the child. Children thus belong to the father and owe absolute obedience to him. He may do with them as he likes, particularly if a "patriachial" God demands them as offerings. Hence, Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac (Ishmael in Islamic tradition), though with hand stayed in the Genesis 22 narrative. (Sarah is nowhere to be found in this portion of the story.) Delaney describes in poignant terms a contemporary case of a girl child being murdered by her father who believed he heard the voice of God telling him to do so. After stressful deliberation the jury concluded "not guilty by reason of insanity." In this case, as in the Abraham episode, the mother's voice was not heard, the child was murdered (no doubt Isaac was traumatized) in the name of God. Western religious traditions (including Graeco-Roman paganism) willingly devalue women and children and give that devaluation divine sanction. It is time, Delaney says, to re-examine and re-envision the legacy of the biblical narrative of supreme Abrahamic faith which denies voice and value to women and children, whether in biblical or koranic studies or in Freud's parallel Oedipal ideas which ignore the deeds of the father against the child. Such ideas "construct" a social world which ignores the worth of children. One note: there is a contrary set of traditions (not always allowed much space in the sacred narratives) where God speaks on behalf of the victims in a patriarchial system that silences women and children. The Abrahamic narrative has two voices, one speaking against the child and one, however obliquely, for the child. This is an important book. Would that it were required reading for our public policy makers. Children are not our first priority. What if they were?

i wish there was something about this book to read, at least by the author. its difficult to buy when you dont know what your buying. even a quick synopsis would have been helpful.

This book is actually two books put together as a set in a common binding. The first book, Addictive Thinking, was pretty much a rehash to anyone who has read anything about alcoholism and addiction. If you are completely new to trying to understand alcoholic addiction then it may have some value, but there are better books on that subject. It would have more accurately been named Addictive Thinking in the Alcoholic. On the other hand the second book, The Addictive Personality, was an excellent and broad reaching tome on addiction. It covers how addictions form, what they mean to the person, what the person is thinking, their fears, concerns and innermost turmoil. It not only applied to alcoholic addiction but food addictions, power addictions, sexual addictions, etc. If you truly want to understand how addictions form and what is really going on below the surface then this is one of the best books I have read on the subject.

I realize many will be skeptical that a psych book could provide as much insight as AA's text book on the personality of the alcoholic or other addictions, but this book delivers! I've read the book more than once and find it remarkably simple and truthful on the nature of the disease process of addiction. It is 2 books in one and both authors provide information to any person suffering or interested in "why" any addiction is so incredibly difficult to break, as well as pointing to solutions, particulary those grounded in AA, to assist its readers. I cannot recommended highly enough.