Sketches: An Anthology Of Essays, Art, And Poetry is a compilation of the writings of Gestalt therapist Joseph C. Zinker (co-founder of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland), whose observations offers a kind of gestalt model of cross-disciplinary creative processes in a striking compilation of inspirational life insights in the form of engaging essays, art, and poetry. A vivacious and insightful collection that embraces the love and joy of life itself, Sketches is enthusiastically recommended reading.

Sketches: An Anthology Of Essays, Art, And Poetry focuses by Gestalt therapist Joseph Zinker focuses on applying Gestalt psychology and psychotherapy to the creative process. The topical written pieces within cover the core essence of "On Being a Therapist" and "On Being a Client". A selection of dialogues presents the reader with samples of the Gestalt psychological treatment in practice, and the sketches and verses of poetry are memorable in their fragile simplicity. A fine and insightful book for anyone with dual interests in Gestalt practice and the arts, Sketches is recommended reading for students of clinical psychology in general, and Gestalt psychotherapy in particular.

I coach a grammar school basketball team of 5th and 6th graders. I gave the team of 13 players a copy of the book for Christmas. Almost all of them read it and everyone who read it really liked it. I read it as well and rate it 5 stars.
The book is about a kid named Josh who moves from a white neighborhood in California to a black neighborhood in NYC and has to adjust. He meets a bunch of kids who like basketball as much as he does and they play pickup games together. Lots of interesting relationships develop. When Josh is not allowed to try out for the school basketball team by the coach because of his appearance, he and several other kids form a team to challenge the school team. They are coached by the school janitor, an ex basketball star who is out to prove the school coach's win -at- all costs approach is not the best one.
The book has a great ending and lots of great basketball action, with colorful players nicknamed Dish, Death and Weatherman. The book also teaches some valuable lessons to kids- getting along regardless of appearance, teamwork and sportsmanship matter in addition to winning, and importance of putting basketball in perspective along with other interests in life. Anyone 10 years or older who likes basketball will really like this book.
Great gift for coaches to give their teams. Enjoy!

I WAS SURPRISED AND ENTERTAINED WITH HIS EXPRESSION AND WRITING SKILLS.

HE HAS TAKEN THE TIME TO DEVELOP THE CHARACTERS INVOLVED AND PRESENTED THE STORY FROM A POINT OF VIEW THAT SHOULD BE INSPIRATIONAL TO READERS OF ALL AGES.

I BELIEVE EVERY TEENAGER COULD IDENTIFY WITH THE PRESURES THAT SURROUNDS THE MAIN CHARACTER IN "SLOW DEATH".

MY ONLY CONCERN IS THE TITLE OF THE BOOK. I DO NOT THINK IT REFLECTS THE REAL MEANING AND INTENTION OF THE WRITER.

I HAVE RATED THIS A 5 ON THE SCALE (...) BECAUSE I TOTALY ENJOYED THE STORY AND THE ART OF THE STORY-TELLING

Josh Thomas wrote an excellent review of this book. I can only add: Amen! I have read just about everything that Joseph Hansen has written, and in "A Smile in His Lifetime" you will find this wonderful author at his absolute best. I highly recommend it! (And while you are at it, also check out Josh Thomas' "Murder at Willow Slough" - it's a great book).

I am reviewing this book because, to date, no one else has done so. That is a crime. "A Smile in His Lifetime" may be the best Gay book ever written.

It is certainly the best Bisexual one.

It is a story of obsession, as sensitive, married, impoverished writer Whit Miller goes off the deep end for his down-canyon neighbor, a seldom-available ne'er-do-well with "stud" written all over him.

Whit's wife Dell makes ends meet, simultaneously emasculating him and supporting him in his writing. He mustn't do physical labor around their dilapidated house, she warns; he must protect his hands so he can type.

So he types, sometimes, but no one cares; very few people, anyway. Whit knows he'd spend his days better patching the roof, but Dell insists he come down; so he does.

She eventually runs off with a "real" man Whit envies and despises, then a second tragedy strikes: Whit sells a book. Not only does it sell, it's a huge hit. He gets totally disoriented. Success makes it even harder for him to connect with another person. A sudden bigshot, he gets involved with a bunch of hippies, has a heterosexual tryst under a pier, but the only creature who really cares for him is his cat.

What makes this a great novel? That's a lot to claim, and I don't tout books lightly. This is art, in my opinion, because Mr. Hansen has captured the quintessence of Gay men: we are lovers. More than dickhounds or drag queens, we want to be husbands. To my knowledge, this is the first book to point that out. As throbbing and insistent as the sexual impulse is, our need and ability to love is stronger than sex. Whit is often foolish; he is never insincere. He thinks constantly of the best interests of others, and wears his heart on his sleeve, knowing it will be broken repeatedly. He's not a masochist, he just wants someone to belong to.

You can't help thinking, he deserves that.

He succeeds in his work, but wanders clueless in life. Sometimes success is worse than failure, especially in California. Have you ever known a happy movie star?

I've read "Smile" half a dozen times; my most recent reaction was more critical than before, as I finally got tired of all the anti-Gay epithets the author uses. But then, internalized homophobia is the Gay man's biggest problem, and Mr. Hansen seems to recognize that, without solving it. What would Whit's life have been if he hadn't gotten married, but found an emotionally open, available Gay guy to love? Maybe he'd have constantly lusted after the elusive rough trade; or maybe he'd have discovered something masculine in his lover, the decorator.

Stereotypes aside, love is a tricky and tragic business; for all Whit's talent, he succumbs like the rest of us. His heart not only gets broken, it stays that way. At least he's always got his cat--until a storm blows up...

Read this book with your highlighter pen nearby, as Hansen's phrase-making will put you in awe. He is a stylist of the first magnitude, who has never received the recognition he deserves from Gay readers. He puts the Lavender Quill crowd to shame; they yammer endlessly about pecs and pricey merchandise, obscure opera stars and viruses, while Whit Miller falls in love impossibly, stirring his coffee "little boy-style" with lots of cream and sugar to mask its bitterness. Maybe it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all; or maybe the most we can hope for is a loyal housepet.++

This book is hilarious. It was written for kids, but its funny to me as an adult. Some of the oldest sayings are in this book. One that I don't think a kid would get is: "I never forget a face. In your case, that would be two of them." You could say that as an insult to someone that is bugging you, or for someone that just shot you a low blow.

I first got this book as a child, yet I still giggle my way through the end. The illustrations are stellar and the characters sassy. Rosenbloom gives them life by his wit and cheese-packed charm. This bugger is a superficial laugh for all ages; it sparks off a quick fix of brain neurons and widens the grin.

I usually only write reviews here about inexpensive math textbooks, but when I saw the other review, I had to add my two cents. This book is a great work of scholarship about the theory of voting and social choice, fields which this book(in its original form as Arrow's PhD thesis created). It is a totally theoretical work, which does not espouse anything about how one should live, contrary to what the other reviewer says. Very certainly, it says nothing about conformity. In a certain very tenuous sense, one could say that the conclusions favor the individual over society, but the work makes no value judgements that kind.

The theory of social choice is concerned with the logical problem of defining what it would mean to say that 'society prefers x to y'. More concretely, given a set of abstract individuals, each with their own set of values, how can we put these individual values together to determine what "society" wants. In particular, this theory clearly has relevance to voting, but it is abstract and has wider relevance as well. Arrow shows in this work that a few very reasonable assumptions about how these social values should behave in relation to the individual values are in fact contradictory(provided one has more than three people in the population-with two good old democracy works perfectly), forcing one to conclude that perhaps the concept of social choice is meaningless.

So he proves that an informal concept of social choice is contradictory, but that doesn't mean that if one takes weaker axioms, you can't get a consistent concept, and he studies this question, a topic of much further research, in the later chapters.

One thing to note is that Arrow's original proof was in fact fallacious, but in this book he provides a fix.

So, it can be tempting to read this work as being opposed to the idea that a society itself can have values, and thus individualism is all, but this was not at all the spirit in which the book was written, which is the spirit of mathematics(though no mathematics is used) and of welfare economics(which is not about welfare in the sense of a government giving money to the poor).

This book espouses intransigent individuality while refuting blind conformity to societal norms.. . .A great work!

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was used for a sociology class taken at BYU. Going into the course I thought it was going to be extremely boring but I found myself reading it as if it were a novel! This book is very thought provoking and knee jerking, forcing you to take a look at your views and perceptions and how they got to be that way. I would recommend this book to all because it can only help you to be a better person. I wish this were a requirement for high school students, it would definately help them to understand our world and how they fit into it!!!

James Henslin's Social Problems is an excellent textbook for students who want to learn more about social problems in the U.S. Henslin divided his book into three parts. First, an overview of the problem. Henslin used the three major sociological theories: symbolic interactionism, functionalism, and conflict theory to interpret the significance of the problem. He used all of the theories without any biases favoring one theory over another. Second,he summarized what social researchers have found about the problem. Finally, he outline possible social policy for it, including making his own recommendation about how to solve it. Those who are tired of reading other social problems book who found that the book' content are depressing and the authors are pessimistic about the problem he/she cover should read Henslin's book. His coverage of the problems, from crime to America's health crisis, from racism to income inequality, from population explotion to war, are excellent and his recommendations on how to solve this problems makes sense and largely optimistic. My professor used Henslin's text for his social problems class and I think his choice is an excelent choice. I highly recommend this book for students and professors who want to learn and explore the social problems in our society

In the coming years, the role of the social worker in the treatment of the mentally ill will continue to grow. Books such as this help social workers to define their roles, which are critical ones. The mentally ill deserve the very best that the social work profession has to offer. Kia Bentley and Joseph Walsh do a great job in compiling the information needed to ensure that the collaboration between the social worker and patient is an informed one. This book is a fitting start to a new century of more effective treatment of some of our most vulnerable citizens.

This book is a wonderful product of the Decade of the Brain. Written by two concerned professionals in the social work field, it emphasizes that the medication of patients is a true partnership between the patient and professional. Only then will many patients truly comply with the medication that they would be better off taking.

John Powell explains in a simple way reasons why we behave the way we behave.
He has several excellent and well-explained real life examples of how real people have been shaped to further simplify his excellent points.
These examples remind me of how Dale Carnegie wrote about people in different situation and how that affected them.
The book is also filled with useful hints (gems) one can use in real life.
After reading this book I got a new way to look at criticism making it possible to use twice as much feedback!
Who do you think will tell you of your most important weakness?
The one who loves you or the one who does not like you?
Does it hurt to listen to the person that does not like you if he has the most valued point?
John Powell explains how to take care of criticism much better than I do.
Welcome to enlightening reading you will not regret you have laid your eyes on!

This book is a wonderful way to determine why we behave the way we do. It explains why our childhood molds our adult behavior and how we can change our attitude as a result of realizing who we are and how we got there.

"Sons and Daughters of God" weaves three threads: the Apostasy our identy viz-a-viz God; the restoration of this knowledge by Joseph Smith; and real-life, "rubber-meets-the-road" applications of these doctrines from McConkie's experiance as mission president for the LDS Church in Scotland.

McConkies begins each chapter with an incident from his mission that illustrates the doctrinal points contained in each chapter, such as the loss of God's body, "figurative or literal," and so forth. Then the light of the Restoration is cast upon the subject.

This book is another touchdown for McConkie and is great for any recent convert who wants a deeper understanding of the "so-what" of the Apostasy.

This book examines the LDS view of God and mankind's relationship with him. It looks at historical documents to identify times when mankind's view of God changed (such as a change from an anthromorphic view to the present mainstream Christian view). McConkie's wit and style makes this book very enjoyable and easy to understand. The arguments are straightforward, inspired, and well researched. No honest person can dismiss this work simply out of hand.

"I have learned many things from my friend and mentor, Lonnie Joseph Nichols. Lonnie started out as my patient and has become my teacher. In the "Soul as Healer", he gives you(the reader) gems of his own inner wisdom and helps you recognize the healer within you." - Dr. David Vicena, D.C., Host of the talk show, "Natural Healing Arts", Mesa, Arizona

"Lonnie Joseph Nichols has presented us with a text that is as multifaceted and holistic as his philospphy. The affirmations and meditations will benefit students of every meditative discipline. The understanding he brings to the energetic nature of healing should be incorporated in medical, chiropractic, acupuncture, and massage schools throughout the land. The techniques and concepts Mr. Nichols espouses work and are repeateable; they place the power of healing in the hands of the patient where such power belongs." - Dr.Robert Kienitz, D.Ac., M.Sc.O.M.; Director of the Stone Ponte Institute of Oriental Medicine, Mesa, Arizona; Dean of Faculty and Curriculum, Phoenix Institute of Herbal Medicine and Acupuncture, Scottsdale, Arizona