How would you hendle the death of a loved one? For me, until I read this book, I wouldn't have had a clue! I think this book makes sense for anyone who is going through the financial transition that death brings to survivors but also to anyone who wants to be prepared for the event. Think about it...we will all eventually have to face this, why not be prepared? This book covers more details than I would have thought of, and I work in the financial industry. I think a major plus to this book is that is gives definitions, addresses, phone numbers, web addresses, etc... of all the things and places you will need to know about. I would highly recommed this publication.

If your loved dies suddenly or you know its coming this is the essential book to read about handing the situation.

A compact guide on what to do when and how. It brings together in one easy to read and understand format the information you will need immediately after a death and later on.

This is a book to have on hand as you would have a dictionary.

When my mother died I found it was dificult to get the information I needed. Laywers can be very expensive. If I had this book it would have saved my time and money.

Although the book origionally seemed small for the price I discovered that it had a lot of information. It covered everything from how to handle my husband's car lease to estate processing and identity theft. It was also well written and had a easy to follow format.

The ABCs of love. A collection of delicious bon-bons, each morsel a tidbit of love advice from a voice of experience - a cute canine who (seemingly) has been around a few blocks a few times. "On the menu of love, not all men are main courses." So true. The illustrations are wonderful, too. I loved this book. I got it as a gift from my sweetie. A great gift. A little treasure.

i loved the first book but this one is even better. sweetie gives funny, tongue-in-cheek advice about love, sex and puppies. amazing illustrations. she's the new eloise. great gift for my three daughters. my husband bought this for me as a gift.

This is the follow up on Sweetie's "From the Gutter to the Runway". (Sweetie is a dog who somehow found her way to being a darling mutt of the fashion world.) I really enjoyed that book and was happy to see she had more to say. When it comes to love advice, she seems to have a pretty good-humored head on her shoulders! Very cute. The illustrations are a treat, too! Loved it.

Scott's poems come at you like a great jazz line: at once controlled and extemporized; modulating, surprising, and honest --ever honest. You hear the poems at first reading and again when they repeat in your inner ear.

A searing book of poems. Honest and rigorous, with a sensibility serene enough to listen to the shadows, the steady music directing within and without.

A stunning collection. A small triumph of integrity and grace.

Mark Scott's words refuse to lie cold and aloof on the page. They rise and fall as inflections of voice, as pulses of action, as currents of feeling that leap across space to encircle the reader in a compelling embrace of memorable imagery, of imaginative memory. Scott takes everything personally - in the welcome sense of making even the abstract, intimate, and the intangible, concrete. These poems involve the reader not as a distanced spectator but as a confidante, a collaborator, a hands-on conspirator in wresting beauty from life's closely observed beasts.

The volume's title describes the poet's project: to touch and be touched (and sometimes to exorcise unwanted touch). Scott's ingenious command of expression relays with palpable force his uncommon perceptions of our common vocations: our journeys through the thickets of love, loss, ambition, disappointment, longing; from the limpidness of childhood to the culpabilities of adulthood. Always, an imprint is scored - and, like the touch of an absent lover, viscerally felt long afterward.

Todd Borg is a Tahoe resident and small businessman. He also teaches part time at Lake Tahoe Community College. TAHOE ICE GRAVE is his third Owen McKenna and Spot mystery. Mr. Borg's first two novels in the series, TAHOE DEATHFALL and TAHOE BLOWUP, won several awards, including "Top 5 winner of Bay Area Independent Publishers Association" and "Librarian's Choice, Best Fiction 2001" by the Cincinnati Public Library.

Thos Kahale's body is found naked near Rubicon Point in Lake Tahoe, his clothes neatly folded onshore and a bullet through his head. Thos's mother, Janeen Kahale hires Owen McKenna to look into the death. Thos was an upstanding young man with a successful business and a discreet nature, and there is no apparent reason for his death. Owen has to dig deep to find the reasons, and in the meantime the Kahale family seems to be dying at an alarming rate. All Owen has to go on is a suicide note left by Thos and his family history:

"'Janeen, Thos's note says he was responsible for the deaths of three people. Jasper's father and brother have died in the last few weeks. Could they be two of he people Thos referred to?' 'Of course not. Jasper's father died of lung cancer. His brother in a car accident. Obviously, Thos could not have had anything to do with either death.'"

One of the real strengths of the Owen McKenna series is the characterization. Mr. Borg has a knack for telling a "tall tale" with larger-than-life characters. Owen himself is 6'6", and his dog spot is a Great Dane who is perfectly tuned to Owen's commands. McKenna's girlfriend Street completes the triad; an entomologist (science of insects) who deals with the grisly forensic side of murder. Together the threesome make for a winning combination of grit, intelligence, strength, and tenderness that is captivating to the reader. But Mr. Borg's plots are also super-twisters that take the reader back and forth, into and out of the mountain scenery at a dizzying rate. TAHOE ICE GRAVE is as compelling as any of Todd Borg's tales to date. With each book his writing advances to a new level, much to the delight of his growing audience. A big thumbs up.

Todd Borg knows how to win fans...
Taho Ice Grave is a well executed story that
provides fast moving, compelling suspense.
Owen and Spot pack the realism that all mystery
readers enjoy.
Add Todd Borg's name to your list of favorite
authors!!!

Murder in the deep icy waters of Lake Tahoe; the search for a priceless manuscript and the ruthless killer who would do anything to get his hands on it; a frantic chase up frigid mountain cliffs to a hidden ice cave-Owen McKenna and his faithful Great Dane "Spot" are at it again.
"Tahoe Ice Grave," Todd Borg's third thriler in the Owen McKenna myatery series, is every bit as fast paced and spell binding as his first two, "Tahoe Deathfall" and "Tahoe Blowup." Borg's attention to detail and unique talent for character portrayal go a long way to make "Ice Grave's" people and places larger than life. A fast paced read that will keep you turning the pages 'till the wee hours of the morning.

Anyone can tell (or write) a story. The real trick is all about engaging the listener or the reader...grabbing hold of them in such a way that they set aside the hustle and bustle of their lives and become engrossed in the story. This is the storytelling skill Petrakis has demonstrated throughout his long and illustrious career. Tales of the Heart exhibits all of Petrakis' power as a storyteller, but it goes much farther. When I was young, my dad, an educator, used to stop every once and a while, in the midst of some thankless task, glance sideways at me, and say: "This counts." He wanted me to understand that we were engaged in something bigger. Tales of the Heart points us all toward something bigger.

Petrakis, whether writing fiction or essays, or whether delivering a public address, is one of my favorite storytellers. Tales of the Heart provides an inspiring look into the heart of a superb writer, the likes of which may never pass this way again.

I had the honor of meeting Mr. Petrakis at my school just a short while ago. He is a very unique man and weaves humor in with some of the most nostalgic of memories. His books are great, personally, i had dreaded reading someone's memoirs, but even though there is a considerable gap of decades in between our ages, i can still identify with some things he experienced and grew stronger by.

Harry Mark Petrakis' new book, "Tales of the Heart: Dreams and Memories of a lifetime," is an amazing piece of autobiography that speaks with the force of lyrical poetry. Although prose that is either fiction, nonfiction, or both, the book immediately brings to mind the poetry of Yannis Ritsos, or Pablo Neruda. The book, like almost all of the work by Petrakis, is so tightly constructed that the reader can feel and hear the words alliteratively exploding off the page. What makes this book so unique in the world of contemporary literature is that it is impossible to define by genre. It is not a novel even though it reads like one. Although it looks like a collection of essays it is not that at all; instead, what we haveis a powerfully packed series of highly emotional and poetically told tales by a master storyteller in memory. Finally, "Tales of the Heart: Dreams and Memories of a Lifetime," is the type of book that may change the readers life. The world in which it presents is so moving, emotional, and poetically told that the reader is forever drawing back to personal memories of their own,and as strange as it may seem, simultaneously laughing and crying. Don't miss this one!

Alan Watts (1915-1973) was a great explicator of the Oriental way of being. This is the fifth volume in the Love of Wisdom Library edited by his son Mark. In these lectures given between 1968 and 1973, he examines Taoism.

The anxiety, the body tension, and the constant stress of our lives in the West is partly the result of trying to make things happen and to control outcomes. The antidote is "Wu Wei" (don't force it). Or as Watts notes, "When you force a lock, you usually bend the key, so instead, jiggle gently."

Instead of fighting the external world, adopt the watercourse way of Taoism - go with the flow. By following the course of least resistance, we keep the door open for spontaneity and surprise. Watts also talks about art as a controlled accident, the wisdom of accepting yin and yang (the constant interplay of differences), and the value of following intuition. These lectures seem as relevant to our times as when they were first presented over 25 years ago.

Brilliant, insightful, and occasional gentle humor are the hallmarks of this commentary on the Tao Te Ching. The Tao is not an easy book for a Westerner to understand, but Watts picks a few key concepts, ones that are repeated often, and focusses on them. The result is a Tao that makes sense, if not always in one's (logical) head, then at least in one's intuitive heart.

There were a few passages which really stood out for me. As a Catholic, I have reflected often on the meaning of Beatific Vision. Being an impatient soul, I am not quite content to wait until the heavenly hereafter to find out what it is all about. Watts does not address this topic, irrelevant to Taoism, but what he says (p.56)about oneness and individuality apply: "There is enormous differentiation inside the body, desite the fact that it is a single, distinct organism. I use the word 'distinct' rather than 'separate' because by 'separate' I mean "disjointed" or "cut off from," but by 'distinct I mean something I recognize as a distinguishable pattern perceived as a whole. So, something can be distinct without being separate, in just the same way as back and front can be very different and yet inseparable." Yes, of course, that's exactly it: the Mystical Body of Christ here, the Beatific Vision hereafter.

His game of "Vish" sounds like fun and is a really good example of how language works.

This book has gotten me to thinking about art in a new way. I am coming to recognize the difference between what transcends and what is merely mechanical performance. It may be that, even though I cannot produce music or sculpture or anything that is usually termed a "work of art" in the usual sense, I can do other things that fit his description, baking bread for one thing. We can all be artists in our own way.

This book is destined to last through the centuries. Not guessing here, I know this for a fact. How, you may wonder? Well, four hundred years from now, Mr. Spock will say "A difference which makes no difference, is no difference." A very good paraphrase of the lines at the bottom of pp. 64-65. Guess Vulcans read Alan Watts, too!

I would highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a better understanding of the Tao Te Ching.

This is the best book on Taoism that i've read. Illuminates beautifully that seemingly murky yet wonderfully simple philosophy; full of wit, great examples and metaphors, inspiring and original ideas, and above all the slippery glint of truth, like catching sight of a fast fish moving in a stream. (hmm...) His appropriately 'flowing' style is all the more flowing due to the fact that these are talks that he gave, recorded by Mark Watts.

Ludwig's Third Paradigm brings much-needed conceptual insight and simplification to politics. The governments of past and present fit into one of three categories: monarchy, where an individual determines law (the codification of right and wrong), representative government (republics, democracies), where individuals collectively, through voting, make the law, and theocracy, where divinely revealed law is the standard of morality.

Anyone trying to think through the principles of human organization from a foundational viewpoint should read this book.

Mark A. Ludwig is a brilliant scientist who lends credibility to the word of God, and shows from an intellectual and historical perspective that biblical Christianity has not failed. It simply has never been tried. The book is logical and analytical, and shows how this world's perplexing problems will eventually be solved.

This great book is about how the first paradigm (divine monarchy, or god-kings) has failed, how the second paradigm (representative government, which we are currently using in America and other countries) is failing, and how the third paradigm (theocracy, or God's law) will work once implemented. Author, Ludwig, describes how a government truly under God will operate, how self government will be implemented, and more!

First, he gives you a brief history lesson on how the first paradigm operated, was implemented, and how it was finally discarded for the sake of the second paradigm. Then he shows how the second paradigm began, and where it is heading. Sooner or later people will lose respect for the second paradigm just like they did with the first paradigm, and will begin looking for something better. That's where the third paradigm comes in. Under the law of the Bible, criminals will be punished fairly according to their crimes. There will be no more need for jails, or even police. For example, a thief would have to repay the owner 4-5 times the item's value if the item has been sold or damaged, but if the item is found unharmed and still in his possession he will only have to restore double. This creates a strong deterrent against stealing something, and giving incentive both to take care of the item and to confess. But changes like this won't happen overnight. It will take a reformation of people's hearts and minds before it can truly be implemented.

I thought reading this was a very worthwhile use of my time. I learned some history that I didn't know before. It is really interesting how God's laws will work, and how, unlike some people think, His laws have not passed away. I would highly recommend it to someone who is tired with where representative government is leading us, and is wondering if there is anything better to be had. There is.

Daddy's never seem to get enough attention when a newborn arrives. This was a great depiction of how a new father is able to get the attention he needs and deserves. It is nice to see, coming from a stay-at-home mom, that a daddy gets to experience all the trials and tribulations we typically experience (mommies, that is). I enjoyed reading this book and was enlighted by some of the anecdotes that Mark wrote about. I too had some of the same or similar stories to tell. Thanks, Mark, for showing all the men out there that it is not always easy, and can be done correctly by a daddy!!!

I loved this book. Not only was it side-splitting funny, it was also painfully honest. The story covers the first year of a stay-at-home dad's experience in raising his two young daughers while his wife worked full-time. I don't have children of my own, but I could totally relate to a lot of the experiences he went through based on my relationships with family and friends who have children. What I loved the most about "Through a Daddy's Eyes" was the everyday parenting duties (traditionally performed by women) depicted from a man's point of view. I found the comments regarding teething, diaper changes and Christmas shopping both enlightening as well as laugh out loud funny!

I read this book with the expectation of reading a daily journal with lots of funny and heartfelt stories. It was so much more than that. Mark takes you through all of the thoughts, emotions, and hard decisions that parents have to make to raise healthy, smart, and "pleasant" children. His love for his daughters is apparent right from the start as he gives up his career to stay home and raise his two daughters. Of course, for Mark, it was not much of a sacrifice because he was born to be a stay-home-dad. His realistic accounts of teething, colds, stomach viruses, head injuries, diaper changing, and all around baby juggling are hilarious as well as informative for those without children. His adoration, appreciation and respect for his wife Lisa, acknowledges her very difficult role as the "bread winner" in this family. I think the greatest thing about the book is that Mark has not lost any of his manliness, and at times he has had to fight to maintain it. He still talks about golf, baseball, women, and sex, on such a regular basis, that there is no doubt that he plays his role as a stay home dad without missing a beat as a man. Mark takes you through his first year at home with his girls and all of the changes in between, and when you are through you can actually feel the intense love he has for his girls. He makes you think twice about your priorities in this world. Mark's writing is funny and light-hearted and I thoroughly enjoyed his book from beginning to end, and look forward to a sequel.

Although the original essays and reprinted material in this book make fine reading, the real contributors are the 13 photographers whose images of mustangs on nearly every page will please anyone with an interest in horses and the landscape of the Western states. Some shots are of horses grazing or standing still, looking back at the photographer, ears up and altert, but most are of horses in motion, sometimes in tight telephoto closeup, sometimes against rolling hills or sage-covered flatland. There are many kinds of weather as well, foggy, stormy, snow, wind, spring sunshine, dusty summer, and horses of all colors and markings. A handful of shots include saddled horses with cowboys.

The book has also been very handsomely designed. Page layout, typography, end papers, variety of image placement and use of white space, balancing of images and text, all serve the subject wonderfully and please the eye. Nearly all the photographs selected are crisply cear, motion frozen with a high-speed shutter. The wide pages make possible many double-page spreads that look and feel panoramic.

Editor Mark Spragg has brought together the work of seven writers, including himself, and an Assiniboine tale to accompany the images. The writings are mostly contemporary, but a few hark back to earlier times, such as Charley Russell's cowboy theory about the origins of horseback riding and Ben Green's account of trying to capture a band of mustangs, while nearly losing his hand to an infected horse bite. Spragg's harrowing essay "Wintering" appeared later in his collection of essays, "Where Rivers Change Direction." There's also an informative essay by New York Times writer Verlyn Klinkenborg, who writes eloquently of the rural life and has visited wild-horse territory earlier in his book "Making Hay."

I highly recommend this beautiful book to lovers of horses, good writing, and the Western landscape.

This book reads like a group of short stories, of which they are all by different authors. The combination of their stories gives one the true feeling of the multitude of facets of the wild horses. It will make you realize they are carved out of the landscape, and an intrical part of nature. A creature of survival sometimes at the risk of their very own life. The stories are memorable and unforgettable. A definate must for the armchair western adventurer.

This is a great book for anyone interested in the Mustangs. It shares stories and legends of wild horses and people's interactions with them. The stories range from heart warming to tearful. Each brings you a step closer to understanding the difference of the wild and domesticated horse. Throughout the book are beautiful pictures that capture the spirit of the mustangs.

First of all this Book is funny and keeps you reading. Tokyo Confidetial focused on Japan and many kinds of characteristic of Japanese. I would say if someone read this maybe the reder would think Japanese are crazy, but i think this book really show true? parts of Japanese. It's nice book to find what Japanese are up to and also it is good for serching the reason wy Japanese are crazy. Overall, i really enjoyed it not because i learned funnt secrets about Japanese but this book keeps you reading, makes your time faster. Oh yes i don't know how many ties i laugh haha.
So if you read my review, just trsyte me and click the button "Buy" and i know you would laugh and enjoy it.

As one of the gee-whiz, rocket eyebrow types who has lived in Japan nearly 20 years, I really appreciated Schreiber and his cohorts explaining what is going on with Japanese high school girls and their thigh-high uniform skirts, compensated dating, etc. There's lots more in this book than that, certainly, as the various seedier and "oh my!" parts of (mainly) Tokyo are parsed from the vernacular tabloids by these witty and perhaps *too* informed writers. They translate not only the words, but the titillating currents that buffet the "impenetrable" Japanese people and help give this society some of its excitement and spice. Thanks, Mark et.al, for opening up the bamboo curtain a whole lot wider!

Forget kimonos, samurai and ninja. Find out what"s really happening on the streets of the Land of the Rising Sun. A fantastic book that digs deep into a land with an underbelly as big as its sumo wrestlers. A must read for anybody interested in a no-holds-barred look at the REAL Japan.