One of a kind. Diary, dialogue and moving action take you to a place in a young man's war mixed with confusion, love and self-awareness. Highly Recommend

... Most Americans believe that people should grow up to be autonomous individuals through the sustained exercise of personal will and effort. "A General Theory of Love" is an un-American book.

Lewis, Amini, and Lannon, all psychiatrists, argue that we develop confidence, happiness, and feelings of independent competence only through ongoing dependencies within intimate human relationships. True maturity is achieved not by scorning dependency but by continually satisfying our need for it throughout our lives.

Of course, op-ed writers tell us that children need time with attentive relatives instead of with TVs and computers, and psychologists commenting on recent school shootings theorize that teenagers with violent tendencies lack strong, healthy bonds with their families. "A General Theory of Love" takes such ideas further and grounds them in brain research made possible by new technologies.

Recent research into the physiology of the limbic brain is especially revealing, says the book. Scientists once believed that this part of the brain only coordinated sensations from the external world and internal organs. But recent brain-wave experiments show that experience lays down patterns in the limbic brain which regulate our emotions, and that these patterns change and grow throughout our lives.

Thus our nervous systems are not autonomous or self-contained, but continually rewired by intimacy with others. No wonder two lovers feel like one person: their closeness forms new psychic patterns in both. No wonder psychotherapy takes time: we heal by connecting with healthy therapists long enough for our minds to become more like theirs.

This persuasive, moving book is wise about the heart as well as the nervous system. But the writing can be exasperatingly verbose. Sometimes Lewis whips a sentence to a froth as if hoping the jargon will vanish among the bubbles; sometimes he just seems anxious to impress. If he listened to his prose as attentively as he listens to his clients, he'd create stronger, healthier bonds with his readers, but despite the book's overwrought style its fascinating content makes it well worth reading.

Exposed as children to imperfect relationships, many of us slip into the same stale and ineffectual patterns as adults, inexplicably falling for those who will hurt us, driving away those who don't, or habitually avoiding the intimacy that we need. No matter how senseless our behavior seems, we stick to the formula, married to conscripts of love that--time and time again--leave us broken-hearted.

Enter this sizzling new book called "A General Theory of Love," which--with unsurpassed eloquence--explains why love confounds us and why it is finally within our grasp. The authors--Drs. Lewis, Amini, and Lannon--are practicing psychiatrists from the University of California. Melding cutting-edge neuroscience with real human experience, they make a sober but uplifting case for the elemental tie between love, health, and happiness. Their argument will grab you by the seat of your pants. It is grounded in fact but spelled out in lovely prose with compelling allusions to history and literature. Believe me, this unusual work is a far cry from the stagnant drivel of many scientific journals (and some evolutionary biologists). Nor is it anything like a typical self-help book. It is a lifeline, masterfully woven from the hefty secrets unveiled within its pages.

To a few, love may come easily. For the rest of us, "A General Theory of Love" is indispensable reading. Why wait?

This thoughtful, sensitive book accomplishes the impossible; itcombines lyricism with science to help a lay person like myselfunderstand the biological basis of the human psyche. The authors make complex neuroscience accessible. The book explains what we intuitively know: attachment and human bonds are critical to happiness.

I'd compare this book to the works of Carl Rogers, Arthur Sullivan, and Rollo May, for its new approach to the science of the psyche. I'm sure some of the authors' conclusions will be controversial, but that just makes the book more exciting. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in exploring the scientific basis of love. It's no accident that this book was released just before Valentine's day.

The Napoleonic wars were a world war, though students of the Seven Years War or other earlier conflicts might argue whether it was the first world war. Iradj Amini has written a book outlining one of the remotest and easternmost frontiers of that conflict. Amini begins his history with efforts to open relations with Persia during the ancien regime. From the beginning France's relations with Persia was filled with many strange twists and turns.

Britain signed a treaty with Persia in 1801 in which the Shah agreed to keep the French, whose Egyptian campaign was a threat to India, out of his lands, but in return Britain, on friendly relations with Russia after the assassination of Tsar Paul I, made no promises in regards to Russia's expansion in the Caucasus. When the Russians made threatening moves into Azerbaijan, the British, desirous of including Russia into a new coalition against France, refused to provide the Shah any assistance. The Persians turned to France, who had already sent envoys to the distant land. France, for her part, saw definite advantages to an Eastern diversion against both Russia and Britain and was equally eager for a rapprochement.

As Persia was distant and travel was to that land was long and difficult, Napoleon proposed sending military advisors to Persia as he was to do with the Ottomans. Napoleon described what advisors would have to offer to the Shah. "...When your subjects know how to manufacture arms, when your soldiers have been taught how to split up and reassemble in a series of rapid and well-ordered movements, when they will have learnt how to back up a vigorous attack with the fire of a moving artillery; when your frontiers are secured by numerous fortresses and the Caspian Sea has the flags of a Persian flotilla fluttering on its waves, you will have an unassailable empire and invincible subjects."

But the vissitudes of European politics were to intervene. Gardane, the French ambassdor to Persia, was in Constantinople, on his way to the Shah's capital, when he heard of the peace signed at Tilsit. His instructions now were to promote peace between Persia and Russia, and enmity to Britain. Meeting with the Shah, Gardane had to play a difficult game, placating the Persians while not disturbing the peace between France and Russia. Britain was not idle and the Tilsit treaty renewed fears of a joint French-Russian invasion of India through Persia. Now that it was the French, not the British, who were allied with Russia, some at the Persian court were more prone to listen to British proposals. Though Persia was now in the position of having two great powers fighting for its allegiance, neither France nor Britain had much concern for Persian interests. For the Shah, the thrusts and parries of European diplomacy were ultimately meaningless as long as the Russians were in Georgia.

The maneuverings of France and Britain in Persia foreshadowed the later conflict between Russia and Britain known by the Kiplingesque name of "the Great Game." Persia's greatest immediate threat was imperialist Russia encroaching into Central Asia through Georgia. The Persians therefore saw as their ally any power opposed to Russia, so that its foreign policy swung from France to Britain and back again as alliances in Europe formed and broke apart.

Iradj Amini is an Iranian-born diplomat, the last ambassador of the Shah to France, who is now a French citizen. He has degrees from U.S., Iranian and British universities and has previously written a history of the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Amini has made use of archives in both France and Britain, making use of archival material not available to Edouard Driault in writing his classic La Politique Orientale de Napoleon (1904). As for secondary sources, Amini employs mainly French works, missing, for example, Edward Ingram's relevant Britain's Persian Connection: Prelude to the Great Game, 1798-1828 (1992). It's unfortunate that Iranian sources, either primary or secondary, were not used to round out the story; though an appendix, written by Farrokh Gaffary, does give contemporary Persian views of Napoleon.

A discussion of Persia's military strengths and weaknesses would have filled out the story. What troops did Persia have, in what numbers, how were they armed, where were they stationed-these questions I had reading the book. I detected some minor errors, such as the implication that the Treaty of Lunéville (8 February 1801) was signed within a few days of the Battle of Marengo (14 June 1800). Amini might be confusing this treaty with the Convention of Alessandria. But the fascinating story is told with economy and flair. The book includes one map, showing the Persian empire and its environs, and twelve pages of black and white illustrations depicting, chiefly, the personalities discussed in the text.

Napoleon and Persia was originally published in French in 1995 and received the Potiers-Boès Prize for History from the Académie Française in 1996.

Amini's work fills a void in both Napoleonic and Iranian history with surprising success. This history, not from the pen of an academic but a former diplomatist, will be an informative read for the student and curious reader alike.

This history is the tale of the betrayl of Fath Ali Shah the Qajar of Persia by Napolean Bonaparte, Emperor of France, King of Italy, in 1807. It tells the story of the British, French and Russian imperial ambitions in Iran, or Persia as it was know before the Pahlavi dynasty. It outlines the attempts by Fath Ali Shah to play France off against both Britain and Russia, so as to regain control of Persian territory in both the Caspian Sea region and on the shores of the Persian Gulf. These attempts culminated in the Treaty of Finkenstein signed between Persia and France in 1807, only to be brocken when Napoleon made peace with the Russian Tzar two months later, abandoning his Persian allies to the Russians. Britain would assume the role abandoned by France as Persia's 'ally' in 1809, a role she would pursue until the Second World War.

The insights one gains from Amini's work on the immense difficulties of diplomacy and statecraft before the age of telephones and aircraft is enlightening. Furthermore, as it is written from an Iranian and diplomatic stand-point it is even more valuable and readable for the student of history.

Visiting Paris recently, I had the pleasure of seeing a protrait of Fath Ali Shah in the Louvre, brought back to France from Persia by Amedee Jaubert, a portrait admired by the Persian Ambassador in the Apollo Gallery of the same institution some 190 years previously. Particularly amusing are the anecdotes of the Persian Ambassador's adventures in the Parisian social set and the travails of the European adventurer/diplomats in Persia.

I would recommend this work to anyone interested in the history of diplomacy, Iran, or Europe's relations with the Near East. I certainly hope this is not the last of Ambassador Amini's non-fiction works.

Somewhere in this book there may be the information necessary to take the MCSE Security Exam 70-220. I couldn't find it, maybe you can. The author rants on about coffee shops and lakes of Minnesota, doing his best to be like Garrison Keillor telling the "Tales of Lake Wobegon", which may be entertaining in a detached way, but has absolutely no place in a test prep manual.

He is also obsessed with a book written by Bill Gates, and works it into his presented lessons, when even Microsoft doesn't try to make the Gate's book into an MCSE issue.

Clearly the author has lost the sense of mission in this manual, which is to help you get through the test, not entertain you (actually, I'm not sure the author actually entertains anyone except himself).

If you want to pass the test, stick with the Microsoft dull, boring training manual which actually has the info you need to pass the test.

This book was just a waste of money to me, it's too big to even hold up the leg of a wobbley table well.

The book does indeed cover every objective of the 70-220 Microsoft exam. However, more than half of the book is, or at least seems, irrelevant to the topic of the book. First 6 chapters all discuss the types of company models, management methodologies, risk analysis, analysis of current infrastructure, requiremenets analysis, and so on. Indeed, all of these do apply to how security would be designed for a network, but frankly, most technical readers would tire out reading 300 pages of business material (types of managements, types of companies, risk management analysis, etc).

I do think that all of this stuff was necessary in the book, but not with the length that it has. It should have been dealt with more succintly.

All in all, a good overall book, but for the purposes of the exam, I wouldn't choose this book

I liked this book because it is pretty well explained and gave me a solid foundation to understand more about how to design Network Security for Windows 2000. I say it is a must for anyone seriously wanting to grasp a strong foundation in Windows 2000 Network Security.

This is a very poorly written book. There are hundreds of spelling and grammatical errors. I can't believe a publisher actually printed this book, or that nobody with some education proofread it before it was published.

The book seems to be a collection of drawings, extracts from other books or articles, and another book (perhaps in Farsi from the same author). It is a mix bag of disjointed short description of stories from Shahnameh (the legendary / mythical history of the ancient Iran) and the history of the Persian Empire. The pages, the stories, and the whole book do not flow together.

I do not know that much about the subject itself, but I suspect that there are a lot of wrong information in the book as well.