By the time I got to the last page of Samuel Hynes's memoir GROWING SEASONS, I had developed such an attachment to young Sam that I was reluctant to quit reading. Luckily Hynes had written an earlier memoir about his days as a dive bomber pilot during WWII entitled FLIGHTS OF PASSAGE. Imagine my surprise when I spotted the book already in my bookcase. I'd read it when it was published in 1988. I had to read it again.
Hynes writes with such humility it's easy to put yourself in his shoes. Sam is continually worried about being cut from the flight program and sent to Great Lakes to train as an enlisted man. He also doesn't shirk from describing the times he crashed his plane or did something stupid, trying to show off. Although he went on over a hundred missions on Okinawa, he isn't sure his contribution to the war effort was worth that much. He's disappointed when he's left behind when his squadron goes on a bombing run of Japan.
As an ex-Navy man myself I can relate to a lot of what Hynes went through: the depressing bus stations, the sexual braggadocio, the feeling of vertigo when changing duty stations, the hurry-up-and-wait mentality, the obsession with drinking and playing cards.
About the only problem I have with the book is that the other pilots don't really come alive for me--I had trouble remembering who they were. Sam also gets married (at nineteen) before going overseas, but we never get to know his wife. He doesn't say much about her letters; he doesn't even seem to miss her. I had an ominous feeling about that marriage.
Perhaps the most memorable part of the book is when the war ends and Hynes and his fellow pilots are sitting around waiting for orders and they're caught in a typhoon! It blows away several tents and several men are killed. Talk about situational irony.

I have read this book 4 times now, and it gets better every time. Samuel Hynes has achieved something a lot of other writers have not. He has written about events that happened to him decades before, yet tells his story with the same sense of wonder as if it had just happened to him. This is a blunt, emotional, and at times extraordinarily humorous book that pulls no punches in its depictions of military life and the actions of young men about to go off to war. It is a shame it is out of print. If you can find a copy, whether through Amazon or at your library, it is worth reading over and over again!

I am surprised to see no author listed for this book. It is by Samuel Hynes, and was published in 1988 by Frederic C. Beil and New York Naval Institute. It is a great book, albeit one is disturbed by the great amount of boozing and whoring (no doubt truthfully) the author describes. But the author, now a distinguished author and professor of literature--unless he has retired by now--tells a poignant and realistic story of how he trained to be a pilot and was in 1944 commissioned as a Marine Corps aviator, and went on to action in Okinawa. The closing chapter is especially thought-provoking and I was sorry to see the book end. I wish the author had told us more, about how his hasty war-induced marriage went when he returned, and how he came to his present eminent position--little in the book prepares one for his eventual success, except it is obvious that Samuel Hynes is a writer of real power. This is the fourth book by him I have read. The others are The Edwardian Turn of Mind (finished 17 Oct 1993); The Auden Generation: Literature and Politics in England in the 1930s (finished Nov. 4, 1993); and A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (finished 21 Sept 1999). Reading this book will not remind you of these other books, which are a different genre, but also eminently worth reading.

This is a beautiful, full-color, artistic look at what it means to be a young woman today. The book is encouraging and upbeat in tone, with lots of pictures and bright colors. The advice is good and primarily focused on nurturing the spirit. This would be a great gift book for a teenage girl.

However, there are some problems with this book that I'd like to comment on. First, as many people have already mentioned, all the girls featured in the book are thin and attractive. A book meant to be for all girls should have girls of all body types in it. Second, a lot of the text is in silver ink, which is really hard to read in anything but bright lighting. Third, some of the pictures are repeated for no good reason, except for maybe filling space.

Despite all this, I still really like this book, and I'll probably be buying Girlosophy 2.

i first got hold of this book when i was talking with my friend kate. after we talked a while about life, love, and other mysteries, she told me that she had a book that i needed to read.
now, im not into the whole self-help book scene. i think that they are usually really cheesy and utterly ridiculous, to speak frankly. i wouldnt have read this book at all, except for the pictures and the whole beautiful feeling of the book drew me in. after i started looking through it, i was captivated. the pictures are amazing. the color is surprisingly good for a book of its price. and though i dont entirely agree with everything thats said in it, for the most part, i find the writing beautiful as well, in a somewhat cheesy, artsy kind of way. (and im not knocking artsy stuff, because i usually love it. its the whole cheesy bit that i usually dont like, but it was completely bareable and somewhat welcomed here. it kind of fits with the fun, playful pictures.)
after i had to give the book back, i was really disappointed, so i was going to go and buy it for myself. but then kate gave me a copy for graduation, so now i get to take the money and buy girlosophy 2. i think ill buy kate a copy as well!

This a gorgeous, helpful, amazing book that I have learnt a lot from. It will help me throughout my life, I am so glad that I got this for Christmas because it will make me a better person and help me realise my full potential.
It's beautiful photographs and inspirational words of advice have allready changed the way I think about the world.
I am only 12 years old but this book is wonderful to me. I love it.
...
I reccommend it to all girls and woman 12+.
Congratulations Anthea Paul on the best book ever!

The atlas is U. S. centric even though the title is 'world atlas'. The map of the U. S. takes up about 25 pages, while the map of Italy, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslovia (formerly) take up 2 pages. And the spelling is unbelievable. Many of the place names are rendered in the native language instead of English, at least I assume so. North and South Korea, about the size of Kansas is shown at about 1/2 the size of Kansas. One normally buys a world atlas to learn about the world, not the U. S. A disappointment.

The twentieth edition of Goode's atlas of the world continues to be a standard for U.S.-educational purposes. The reference maps themselves are not too accurate and detailed, but they provide a reasonably well-balanced coverage of the world, with handy larger-scale inset maps for the more populous regions of each continent. There is an elaborate thematic section on a variety of topics about the world, the continents, and the United States in particular. This is supplemented by a very good statistical section, and the 30,000 entry index gazetteer contains a pronunciation guide for each entry, which is unique for a world atlas. Non-US buyers probably have better alternatives, but for school purposes for North America, this is a very good choice. The publication of this twentieth (!) edition illustrates the endurability of this work since 1922.

When I took my first college-level geography class, my professor told the class that Goode's World Atlas is the best atlas on the market. Fifteen years and a couple of editions later, it's still the best atlas I've ever seen. The atlas includes a commendable section on map projections, many excellent thematic maps, easy-to-read regional (general) maps, tables of country and landform sizes, and a wonderful index. If you're looking for a road map, this atlas probably won't help. If you want to learn about the world, or teach school-aged children about the world they live in, then this is one of the top resources out there.

Patrick Dennis' famous "Auntie Mame" has so many incarnations that it can be hard to keep track. In the 1950s there was a famous stage version and still more famous film version, both starring the illustrious Rosalind Russell; in the 1960s there was an extremely popular stage musical starring Angela Lansbury and then a critically disasterous screen musical starring Lucille Ball. But this is the first, the original: AUNTIE MAME, one the 1950s' most talked-about books, a true runaway bestseller and one of the great classics of American humor.

The episodic book concerns an orphaned child, Patrick Dennis, who is sent to live with an aunt he has never before seen in 1920s New York--and the aunt is Mame Dennis, a fast-living, intellectually sharp, and decidedly eccentric woman beset by both the fads and fashions of the day and the money and social connections with which to indulge them. Although time has rather blunted the actual way in which Patrick Dennis writes (his framing device of a magazine article is more than a little tiresome), it certainly has not blunted the character herself: madcap Mame runs riot through the roaring twenties, goes through largely self-induced hysteria during the Depression, works for the boys during World War II, and along the way gets involves in art movements, theatrical performances, fox hunts, Southern country society, war orphans, a wealthy husband, an Irish poet, a college lover, and most famously her beloved nephew's unfortunate engagement to the shallow and snobbish Gloria Upson. Each comic disaster is more memorable than the last, and Mame herself lingers in the mind as an inspiration to live life to the fullest no matter the consequences.

Fans of the Rosalind Russell film version will quickly realize that Russell has captured the character perfectly; the book, however, is at once less structured and considerably broader than the Russell playscript and film. Very episodic and considered quite riske for its time, it contains a number of adventures (such as Mame's seduction of one of Patrick's college friends or her introduction of Patrick to the Maddox sisters) that never made it to any performance version. Both fans of the various plays and films and even the completely uninitiated will adore meeting the sparkling original, certainly one of the greatest comic creations in 20th Century literature. AUNTIE MAME deserves a special place on the shelf of any one who enjoys a range of humor that runs from sly giggles to screaming laughter. Strongly recommended.

Auntie Mame was first published almost fifty years ago, and although clearly describing times 75 long past (the book sees Mame through the twenties, the Depression and the War,) it is still charming, witty and absolutely hilarious. Far, far better than the embarassing movie starring Lucille Ball that was made from the book.
The story is told in the first person by Patrick Dennis who is adopted in 1928 by his Auntie Mame after being orphaned. Although a flapper enjoying New York society in the Roaring Twenties, Mame makes Patrick an integral part of her life, in her own inimitable and quite irrepressible way.

Unlike most post-War fiction, I think this book more than stands up to the passage of time. Perhaps because Patrick looks back at his childhood, which, even in 1955 (when the book was written) was part of the far distant past, the story is fun, rather than dated. And, certainly, contemporaneous readers have no trouble identifying with the excesses of the twenties, the financial desperation of the thirties or the terrors of the wartime forties.
This book is fun and a good, enjoyable read. I highly recommend it.

This book was one of the most enjoyable books that I've read all year! Patrick Dennis created the most interesting, risque, fun, and suprising character with Auntie Mame. This book was a fast, easy, and enjoyable read to say the least. This is my first Patrick Dennis book and I have to say that before I even finished it, I had already went out and bought the sequel. For anyone who wants a little adventure in their reading, this is the book for you.

Paul Johnson writes in a unique style. Many say his style is quirky, but I think his way of writing history is really the best. My reading his book is like being taken to a month-long tour of the early nineteenth century, mostly to England and Europe, but also to other parts of the world - American, Australia, Latin America and Asia - by virtue of the English (mostly) influence. It was like waking up in the morning and reading the morning paper of the era, learning about the what were unfolding in politics, business, industry, literature, music, art, science, and even gossip as they happened.

In this 1000 page volume, Johnson tells how the modern society rapidly took shape in a relatively short period of time after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is an interesting and compelling thesis. The industrial revolution, which created a lot of "self-made" men, and the arrival of the white men to all continents with their modern morals and superior weapons, the emergence of science, the popularization of music, art, communication media and eventually politics, all interacted to bring about an era of politics of the masses, or democracy, in the West.

Johnson tells us that this was not just another period of progress. It was the birth of the modern society. After reading his book, I am inclined to agree. Many of the salient features of today's society first took shape then. From little ills like traffic jams and parking tickets, for example, which started with increasing number of horse carriages, to party politics fanned by the media, newly juiced up by the steam-powered printing press. As if he anticipated what would happen in September 2000, at the ending pages of the book, Johnson innocuously chronicled the invention of the Lucifer match, a godsend for housewives but which also spawned arson. Does that not sound like a foretaste of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction?

The Birth of the Modern is a very unique history book. It is well worth your time. It gives meaning to the author's famous quote: "The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false."

It is the best answer to anyone who might ask why we should study history.

The Birth of the Modern is an amazing achievement! This history of the world during the period from defeat of Napoleon in 1815 to end of the Bourbon dynasty in 1830 is amazing in depth and breadth. The author chose to cover the history in all parts of the world from gunboats in Siam to the Russian conquest of Chechnya in graphic detail.

Paul Johnson covers art, poetry, philosophy, technology, as well as the life of the common man. He explores the philosophies of Fichte and Hegel. Byron and the Hellenists are discussed in detail, ending in the death of Byron at 36 years old in 1824 Greece. The large families and incredible population explosion in Europe is explained. The expansion of the railroad in Britain, and throughout the world comes to life. I found such discussions as the availability of opium at corner drugstores (at its effects upon colonialism in China) quite interesting.

In short, this is one comprehensive overview about world history at this interesting place in time. I do agree the author does have a tendency to go off on tangents at times. For me this kept the book from being dry reading. At times while I read this book, I genuinely felt transported back in time, almost like I was reading the newspaper headlines of the day. My thanks to Paul Johnson for making history come to life.

As an "avid reader" (pardon the pun) of Johnson, I judge this book as a real jewel. It does not have the broad sweep of Modern Times or the monumentalism of History of the American People or the meditative quality of History of the Jews but it does have a thoroughly detailed examination of a relatively unknown era.

He asserts that this era is of immense importance to the modern world in that the rhythm of our life - politics, music, science, religion - was established during this time. In his usual quirky and entertaining way, his presentations of the personalities of the time provide a startling behind-the-scenes look at those we thought we knew. He also includes those we do not know or those on the fringes and insists their contributions are many times more than those we celebrate. The movement of the story is a work of art in itself as it switches from subject to subject without ever losing either interest or direction. If you are interested in the Romantic Movement and the establishiment of modern social strucures, read this book.

While The Artist of the Missing will not be for all tastes, no-one could honestly deny that Paul LaFarge has real skill with the English language -- marvelous skill, for the book is full of marvels.

If you like surrealism and fantasy, if you are seeking dreamworlds to explore, then you will love this book. Every page holds a surprise, a lilt or a tilt in an unseen direction, or at least an unexpected turn of phrase. It's all done with an old world sensibility, and in the end it leaves the reader feeling like he or she has sat through a performance by a master of legerdemain, someone who glories in the art of pulling beautiful handkerchiefs out of thin air and then turning them into butterflies or rabbits or flames.

For a first novel, this is magnificent accomplishment. My only reservation is a minor one, for by the end I was enchanted and enthralled. But the techniques felt familiar, for though the landscape here is unique, the path to it is one that has been crossed by many great writers, from the Grimm brothers to Italo Calvino to Stephen Millhauser. LaFarge does it just about as well as anyone, and there's nothing wrong with doing well things which have been done before (realistic novelists build their careers on it), but I have a nagging suspicion that LaFarge is good enough to do even more, to stake out territory which is completely and undeniably unique to him, and I expect that with his future works he will.

Until then, The Artist of the Missing will do just fine, for it is a book to treasure and adore.

At first, LaFarge's first novel "The Artist of the Missing" bears striking similarity to Paul Auster's existential style, especially Auster's famous "New York Trilogy." LaFarge's themes of absences, coincidence, loneliness and his pawn-like hero Frank also echo Kafka. The second part of "The Artist" drifts into Haruki Murakami ("The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle") territory, where the bizarre, skewed logic and mystic circumstances become merely commonplace. And it's in the novel's 2nd half that the plot, which starts out tight, atmospheric and menacing unravels. Frank, the self-taught "artist," is a sympathetic hero, diligently searching for his past, his vanishing parents, while taking his quest to a mythical, mercurial, nameless city. The quest becomes more profound after he meets and falls for a mysterious police photographer of the dead -- Prudence. After that, images, ideas, symbols, scenes, characters and adventures weave in and out almost indiscriminately. This severs what had been a snug bond with the reader. Overall, "The Artist" is still a good read, very original and LaFarge has a clear, erudite style. I'm eager to see what he comes up with next in novel No. 2.

"the artist of the missing" is good stuff. the story is filled with imagination, loneliness, curious illustrations, love and adventure. it has all the ingredients needed for a spectacular novel but doesn't follow a set pattern. the book takes twists in plot and is happily not formulaic. makes you think and wonder and realize and all that important inner stuff books should do. "the artist of the missing" is a good ride

I first read Eckankar: The key to secret worlds by Paul Twitchell 13 years ago.I was then 16 and in my first year in Medical school. I remember that I almost virtually finished the volume on the spot.Was it possible that this depth of knowledge existed? Where were his curious heirachy of Eck Masters all this time when I was searching for answers to questions on God, Heaven, Death and dying.Could I meet them on my own volition? Paul Twitchell also speaks authoritatively of Heaven, a concept so familiar to the majority of us yet so distant. In ECKANKAR, KEY TO THE SECRET WORLDS Paul provides the proof to his claims- in simple, easy to follow Spiritual Excersises.Like all other great writings on God and the spiritual, the proof lies in the experience, since there are no scientific instruments to universally reproduce a spiritual experience. It's therfore noteworthy that this book and others by Twitchell remain Spiritual compasses in these times where the pace of life makes for little or no time for things spiritual. No matter your religious persuation, THIS BOOK HAS SOMETHING TO OFFER YOU.

Glad to discover that amazon.com carries this book! I enjoyed it immensely when I first read it 26 years ago. I last read it 12 years ago, so take that into account, but I really think it's content is timeless. Twitchell writes about various spiritual principles (most of which are addressed by all religions in one way or another) that can be applied in daily life. He looks at these in a fresh way and offers some concrete possible answers for what I believe are common nagging questions of spiritual seekers. For example: What are dreams, really? Just how do I contact Divine Spirit, or the force for which all religions have a name? (Names like the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, the Bani, the Light, the Sound, and the Shabda -- the list goes on. It even pops up in the "Star Wars" movies as the Force. Eckankar -- a relatively new outer-world religion but an ancient teaching many thousands of years old -- calls the Spirit "the Eck," a word evolved from the Greek or Sanskrit Ek meaning the One Oneness or, simply, One.)

Twitchell and Eckankar consider Spirit to be tangible to us as both light (the burning bush of the Christian scriptures, for example) and as sound (the celestial symphony referred to in the scriptures of nearly all religions). They teach ways to experience it and benefit from contact with it.

Twitchell offers thought-provoking information, some of which some readers may find fantastical or unbelievable. He writes about inner spiritual masters, whom he encountered sometimes outwardly, and inwardly during contemplations and dreams. I tried his first contemplative technique and quickly got results, meaning I experienced concrete help in my outer life by calling upon these "spiritual travelers." He also provides easy "spiritual exercises (contemplations you can use from five to 20 minutes) to gently open the third eye in the lower-to-middle forehead. This is to gradually connect more clearly with Spirit and with our own inner guidance and knowingness (my words). I practiced the techniques and found them effective in increasing my decision-making ability and sense of sureness about directions and choices and values. There are too few books our there for those of us who have wondered all our lives about God, about the truth of our human and spiritual nature, and about the greater universes and our dreams. I thought this book opened up access to these other worlds and levels of consciousness.

The book is not always technically well written. At some point, Twitchell was apparently writing several books at once on various typewriters, and his writing style may have suffered for it. However, that didn't detract from the enjoyment of reading or the value of the book for me. If a little rough writing doesn't offend you, it's worth the time of any serious spiritual seeker. At the very least, it will add some valuable new concepts to your biocomputer reference files, and fill in a few holes!

A personal footnote: before I was given this book, my friend mentioned the names of some of the masters written about in the book. Strangely to me at the time, I knew how to pronounce and spell their names. Strange because they were names such as Yaubl Sacabi, Fubbi Quantz, and Rebezar Tarz! I later realized I studied with these masters in the dream state or a past life. For some of you, this may start to touch on the "fantastical" I mentioned.

I first read this book almost thirty years ago, and have read and studied it many times since. Yet this book still gives me fresh insights whenever I pick it up.

It is about ECKANKAR, but provides many universal truths that can be of benefit to anyone seeking a greater understanding of Soul and of God. Beyond this it gives actual techniques of how to Soul Travel in the spiritual worlds.

This book was one of the pioneers in bringing out what had mostly been secret spiritual exercises. Today out-of-body travel has become common knowledge and widely accepted. Paul Twitchell's focus was on teaching these abilities as an aid to self discovery of our true spiritual nature.

It's a fascinating look at, and ways to access realms of consciousness beyond this world.

People can often be categorized into one of two bins: innovators and followers - a small number pave the way for the rest. I chose to read Israel's biography of Edison because I wanted to understand more about the 'Wizard of Menlo Park,' the innovator's innovator, Thomas A. Edison.

Israel provides a detailed review of Edison's upbringing, influences, successes, and failures. The dominant character of the inventor's personality was his single-minded vision of success: the way he practiced telegraphy as a young man (long hours where ever he could find them), the way little could thwart his visions of innovation, his genius for seeing analogies among various technologies, his charismatic ability to raise capital, and his lack of fear of failure. Israel's portrayal of Edison paralleled de Toqueville's vision of the quintessential 19th century American. The 'Inventor of the Ages' was both a man who knew that what was good today could be made even better tomorrow and one that favored practical, applied knowledge over theoretical and esthetic considerations - "less learnin', more earnin'." (I admit that the latter quote is actually from an episode of Family Ties guest starring Carl Reiner but it is still applicable.) This is perhaps best summed up in the revelation (to me) that Edison did not stop at inventing the light bulb - he invented electric lighting. However, Edison's single-minded dedication to technical innovation negatively affected his personal relationships and his esteem among the scientific community of the early 20th century.

Israel's biography is extremely detailed. The text contains a great deal of the minutia of the individuals with whom Edison worked and technical descriptions of electrical apparatus in which I (who has studied only the physics which accompanies a BS in biology) had little interest or comprehension. I personally would have been satisfied with more interpretation from the author.

The conventional story is so familiar and reassuring that it has come to read more like American myth than history: With only three months of formal education, a curious and hardworking young man beats the odds and becomes one of the greatest inventors in history. Not only does he invent the phonograph and the first successful electric light bulb, but he also establishes the first electrical power distribution company and lays the technological groundwork for today's movies, telephones, and sound recording industry. Through relentless tinkering, by trial and error, the story goes, Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) perseveres-and changes the world.

In the revelatory Edison: A Life of Invention, the author exposes and enriches this one-dimensional view of the solitary "Wizard of Menlo Park," expertly situating his subject within a thoroughly realized portrait of a burgeoning country on the brink of massive change. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the birth of corporate America, and with it the newly overlapping interests of scientific, technological, and industrial cultures. Working against the common perception of Edison as a symbol of a mythic American past where persistence and individuality yielded hard-earned success, Israel demonstrates how Edison's remarkable career was actually very much a product of the inventor's fast-changing era. Edison drew widely from contemporary scientific knowledge and research, and was a crucial figure in the transformation of invention into modern corporate research and collaborative development.

Informed by more than five million pages of archival documents, this ambitious biography of Edison brightens the unexamined corners of a singularly influential and triumphant career in science. In these pages, history's most prolific inventor-he received an astounding 1,093 U.S. patents-comes to life as never before. Edison is the only biography to cover the whole of Edison's career in invention, including his early, foundational work in telegraphy. Armed with unprecedented access to Edison's workshop diaries, notebooks, and letters, this book brings fresh insights into how the inventor's creative mind worked. And for the first time, much attention is devoted to his early family life in Ohio and Michigan-where the young Edison honed his entrepreneurial sense and eye for innovation as a newsstand owner and editor of a weekly newspaper-underscoring the inventor's later successes with new resonance and pathos.

In recognizing the inventor's legacy as a pivotal figure in the second Industrial Revolution, the author highlights Edison's creation of the industrial research laboratory, driven by intricately structured teams of researchers. The efficient lab forever changed the previously serendipitous art of workshop invention into something regular, predictable, and very attractive to corporate business leaders. Indeed, Edison's collaborative research model became the prototype upon which today's research firms and think tanks are based.

The portrait of Thomas Alva Edison that emerges from this peerless biography is of a man of genius and astounding foresight. It is also a portrait rendered with incredible care, depth, and dimension, rescuing our century's godfather of invention from myth and simplification.

Paul Israel is the Managing Editor of the multivolume documentary edition of the Thomas Edison Papers at Rutgers University and the coauthor of Edison's Electric Light. He lives in Highland Park, New Jersey.

This is a great work by author and scholar Paul Israel, who gives us an objective picture of Edison, his life, his strengths and his weaknesses. The book has sufficient technical details to satisfy those who seek to learn about his inventions and work, while painting a broad picture of life around him, and how it influenced his own life and work. For some reason, the author has not included the controversial interaction between Edison and contemporary inventor Nikola Tesla, even though the latter worked for a short period for Edison. This however, is of minor consequence to the excellent book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is seriously interested in the history of 19th and early 20th century technology. This is also a great inspirational work for any creative person.

After reading Paul Zane Pilzer's first book, "Unlimited Wealth", I was anxious to read this one. And since I'm a Christian, and the author is Jewish, he comes from the Old Testiment's perspective that during the time of Abraham, God promised him wealth. This well written book helps to explain the theology of economics in today's society. As also stated in "Unlimted Wealth", we have an endless supply of resources. And where one technology fades away, another one takes its place. Two good examples are how CD's have replaced vinyl records and how fuel injectors have mostly replaced carberators in automobiles. We are given the premise all things come from God, and we have at our disposal new technolgies which have the potential to increase our wealth and quality of life. There is a very extensive bibliography with excellent support for the arguments in this book. Finally, we now know that being rich isn't evil or a sin. In the final analysis, it's how we use our wealth that counts. For it is indeed the "love" of money that is the root of evil. An excellent book. I highly recommend it.

The amount of ignorance on this board is astounding. Why are they trying to say that Zilfer said that being poor was a sin? What page did they get that from? Maybe I don't understand English very well.

God did promise to bless Abraham, and the Bible teaches that we are children of the promise. We are to reap the blessings of Abraham in the natural and spiritual.

The bible also says that:
2 Corin 8
9For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

That doesn't mean just spiritually. It means naturally as well. I wish above all things that you may prosper, even as your soul prospers. Maybe somebody ommited that scripture from their Bible.

Y'all need to learn how to break free from that poverty demon who is preaching the poverty doctrine. Yes, the poor will always be with us. But we don't have to be poor -- unless we want to be.

The previous reviewer says that, boiled down to its essence, Pilzer claims that if you aren't rich, you will go to Hell. Not quite. He states that if you are rich, you won't be condemed to Hell. In this book, he explains how and why people for thousands of years thought that there were finite resources, and that in order to increase your wealth, you had to take from someone else. Under this theory, it is reasonable to argue that G-d wants you to be poor. However, he presents a rational theory which he first explained in his earlier book, Unlimited Wealth - his theory of Economic Alchemy. From that he shows how wealth is only limited by human ingenuity, which is essentially unlimited. It follows that with unlimited wealth being available, it is possible to become rich without taking the wealth from someone else. In fact, he demonstrates in his book, how by becoming wealthly, you provide a benefit to society, improving not just your own standard of living, but the standard of living of others as well; it is only by improving the lives of others that you can obtain lasting riches - both monetary and non-monetary.

In short, he explains that while being poor is no great sin, neither is being rich.

I have read this book cover to cover. This book is for little children who want to learn about medicine. If you have little kids, get them this book as a head start. They will become great doctors after reading it. You-won't! This book is not even close to a reality! How can they even publish this book! Please, if you have little children that are in kindergarten, and they would like to learn about medicine, please buy them this book. But please don't read this book for yourself for the Boards! This book won't even tell you the most common things that occur commonly! This book doesn't even have all syndromes and diseases that are definitely gonna be asked on the Boards! This book says nothing about Takaysu's arteritis, Temporal (Giant cell) Arteritis. This book won't even mention cytoplasmic antinuclear antibodies (c-ANCA)that are present in Wegener's granulomatosis! This book won't even mention ANA Ab against double stranded DNA in SLE for God's sake! How can they even publish this book? This book doesn't have a half what you need to know! This book is for little children who would like to learn very very basic things about little things in medicine.

This is an excellent book to put a baby to sleep.

I do have to agree that the CD-ROM, that comes with the book has a few good vignettes and questions that might be helpful to you, but please don't read this children's book.

Excelent source of updated information, specialy in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. I liked the well-organized, system-based content of this book, but it's a little wordy and I've found several mistakes. Even though, I would recomend it to any Foreing Medical Graduate prepearing for the STEP 1. ( I scored high with this one and First Aid )

This book covers a lot of information, but it is not complete for a complete review. I used it along with First Aid for the USMLE and some other review books. It is a fantastic place to start.