The book was a rocket ride for me. It was exciting, well-paced and well written. What's even better is that Delusion is Good is a book you can put to use. It's not so abstract that you can't use it. It's practical and assertive, but it doesn't ever force-feed you. Instead, it takes you by the hand. It guides you to some great places in yourself. And once it does, it really starts to shake stuff up for you. The book works. And it teaches us things we can put to use now, not five years from now!

DELUSION IS GOOD is not your run-of-the mill self-help book. It makes us all look at some things that we might not want to confront. And it requires a little bit of honest self-evaluation to go after it's rather outspoken theme. But once I did, once I took a look at the two matrixes that drive us, Love and Fear, and how we respond to them, I found it exceptional. Once I got the message of my true mission in life, I couldn't put it down.

As a therapist I have found this title to be very helpful in counseling grieving clients. I haven't found another book like it on the market because it's so practical and yet has a depth to it which only a person who has experienced grief can express. A grieving person can use it at any step in their grief recovery--whether they have just lost a loved one or are still grieving a death which occurred years ago. The way the author uses the seasons of the year is quite extraordinary. I use it in conjuntion with the author's "Bereavement Handouts" and have recommended this book to clients, other mental health clinicians, and even my local funeral home as an expression of sympathy to a grieving individual.

As a clinician, I have found this book to be helpful with my clients who are grieving--no matter what stage they are in. It's very practical--going through the seasons of the year. The author has obviously had extensive experience with grief, both personally and professionally.

The reviewer below got it right....this is a beautiful, inexpensive edition that houses two fine, fine novels.

This is a truly excellent edition (and compilation). It may seem like a small point, but I really love the typeset used. And the prefatory material, especially that of Robert Kaplan, is particularly good. The selection of Lord Jim and Nostromo was also well done, for it juxtaposes two of Conrad's best and, perhaps, most representative works. On the one hand, there's Lord Jim, largely psychological and personal, in which the title character struggles with, and constantly returns to, a trying moment in which he acted questionably. On the other, while no less psychological, there's Nostromo, which enters the realm of politics, revolution, and ideology--a more mature Conrad and certainly much more complex, stylistically and thematically. The works themselves, of course, deserve five stars, but so, too, does this stunning Modern Library edition.

Growing up in this section of New Orleans, I was pleasantly surprised to see several homes of my childhood friends. No other city in the U.S. has such distinct and diverse neighborhood architecture. Another great volume in a GREAT series.

This volume in the N.O. Architecture series by the Friends of the Cabildo is, in my opinion, the best of the entire series. Perhaps it is because this is the section of the city in which I spend most of my time, a place to which I've become rather attached. Anyone who enjoys architecture will probably like this book, not just New Orleanians.

This book is probably the definitive study on pallidal surgery for PD and other movement disorders - coedited by two of the giants in the field. Although a pretty advanced read for the resident level (for cover to cover reading), it is great for reference and for a review of the history of pallidal surgery. This book is directed at practicing neurosurgeons and a specialists in movement disorders.

Comprehensive discussion of physiology and clinical manifestations of PD as well as different approaches to pallidotomy (target selection), microelectrode recording, DBS. Well written and reasonably priced

"Poetry that expands you heart and mind. A wondrous book of poetry that will enrich your soul, enhance your thoughts, and will keep you wanting more. I recommend "Pieces of Eight" to everyone. You will smile, laugh, and ponder or hours. Thank you for yet another wonderful book Dr. Bob.

Dr. Iwaniec's book has been a fun addition to my library. Poetry has not been one of my strong suits and I'm finding this book an excellent introduction to that art. At the same time, I'm finding the insightfull poems put a different 'spin' on topics I haven't given much thought to before. When I use the book as a quick read before my day begins, I find the inspiration and insights carry over. I find some are funny, some are sad and some poems make me go hmmm. Overall, a great book that I highly recommend and I'm sure that I'll be rereading it time and again and finding different value each time.

PLEASE KEEP THIS BOOK IN PRINT

I use this text for an online college algebra course and find it to be an excellent teaching tool. This text is designed so that an individual works through a topic step by step, with checks for understanding at each step. The topics are reinforced by practice problems. The format is not like a standard text, so it takes some adjustment in study habits, but the adjustment is well worth it!

This book is a wealth of information for counselors who work with clergy, because of the occupational stresses and overwork unique to those in religious professions. I found their discussion of clergy transference and isolation issues particularly helpful. The style of writing is highly informative but the book is also an interesting and engaging read.

This is a must for any mental health professional who treats clergy and religious. Ciarrocchi and Wicks approach this population by emphasizing the cultural factors that need to be considered with this unique group of individuals who devote their life to ministry to others. They provide a framework to understand the unique needs of this population and offer many worthwhile suggestions regarding treatment approaches. It is clear that both men have the experience of working with this population.

I got this book because I had read these same authors first book, High-Impact Hiring (by Rosse and Levin). Talent Flow to me is the follow-up to High-Impact Hiring. The first book is about how to hire someone for your business in a practical way based on performance, and Talent Flow is about what to do after you've made the hire: How to keep employees, keep them satisfied, and over the long run decide if you want to keep them and what to do about it. I liked both books.

Bought this book for my business, because of some problems we were having with dissatisfaction. I didn't think we had any retention issues, though. This book gave me much more than I bargained for. Instead of just having scattered tips on how to retain people or how to deal with dissatisfaction in your organization, these authors give you a complete framework that links workplace satisfaction and dissatisfaction with productive and counter-productive work performance and with employee retention. That's what they call "talent flow." When you have dissatisfaction at work, some of your good employees turn into bad ones, and other good ones leave. If they're leaving faster than your poorer performers, your organization is going to fill up with the kind of workers you don't want. The book helped us to find ways to keep our best employees more satisfied so that they kept performing well and stayed longer. It also helped us identify the others, and help them either move up or move them out. One of the best things about the book was the way the concepts and the practical advice were tied together. The authors write about research they did on how dissatisfaction affects work performance, and they also have clearly worked with a lot of businesses, because they are talking about real-world problems and real-world solutions. Good practical tools, too. Great book! Helped my business.

For years, I ignored the Tarot because I thought it was a frivolous card game and that material written about it was cultish at worst and childish at best. It did not help that Tarot cards on the market were manufactured by American Games. I became interested in the Tarot cards because Bill Moyers interviewed Joseph Campbell, and as Moyers had never struck me as a kook, I thought perhaps Campbell was worth getting to know. Getting to know Campbell led me to TAROT REVELATIONS.

Much of my formal education concerns the social sciences including ethnography and the study of religion, myths, belief systems, etc. As a professional social scientist in a job that deals with ethnic issues, I have struggled to operationally define and measure ethnicity, and view cultural elements including myths as the basis of belief systems around which various ethnic groups organize their societies. I have arrived at the conclusion that most of the smaller systems are doomed, but fortunately, anthropologists and others have recorded enough material that we may still study the myths of our ancestors. Joseph Campbell points the way.

Mark Twain is purported to have said, don't let school get in the way of your education. Like Twain, Campbell--a highly educated man and a college professor--was able to break out of the mold of formal education and develop a fresh viewpoint concerning the world and what makes it tick. In other words, he was able to get past the mental censorship of academe.

In TAROT REVELATIONS, Campbell takes a leaf from Sir James Frazier's book 'The Golden Bough' and suggests a core set of concepts underlie all belief systems. He suggests Jungian psychologists have their own terms for these mythical elements which Jung recognized ages ago. As an empirical test of his idea that mythical elements have universal meanings, he compares the Tarot cards of the Major Arcana with the works of Dante and notes their similarities. He also demonstates how the cards can be used to illustrate the "ideal life, lived virtuously according to the knightly codes of the Middle Ages."

In the remainder of the book, Richard Roberts, a student of Campbell, shows how the cards reflect the various mythological belief systems of historical peoples in the ancient world--Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Keltoi, Iberians, etc. Roberts uses a deck designed about 100 years ago by A.E.Waite, a member of a group interested in arcane matters that included many illustrious members including W.B.Yeats. Waite did not invent the cards, he merely redesigned them using historical sources such as Tarot decks from the Middle Ages. Waite hired Pamela Coleman, an artist and fellow New Dawn member to illustrate the cards. Coleman, a Jamaican by birth with occult interests of her own was later "discovered" by Afred Stigliz who arranged for a showing of her works in New York City.

Roberts compares the elements in the Tarot deck with various myth based and arcane systems including alchemy, astrology, and Hermetic teaching. The Tarot deck is absolutely loaded with connections to all these systems. One could argue that some very educated folks constructed this deck, but the elements of the Tarot cards are recorded back to the mid-1300s thanks to Church Inquisitors who took an interest in the Cathars. Folks in the 1300s did not have had the expertise required to "construct" the cards from scratch because the cards reflect the heavens (arrangement of constellations, solstices, equinoxes, etc.) in about 2000 B.C.E. No one in the 1300s understood astronomy well enough to deduce how the heavens might have looked 3500 years earlier and if s/he did they sure kept it hidden--as in occult knowledge. Since Europeans in the 1300s were struggling with establishing the dates for the moveable feasts (they could not figure out when Easter would come 10 years hence) it strikes me that if anyone could have provided an answer they would have provided an answer--depending on how they felt about the church.

Information about the heavens between 4,000 and 2,000 B.C.E. can be found in the ruins of the ancient world--Stonehenge, the Azetec temples, the Pyramids so there is a great deal of evidence that the ancients understood their moment in time. Events moved too slowly for them to understand that 4,000 years after they lived the spring equinox would not fall in the sign of Taurus. However, Roberts suggests the ancient Persians figured out many things about the heavens and incorporated this knowledge into their belief systems. After all, those Magi who found Christ were onto something. Much of the knowledge of ancient Persia was locked away in Constantinople to be discovered years later by prying minds.

So, the Tarot cards are very old because the knowledge in them is very old. The Tarot cards represent the distilled knowledge of ancient peoples including the Persians who had a Mithraic code that still manifests itself in Zoroastrianism today (number one religion on Islam's hit list in Iran). Archeologists have long argued diffusion versus spontaneous theories regarding the spread of cultural elements including creation tales. Roberts does not take sides, but suggests the information in the cards could support either view point. Whether the information captured in the Tarot cards was discovered by many people in different places at different times or in one place and later spread across the world does not matter. The truth is, humans have been stuggling with the meaning of life for a long time, and while no one has the final answer the Tarot cards are a leading competitor.

I would HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone interested in the interperetations of the Tarot cards and how they relate to the initiatory Magickal systems of organizations like the Golden Dawn and even Freemasonry. Joseph Campbell (who needs no introduction!) writes on the French Mersailes deck, and Richard Roberts does a wonderful job with the Waite-Rider deck, including an explanation of his "Magic Nine" arrangement that is probably the most revealing layout of the cards. The authors focus less on the divinitory aspects of Tarot and more on the individuals journey through the mysteries of the Cosmos as outlined by the symbolism of the Tarot. Get this book! You will be glad you did.