A small sized 80 page book containing 60 crafts and projects to make with gathered materials from nature. The gist of the book is that one will walk among fields, woods, and the general outdoors in the autumn months and gather found objects: dead natural materials to use to make crafts with. The author does not promote cutting living plant materials from natural settings. The book is written as an instruction guide for "harvest crafts" to celebrate the autumnal harvest, Halloween, and Michaelmas. Items may also be used on a "seasons table" as in the Waldorf school style. Unlike other books in the same series, the majority of these crafts will only be able to be performed by adults or very patient older children or teens. I feel that most of these crafts need the skilled and patient hands of an experienced crafter. Only a few items would be appropriate for children to play with or handle as most of the projects are delicate in nature and would fall apart if played with with anything but the most delicate hands. Most projects are to hang on a wall or from a window or to sit on a table and not to be touched. I cannot imagine myself making some of these as they look too fine and require very perfect materials and more nimble hands than I have. The author provides excellent directions and full color photographs of the finished project as well as drawings to illustrate difficult steps in the process. Although the author states that one may use any materials that are native to an area, some of the crafts will be impossible to make unless you live in an area that has these items (unless you can find the materials in a craft store and purchase them). There are many crafts that require straw in very good condition, and seeds and nuts that may not be available in your area. Some required items are lime tree seeds, pine cones, deciduous leaves, various nuts, cereal grains (wheat, oat), and corn husks. Here is the breakdown of the crafts: general: 3, straw items: 9, straw plait projects: 6, straw figures: 4, corn husk figures: 1, projects with materials from woods and fields: 19, project with deciduous leaves: 7, misc. items for festivals: 11. To me the most interesting looking crafts are in the festival section: instructions to make your own flower press (these can be expensive to buy in a store), writing paper decorated with leaves, window transparencies, a table transparency, and a crown made of dried leaves. I see this book being for people who love to walk amongst nature and collect little items and save them up for a time when you can make the project. The problem is that you may want to make something but be missing something such as a chestnut or a hazelnut. Or maybe you have the leaves but you have to dry them for a week before they can be used. This book is not only for the Waldorf student or parent but for anyone interested in taking natural found objects and transforming them into lovely crafts.

As a student at St. Lawrence University, it has been to my privlege to have studied under the tuteledge of Prof. Sondergard and to have conversed with students of prof. Berger. As a student, I would observe that, is this books is anything like the way they teach, it will be a supreme accomplishment for all three.

Warm and inspirational, this story shows how helping others will bring out the best in one's self. (I can't believe this book has no other glowing reviews here!) The illustrations alone are captivating, and the author's writing flows beautifully. The story line has an "ugly" little troll wishing he were human, as he admires their upright walk, clear eyes, and fine voices. In contrast, the other trolls hiss and howl and hate anything sunny, light and good, and they speak roughly and coarsly. Wishing to better himself, the little troll heeds advice he overhears at a cottage window as a father tells his son, "If you want to be a real man, you must learn to think of others more than yourself. If you don't help and serve others, you're nothing better than a troll." The little troll follows this new path in spite of jeers and roughness endured from the other trolls. Woven into the story is the importance of community (and church, but in a light, non-denominational way). I rarely can read the story clear through without getting a little teary-eyed at the fine ending.

This book bridges the business and IT domains. It educates business process owners on the capabilities and technologies that provide tools to support operations, and gives IT insights into how to best develop and deploy systems that meet business requirements.

Integration is assumed to be within the context of ERP systems, which are enterprise-wide in scope. The level of detail is kept reasonably high so that both audiences can easily grasp the key issues and understand the challenges and needs of the other. What I like about the book is the fact that it never loses sight of business requirements, and the manner in which it stays focused on quality and real world issues. I also like the way case studies are used to reinforce some of the more abstract aspects of enterprise integration.

Highlights of this book that will interest both business and IT include:

- Totally Integrated Enterprise Goals and Agile Enterprise, which give a business framework for the technology solutions that are discussed later in the book

- Methodology for Understanding Enterprises, which places integration and technology into the context of meeting business requirements

- Business Development and Product Management, which provide insights to IT about the challenges that their business constituents face and their support requirements

Because this book is a high level view of enterprise integration many details that support the decision to employ integrated systems and how to implement them are missing. However, the true value of this book is the way it brings together business and technical information and the way the authors have managed to address both groups that are normally widely separated.

If you are seeking a book about deciding whether of not to implement an enterprise-wide system I recommend "Enterprise Resource Planning Systems: Systems, Life Cycle, Electronic Commerce, and Risk" by Daniel Edmund O'Leary. If you are more interested in an implementation methodology I recommend "E-Business and ERP: Rapid Implementation and Project Planning" by Murrell G. Shields.

Carl Reinhart is a lovable, middle-aged loser whose hippy son hates him; his wife is leaving him for a younger man; and even his mother makes fun of his string of business failures, which leave him broke and homeless at 44. However, his simpleton daughter adores him almost as much as she loves food.

When a former high school classmate gives the overweight, crew cut Reinhart a chance to get in on the ground floor of the cryogenics fad, i.e. freezing corpses for future restoration, the WWII veteran crashes head-on into the 60's generation.

Berger's great talent for depicting life's absurdities through the eyes of a talented misfit, which he did so well in "Little Big Man," is used perfectly in "Vital Parts" to depict the plight of the middle-aged, suburban, white American male, whose post-WWII utopia was irrevocably altered by women's lib, free love, civil rights, and the youth movement.

Between his oustal by his wife for cutting his son's long hair off while sleeping and his affair with a 22-year-old nymphomaniac, who keeps her car doors unlocked because she "doesn't like to block any of her entrances," Reinhart has one hilarious adventure after another. The plot hums and it is hard to read "Vital Parts" in public without laughing hysterically.

If you liked "Confederacy of Dunces" or "Catch-22" with their wiseguy, lost-in-a-sea-of-madness protaganists then you will love "Vital Parts."

It is a shame that so many of Berger's books are no longer in print. He's one of the great observers of late 20th century American life.

Having read Beger's "Invitation to Sociology" I felt sufficiently enthused and bought his "Construction of Reality". Oh boy. Was that an error on my part! Here, Berger is nearly impenetrable from the very beginning and throughout, the text structure is mind boggling (it's never quite clear what the author is talking about, and *why* he addresses what he addresses, and why here and not some other place; a profusion of very slippery expressions (Something or other "is not empirically available" for example; seems like this "empirically available" is one of his favourite expressions, and it *is* sort of glibly striking, but what exactly does it mean? Many occurrences of such stuff... a lot of ponderous latinizing -- "ipso facto", "sui generis", "mutatis mutandis", someone "qua" something, etc. -- annoying and uncalled for; it is highly reminiscent of the logorrheaic prolixity typical of psychoanalytic writing of the same time (60s) or perhaps an imitation of translated philosophical German.

All Berger's writing here (as everywhere else) is purely expository, there is no shade of argument present anywhere; if something is less than self-evident to you, that's your problem, I suppose.

While "The Invitation..." itself (first five chapters, that is) was not bad, "The Construction of Reality..." is just plain gobbledegook, purposely (I suspect) rendered incomprehensible in order to make it look profound. And even when you do -- at the cost of a huge mental effort, highlighting, paraphrazing, and drawing lines and circles on the pages -- uncover some vague semblance of a possible meaning, it invariably turns out either trivial or highly questionable.

What's interesting is that, following Berger's bibliography, I moved on to Weber, and turns out, sociology CAN be written logically, concisely, and clearly. What a pleasing surprise.

This book led me into a life of sociology as it encouraged me to pursue and complete a Ph.D. in this discipline. On my first reading as an undergraduate, this book brought together many disparate ideas I had been thinking for sometime. I recently re-read it and still find it fascinating and important. It's contributions are detailed by other reviewers, I would only add that I consider a great bulk of the post-modernist movement to be summarized, detailed and challenged in a coherent and succinct fashion here.

Ever wonder what makes us what we are as individuals? Ever wonder what makes society what it is as a whole? This book is for you! One of the main ideas here is that society is built by a group of people (a nation, a state, a political party, a family, etc.) by people but becomes a thing that is seen by people as being reified. Therefore, people look at society as if it were like a brick wall, i.e. hard, unmovable, etc.

What gets people to the point of seeing the world as a unchangeable whole, almost like nature itself? The most important answer is that we're being socialized from our first day of existence. This socialization comes from our family, friends, teachers, everyone - even the people we meet and see everyday and never think about! They tell us who we are, where we are, what we are, what we do, who they are, what everything is, etc. Its absolutely amazing to think that our view of the world is what it is mostly because of our society, but that's the idea here. Society is constantly being constructed and reconstructed, enforced and reenforced, by people all the time.

A huge part of the reason for this is institutionalization. This means that a certain type of person does certain acts, in just such a way, in the right time of their lives, with the right education level, etc. This book has so many critical things to say about the world we live in. However, best of all in my opinion, the ideas are timeless.

The topics discussed in this book have been with us since the beginning of civilization and seemingly always will be. This isn't a book about modern times, it is a book about all times.

A master of sublime plot twists that are more than stirring they jolting, Thomas Berger shows off his storytelling talents in Sneaky People. At the heart of this story is an all-business used car dealer in the years before the Depression who wants his wife dead so he can move in with his favorite prostitute-turned-girlfiend. Buddy is certain his oddball but ever-faithful wife is a insufferable bore. What he's not sure of is if his half-wit mechanic has the brainpower to pull off the hit. One is left wondering what gives Sneaky People its knockout punch. Is it that beneath the surface of its glib, ordinary characters you discover the poetically quirky and deranged? Or is the serenditipous nature that it's unlikely heros get from A to point B?

Berger is a very acute observer of modern (1930s) American life -from flogging off used cars, to the gun culture, to growing up as a teenage boy... There are quiet laughs throughout the book - and some not so quiet - but guaranteed smiles on every page, as much from the mad situations he describes as from his restrained choice of language. He is a fine writer and I will be seeking out his other works.

In this 1980's novel by Thomas Berger we see the first emergance of the sensitive man.
Reinhart is a guy with a life, a big one, not the typical career and nothing else life but a real life for the modern man, with art , cooking home repair and loving women as a few of his daily works
A good book about the freedom that men achived due to the womens movement .
A great book about cooking before it was cool.

This novel, in its different way, is as great or greater than the author's most famous novel, The Little Big Man. It is a shame that it is out of print, and I hope this will be rectified soon.

Reinhart in Love is the second in a series of novels about Carlo Reinhart, Berger's Everyman. The first novel in the series was Crazy in Berlin, Vital Parts followed RIL, and the last, thus far, is Reinhart's Women. They are all good in their way, Vital Parts almost on the level of this one

There is no more fuller realized character in American fiction than Reinhart. A good man with strengths and flaws, Reinhart is easy to identify with. RIL begins in 1946 with Reinhart returning from Germany to his hometown in Indiana, a blond, overweight, young man of 22 years in the throes of some real anomie. It follows his adventures in readjusting to civilian life, as he gets a job as a real estate agent with one Claude Humbold, a truly great comic creation--the satire of the go-getting salesmen, a Music Man without the music but with more outrageous humor, is tempered by real sympathy and affection for the type. Reinhart also gets married, his wife and her father are mindboggling, goes to college, drops out, makes friends with a Negro, Splendor Mainwaring (the episodes where Reinhart goes to Splendor's house for dinner, making the acquaintence of Splendor's father as that man is working an insurance scam by setting an abandoned car of fire, and where he substitutes for Splendor at a motivational type of meeting,in the disguise of Dr. Goodykuntz, a sort of Ronco Chopra, are comic gems of the highest order), ultimately disgraces himself by letting himself be duped by Humbold and some corrupt pols in a shady business deal, and heads out on the highway to make amends by committing suicide, meeting another great subsidiary comic character, Homer T. Blesserhart.

Reinhart is a great, full, rounded character. Sensitive, intelligent, yet not above fooling himself and acting dishonestly sometimes--usually in minor ways. His milquetoast father with hidden strenghts, his most unmaternal mother, his pushy, conniving wife, her self-important drunken father, Splendor, the Maker, Fedder--all varopis comic creation of the first order that enrich the book and instruct Carlo in the way of the world. Reinhart is not a naif, but is a man who genuinely likes people and believes that they can and will rise to their best. And believes that so will he. A lovely man, a great book. Read it slow, savoring the slightly cockeyed perambulating narrative style, and appreciating the rich characters and comic invention.

A simple story that tries to really hold your attention and could have been a very good read for the simple reader. But in this case the author of this simple novel has to prove that simply reading this book could be a challange in requiring a dictionary at hand. The story bogs with obstreperous, abrogating,sophistry, efficacious,prodigious words, page after page. No wonder it is out of print!

For those of us who have always been fascinated by the idea of being stranded somewhere and having to improvise and invent in order to survive, the classic Crusoe story. In this modern retelling,the reader is immediately engaged with the infuriating,yet likeable Crews as he faces a wilderness he is totally unprepared for.With no one to talk to, he is forced to converse with himself (and us), examining his past and coping with the intense present