This is the best book I have ever read. I am not a reader. Itwas extremely easy to understand and so uplifting. I now have anotherset of commandments for taking care of me which is something that I thought I didn't deserve! I have posted the commandments around the house as a constant reminder. I have bought lot's of copies for family and friends. I hope Joan Brady writes more.

This is a marvelous book. Not only is it a breeze to read, but it has made my life easier in contributing to altering my perspective on existence. I sent out a mass email to my enlightened friends, highly recommending this wonderful fable.

My 32-year-old sister lent me this book to read over Christmas - our first Christmas without our mother, who died recently of cancer. I am 36, and at a crossroads in my life as I consider career options, children, etc. I found this book compelling and uplifting, despite the fact that in the beginning, I did not particularly care for the author's style. By the end, I was hooked by the message, and it's been rolling around in my mind ever since. I've enjoyed discussing it with my sister, and there are four women friends I'd like to buy it for - immediately!

This book has got to be one of the best I have EVER read!! A girlfriend of mine loaned me her copy once when I was on the verge of major burnout from job, school, family, everything and I was hooked immediately. There is so much knowledge in this little book that it's unreal. I bought my own copy shortly after I read it for the first time. About 2 years ago, I gave my tattered and very well-loved & read book to another girlfriend who was having some major issues. As much as I hated parting with it, I knew she would benefit more than if I had kept this book. Share the knowledge and help make the world a better place. Kudos to Ms. Brady for writing such an amazing book that we can learn from and love for years to come whenever life seems to be getting out of hand... Excellant reading material!!!

An offhand remark by a friend led me to this wonderful fable. I felt as if I was sitting in the living room with my friend, Joan Brady, as she told me the story of her experience. As adults, it's often difficult for us to suspend our disbelief and become like children again to hear a fairy-tale and believe in its possibilities. But this is something we all should do a lot more often. The six lessons presented in this story I've heard before, but never understood so clearly until now. The context in which they are presented is very impactful. And maybe, just maybe, I was finally ready to really hear, understand and accept them as truth. This is not a "woman's book." This is a book for the manchild and womanchild in all of us, with profound truths for everyone. On the road to peace, joy and deepest love, we all will meet "Joe" one day, and never forget the day our lives changed forever. This is a book that I will read again and again. I wished it wouldn't end.

My sister gave me this book, when I saw the title I was kind of put off and yet also intrigued as its unusual title and I also like Harleys. I read the first chapter and just kept reading, had to drag my self away from the book and get some food and sleep! I finished the book the following night. I laughed a many times whilst reading this book, as I saw myself the I was before and what changes I have made the same way Christine was in this book.

Whist reading I wished I had Joe to help me, yet I also realise I did, all my friends around me are just a equivalent to Joe, they supported me and still are supporting me through my spiritual journey.

I found this book also reminded me of how far I have grown. It's a great read, and a great way to look at yourself and where you are in life and find what is important to you! I would recommend it to anyone.

This is a gem of a book. It is one of those gifts that comes into your life to remind you what truly is important. Thank you to the author for the beautiful words and exquisite paintings.

This beautifully published book, liberally sprinkled with the author's own watercolor paintings, speaks to all of us who have lost a loved one to cancer. This book is a compilation of family and personal history and excerpt from Ms. Brady's personal journal during her mother's illness. Joan Brady and her siblings sought to heal their relationships while assisting their mother in her last months , and they effected a healing for all. A beautiful testimony.

A daughter writes a painful but beautiful, story of what it means to make the worst of times ( her mother , dying ) into a lesson in love, courage and truth. For what it's worth, I meant to start the book and read it as time permitted, but it was impossible to stop. Brady's experience shows that a family's darkest times can bring incredible insight and revelation, and yes...., bliss.

Heaven in High Gear is a sequel to the first God on a Harley. The story revolves around a stripper named Heather Hurley who lives high in LA in her condo and drives a BMW. She works out with a personal trainer to keep her body in top form and she judges all men she sees according to their physical form. Joe, God, arrives in her life when she visits her childhood home for a vacation with old friends. Heather is guided and instructed by Joe how she can have a better life, be happy and do what she really loves to do most, which is to write poetry and sing torch songs. In the end Heather learns to love herself and have the confidence and self-esteem to have what she wants, with Joe's help of course.

These books (God on a Harley and Heaven in High Gear) are not heavy duty reading but there's a message given that applies to all human's who need to have faith in themselves. The message that He does hear and He does help. I think the book is a worthwhile read. It's inspiring and hopeful.

This book picks up where "God on a Harley" ends but yet it can be read and bring much joy and self-enlightenment even if the reader hasn't read the first book by Brady. In the book, God, as a biker, reveals himself to the main character and gives her the direction to find and love herself. God, aka "Joe" gives to her her own personal commandments. Very inspiring and uplifting. In the end, God must continue on to his next person for their own one-on-one meeting except this time, it's a....... Can't ruin it for you. If I could personally ever meet Ms. Brady, I would first thank her for helping me so much through her books and then BEG for the next sequel to "Heaven in High Gear".

This book was incredible. I enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed her other book "God on a Harley". I could relate to it in so many ways even though it wasn't based on anyones life. I really hope that she keeps the books coming. This is a definate must read book!!

This is a very good book. I love Laura Gasparis Vonfrolio. She is very sharp, witty and in nurses face about the things that they do to belittle themselves and look less than professional to others and among themselves. This is a reality check for nurses. God knows that we need one. Every Nursing 101 student needs this book. I wish that Laura would revise and reprint this book.

If ever a book needed to help comfort a new graduate nurse, it is this one. Fluff My Pillow Bend My Straw follow a graduate nurse through her first year out of nursing school. All the schooling in the world would not prepare this eager, ambitious, inexpereinced nurse for the trials and tribulations she would encounter her first year working in a typical understaffed hospital. This book takes a humuorous, yet realistic look at what the secrets of the trade are of the profession of nurssing. Follow the love story,and humorous outlook in a hospital setting. Great for those who have been in the nursing profession for years, or for those just entering.

The narrator of this novel, Malory Carrick, an American woman residing in Britain who returns home to visit her uncle Atlas and to learn the true story of her grandfather from his diaries who had been a "boughten boy" just after the American Civil War. Her grandfather Jonathan Carrick, a white boy is sold into slavery at age 4 for fifteen dollars to a struggling brutal Kansas Tobacco farmer Alvah Stoke. Jonathan lived his adolescence working endlessly at planting, harvesting, picking off tabacco worms, wrapping tobacco plugs, and his ultimate humiliation, getting beat and bullied by his vicious tormentor Stroke's son, George. To the Stoke family Jonathan was " an animal that you need just need to break", but the hatred towards George grew till Jonathan couldn't take anymore and beat him till he was surely dead, then he escaped at the age of 16 taking the Trans. Continental to Denver to finally be free. Twenty years later Jonathan gets an education he has always wanted and soon after he marries, has 4 kids, and becomes a successful farmer. However, he neither forgot nor forgave the past. Soon after he finds out that George Stoke is alive and well as the US Senator now a "fat, cobra of a politician" he becomes Jonathan's target once again.

Joan Brady writes the story with such feeling and heart about her grandfather that it touched me as well. Jonathan Carrick's story is unusual because he was a white slave, which made it more interesting for me to read because you don't hear of cases such as these. The story about Jonathan's life made a serious impact on her family through out the generations and it made me realize how important your families history is. I think Joan Brady did a good job making Jonathan's history one everyone will remember.

This is a tale of white slavery in 19th century America with a part-claim to authenticity, featuring many nice observations, descriptions and anecdotes. Some reviewer compared this book to Jack London, which has its merits - and whenever Brady tells her story like London would she is at her best. There are many memorable incidents, and the main protagonist's fate is drawing the reader in. When Jonathan makes his appearance as a small and babbling boy with a natural talent for invention, the novel is taking off. The descriptions of 19th century farmlife, of pioneers' Denver or the first visit to a brothel are really well done. Still I was not completely happy with this book. The fictitious narrator, a grand-daughter of Jonathan, jumps back and forth in time, rather obtrusively showing that slavery not only managed to destroy Jonathan's life but that of his children and childrens' children as well. Brady gives these characters room enough to disrupt the main story but not enough to make them really interesting. The novel seems to be a mixture of fiction and authentic biography which does not really work out in the end. "Theory of War" is a rewarding read, no doubt, but rather for its many well-executed scenes than as a whole.

I was fascinated by the way Brady traced the stain of Jonathan's experience through the lives of his children and grandchildren. Without knowing why, they replicated his dysfunctional understanding of human interaction, over and over again: failed relationships, crippling depression, emotional escapism, and stunted personal growth. We are each of us the sum of our predecessors' experiences, whether we like it or not.

Yes, it is an honest book and it does reveal the sad puny world of dancers. Moreover the life of Brady one of the biggest egoists I have read so far. Through out her book she exposes her constant envious and pretensious ways, and her other interest other than herself seemed to be her mother's other love, the man she steals and marries to, regardless her mother's suffering. She seems not to really care of anyone but herself, and even his husband seemed a sort of price for her. I did learn not to be like her. Very, very cold and stupid individual, hence a very mundane book.She does not in any part of the book give even a little insight into the real beauty and important of dance. Dance for her is a way to be proved better than others, sad very sad.Again the only help is to get away as far as possible from being like her.

I think non-dancers realize that dancers have to work very, very hard for their art. Brady's interesting and heartbreaking biography outlines the ugliness behind this beautiful art form.

George Ballanchine (sp?) controlled his own company, and indirectly other ballet companies by setting up impossible physical standards. Ballanchine liked dancers to be skeletally thin--so Brady and other dancers performed physical feats that would stagger a professional football player while at the same time being grossly malnourished. Ballanchine and other directors treated his dancers as machines, not human beings. Dancers were to "dance through" injuries, sometimes permanently crippling themselves.

The psychological torture was almost as bad and almost a parody of a patriarchal system. Mr. B wrote the gospel and all were to listen and not question the Holy Writ. And, naturally the patriarch manipulated the women comparing one to another, manipulating jealousy among the dancers and playing favorits.

Dancers for the New York City Ballet, living in an expesnsive city were paid pittances so that the Ballet could pay the superstars huge salaries and buy elaborate costumes.

Another reviewer castigated Joan Brady for her ego. In contrast I applaud her for her common sense in walking away from this insanity, struggling years later to learn how to dance again, and then realizing that she could walk away from madness again.

Joan let's you in on her privet life of being a dancer. From diets to injury care being a dancer isn't easy. The hard truth that your friend made the touring group and you didn't, crying in the dressing rooms. This beautiful autobioaphy let's you in on the secret life of a dancer.

I happen to be a CF by choice - ever since I was a child myself and it isn't a very light, casual decision. In fact, I've struggled quite painfully on the inside many times from such a fearsome, worrying guilt trip that I might be "wrong" after all and that I'd better answer to biological instincts in the very end - whether I like it or not - as well as the ruthless social pressures and myths that will have me believing that I will have no choice but to fall into love with children and thus want to bear them someday. But the truth is that no one would need to go through that ordeal simply because they intellegently put down their foot about what to do with their own lives; in fact, that is their very own birthright. So the CF group need this kind of respect as well as the homosexuals do.

Unfortunately, it sounds like Joan Brady's book actually contributes to the guilt that a childfree woman has to suffer from the fears of biological and social pressures constantly inclined on her rather than reassuring her about her very personal life choice. In fact, two of quotes from the book alone are quite cloyingly sentimental about such poor, needy little kiddies (but they are already SPOILED ROTTEN in this country!) and thus screaming from child-hunger. Ms. Brady, I'm very sorry to hear that you didn't get to fillful your REAL desire in the very first place, but it doesn't mean that a woman is made to be a human receptacle merely waiting to be filled sopping full of unconditional love and breast milk.

I appreciate that the author is proud of her book and her story. However, I do feel that this book is geared solely to people that had to settle for their second choice in life - rather than people who chose (and achieved) their pathways, without regret, from the start. People that are struggling with the loss of their "chosen" life - marriage and/or children - for whatever reason - should read this book. Even then - those people should use this book as a starting point - but then move on to more affirming books. I would suspect that if someone was really hurting from a loss of their desired lifestyle - that this book might teach the person to keep tending their "wounds" instead of healing them. The misleading title of this book, in my opinion, attracted many childfree women to buy it. If you are CF by choice - it's best you don't purchase this book - we should not consider ourselves the intended audience - despite the title and no matter how many children the book is dedicated to! Laurie Lisle, Mardy Ireland, and Elinor Burkett are more appropriate authors for CF people to read!

This is a great book by a great author. It does, however, seem to threaten alot of other reviewers. I wonder why?