Mr. Ozawa details a variety of ideas to reform and modernize Japan's economy, political system, and society. He advocates more freedom (and responsibility) for the lives of all Japanese. He thinks the government patronizes the citizenry and treats them like dependent children. Mr. Ozawa believes that the Japanese people should be given more freedom to decide how to live their lives. However, he emphasizes that more freedom will require individual citizens to take responsibility for their own fate.

When Louisa Young's father was recovering from heart bypass surgery, she found herself thinking about hearts. Her thoughts have been productive, as she has delved into science, art, and history to tell about anatomical hearts, pumping hearts, religious, sacrificial, musical, metaphorical, preserved, consumed, ill, and legendary hearts. She tells us she could happily have extended _The Book of the Heart_ (Doubleday) into twelve volumes, and while reading through such a mass would be daunting, this distillation of her research is captivating. There is little about human hearts that she has not covered.

Hearts are divided into four chambers, and her book is divided into four sections called chambers. The first is about the anatomical and physiological heart, and how we came to understand scientifically what it was doing, and how to repair it when it went wrong. There is a fascinating summary of how the Egyptians, Greeks, and so on, figured the working of the heart, and how Aristotle got it all wrong and confused everyone for centuries. William Harvey published in 1628 the authoritative and scientific demonstration that the single two-sided heart was merely a pump to serve distribution of a single pool of blood to the lungs and to the body. Some saints were given new hearts by Jesus, whose sacred heart became a symbol in itself. The Aztec religion (and other tribal beliefs) promoted eating of the heart, and a thirteenth century mold exists that made communion wafers (which became flesh rather than merely representing it) in the shape of a heart. The third chamber is for the heart in art. Young defends kitsch hearts in religious and other arts, but tells us that she is writing in her room full of glitter hearts, tin hearts, Venetian glass hearts, and more, so this might be self-serving. The final chamber is for the lover's heart. There is actually not much hearty about St. Valentine, but by chance his feast day coincided with the Roman Lupercalia festival, a sort of marriage lottery. There is much lovely heart poetry here.

This is a wonderful book of heart miscellany, full of fun. Young says that pursuing her subject in the library has lead to countless spells of laughing out loud. It is easy to believe this. She has a sharp and ironic way of writing, and has made unforced connections between cultures and between centuries because the heart is universally central to all. She modestly compares her curious book to a vegetable soup - "if you find one bit not to your taste, move on, feel free - all the flavors connect up." But the whole can be taken easily, except, perhaps, by the faint of heart, and the hard hearted.

I read this book several years ago. I found the story to be intoxicating and the characters realistic. Louisa Rawlings does a tremendous job of engulfing the reader into the romantically, tragic lives of her characters. I highly recommend this beautiful work of art.

E-mail has become the current method of correspondence for the masses, but Every Monday in the Mailbox returns us to the delightful experience of finding the treasure of a letter addressed to you in the mailbox. What makes it more endearing is that the letters are exchanged between a young girl and her grandmother.

I come from a family where letter writing is a part of life, like breathing. We can look forward to letters from Mom weekly, and she has instilled in us the value of this dying art. If you can get your hands on a copy, consider yourself lucky!

In this day and age where what seems to make it in this worldis that and those people who conform to the do's and don'ts ofcorporate America, or perhaps I ought say america with a small"a", FM is a most refreshing change that renews my belief that there are still original thinkers out there making personal and important statements that are not only artistic, but personal, cultural, politically relevant, psychologically astute and desperately needed. It is hard to hold onto the hope that individuals can grow up in this world, develop and hold onto and feel good about an authentic sense of self - so kudo's to Lisa Adams for creating this book, and for those whos work appears. I am always impressed by the work of Lauren Hartman who seems to really have found a path to her authentic self - may she never lose that, and may this book inspire others to find theirs.

Alcott is mostly remembered for her wholesome books for children, but she shows another side with her set of melodramatic and suspenseful stories. Many are tragic, while a few have happy endings, but all will keep a reader interested

This book is really fun to read and quite interesting. The contrast between the two journals drives home the fact that LMA was just a little girl embarking on this experiment with her family. What a good sport she was! While based on actual events, the story is fictional. I think this is a good place to start if your not quite sure you want to read Little Women (you'll want to!). This book would be a great jumping-off point if you were looking to get someone interested in LMA and her works.

I read Garland for Girls last summer for the first time, once again enjoying another one of LMA's books! Each chapter is a different story, filled with good old-fashioned piety and lovely story lines so absent from modern books for girls. As a young adult, as well as a teacher and mentor of young girls, I highly recommend LMA's Garland for Girls.

I haven't read it yet. But the other two were great. This one should be too!

This was a good book in the Portraits of Little Women series. Ten-year-old Beth is sent a gift of new sheet music for the piano. The only problem is that she doesn't know who sent it to her. This book was very good.