I INITIALLY viewed this book as non-specific, pointless, and rambling because it was not based on "axiomatic" thinking. After multiple readings, I am convinced that this is the most INTERNALLY CONSISTENT and USEFUL analysis that I have seen---Maharaj sits way up on top of the Mountain and his grand view sees things most of us simply do not. But, as you WORK through the book, you are inescapably drawn into agreement (although complete experience may only be an eventual goal) and see a slow change in (and your awareness of) your SELF.

The recent book "The Power of Now" (E. Tolle) is a "popularization" of this book's message.

I simply cannot recommed I AM THAT any more strongly. Don't give up if the inital going is difficult--eventually, its STUNNING SIMPLICITY comes through to pay rich dividends. You don't have to read the Gita or the Bible, Schopenhauer, Koran or Russell, or any one else for that matter, after this book.

Nisargadatta Maharaj's "I AM THAT" is the last spiritual book you'll ever need read. Congratulations, you've reached the end of your search! Nisargadatta's words are alive and will cut like a razor to the core of your being. Get this book! Read it and be devoured by it. Here are a few quotes...

Nothing can trouble you but your own imagination. (I AM THAT p.113)

General knowledge develops the mind, no doubt. But if you are going to spend your life in amassing knowledge, you build a wall round yourself. To go beyond the mind, a well-furnished mind is not needed. (p50)

The window is the absence of the wall, and it gives air and light because it is empty. Be empty of al mental content, of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in. (p260)

Leave it all behind you. Forget it. Go forth, unburdened with ideas and beliefs. Abandon all verbal structures, all relative truth, all tangible objectives. (p340)

All are mere words, of what use are they to you? You are entangled in the web of verbal definitions and formulations. Go beyond your concepts and ideas; in the silence of desire and thought the truth is found. (p295)

Too much analysis leads you nowhere. There is in you the core of being which is beyond analysis, beyond the mind. You can know it in action only. The legitimate function of the mind is to tell you what is not. But if you want possitive knowledge, you must go beyond the mind. (p341)

Before you can know anything directly, non-verbally, you must know the knower. So far, you took the mind for the knower, but it is not so. The mind clogs you up with images and ideas, which leave scars in memory. You take remembering to be knowledge. True knowledge is ever fresh, new, unexpected. It wells up from within. When you know what you are, you also are what you know. Between knowing and being there is no gap. (p520)

Consciousness, being a product of conditions and circumstances, depends on them and changes along with them. What is independent, uncreated, timeless and changeless and yet ever new and fresh is beyond the mind. When the mind thinks of it, the mind dissolves and only happiness remains. (p488)

[With self-awareness] you grow more intelligent. In awareness you learn, in self-awareness you learn about yourself. Of course, you can only learn what you are not. To know what you are, you must go beyond the mind. Awareness is the point at which the mind reaches out beyond itself into reality. In awareness you seek not what pleases, but what is true. (p346)

Stop making use of your mind and see what happens. Do this one thing thoroughly. That is all. (p197)

Nisargadutta Maharaj has given simple answers to Eternal Questions faced by mankind like, "Who Am I?" "What is the meaning of life?" "What is the true way?"
The book certainly provokes the reader towards the answers of these puzzling questions. The "methods" which he has shown to reach the answers of these questions are amazingly simple as they are "no-methods". The Maharaj simply helps bring our awareness to right answers. Once read and understood, this book is sure to change one's perception towards life. His way of explaining the rather esoteric concepts like witnessing, awareness and consciousness, desirelessnees, purpose of life, present moment, etc. is very clear and simple.
The Maharaj says " The seeker is he who is in search of himself".
I therefore strongly feel that anybody who is interested in seeking him self/her self must have this book on his/her bookshelf to refer to more than often.

I have the English version, but I love this book! The story line is cute, and the artistry is spectacular!! It makes you feel that even though you may be small as a child, you can be as big as a monster!!

I was afraid the text would be too long or the pictures too scary for my 4 month old to enjoy this, but I was wrong. She thinks it's great, and we love looking at the monsters together.

I bought this book because, although I'm not completely fluent in Spanish (yet!), I wanted to expose my son to different languages. I love Where the Wild Things Are, so this seemed an obvious choice for us. The story is wonderful and imaginative. The illustrations are some of the best in children's literature. Some of the pages in the book have no narration. Only pictures. So it appeals to younger book enthusiasts who aren't quite old enough to read. One of the best additions to your home library you'll ever find!

I read this book when I was in third grade (25 years ago). Unlike many books I read as a child, I've never re-read this but have always meant to. Part of the reason I've never read it is that I always forget the title. Someone on my children's literature list knew the book and I made it a point to write it down right away. The other reason I haven't re-read it as an adult is that I've never come across a used copy at a yard sale, book store, etc. Maybe nobody ever wants to part with theirs! Honestly, all I remember from reading this book was it is about a lost dog. But it made such an impression on me as a child. It really moved me in the way that Black Beauty moved me. And the memory of the feelings the story envoked have lasted with me always. I look forward to finally re-visiting this little gem.

I first read this book in junior high school, some 25 years ago, and it affected me deeply then as much as now. A wonderful book for children of all ages to learn compassion for animals, it will make you cry with both sadness and joy for all the trials that little Candy goes through. I am so pleased to finally have my own copy from Amazon.com and will definitely use it in my classroom as a teacher.

I read this book over 20 years ago and was reminded of it after talking about books that effected our hearts with a few friends. Every child should read this!

I am delighted to see the correspondence between Maurice and Therese, which I have appreciated for many years in Therese's letters, so beautifully interpreted here. Rich in insights in Therese's love for her "dear little brother," to whom she wrote, "I see how much your soul is sister to mine . . . "; in insight into her missionary consciousness, her love for the priesthood, her acute compassion for humanity, her extraordinary availability to souls, her theology. Bishop Ahern's luminous appreciation of Therese and Maurice lights the book up. Therese ended her correspondence with these words written on the back of holy picture, "last souvenir of a soul, sister of your own soul," and this book is truly that.

Never have I read a book on a saint that was more revealing than this. The correspondence between this beloved Saint and a wonderfully ordinary priest washes away the mystique of St. Therese. What it reveals is a very human woman who through the love of Jesus helps another human being find the love God wants us to share in. It is very intense and emotional. You will find it difficult to put down and easy to re-read.

This is the only book I've ever finished and started over again. I didn't know much about Therese, and less about Maurice, but this book makes you want to read more about Therese. One reviewer called this book a "gift," and I couldn't agree more. The story of a cloistered nun in 19th century France might not seem very relevant today, but God's love is, and that's what this book is about. If Therese had one message, it was "God is love." We need to hear that as much now as a hundred years ago in France.

This is truly a wonderful book. I notice it is being reprinted in Spanish, but not in English. Publishers take note and bring this charming book back!

Wish this book would be reprinted! I can't believe it's no longer available. Anything with illustrations by Maurice Sendak is great. It is suspenseful, with sly humor. I read it to many classrooms and kids loved it. Bring it back.

I had this as a child and I have looked for years to find a copy to give my niece and nephews. I know they are big readers and I wanted them to have the same experience I had with this book. It is one of the fondest memories of my childhood and I will not give up the hope of finding a copy.

I read this book aloud to my sixth grade reading class. They loved it, and always wanted to hear more. Its also a great way to introduce students to some of the history of China, Japan and US involvement in the war there.

Boys can be picky readers, so I always take notes if they actually love a book. My 8 year old carried this book everywhere and told be about it every night for a week. Besides Redwall or Harry Potter, this is the first book he has raved about.

I told my young son about what a good book this was when I read it growing up, encouraging him to read it as well. He too enjoyed it, and I read it again in my fifties. Excellent book, would certainly encourage children to read it. Now in his teens, we still use a memorable quote from the book, "the heart understands without words".

Each month in my kindergarten class we memorize the chicken soup poem for the month. The humorous rhymes, pictures, and predictable pattern make it easy to learn. Kids love it, and months later they can still recite all the poems from the preceding months! I bought the big book also, and cut apart the pages to make posters to display every month.

This is a short and sweet little book that can be read in just a few minutes, but every minute will be filled with fun! In cleverly silly rhymes Maurice Sendak takes us through the twelve months and thoroughly entertains us with his characteristic illustrations featuring the little dark-haired boy we've come to know in some of his other stories. The non-sensical inclusion of "chicken soup with rice" in all of the rhymes makes the months all the more memorable and easy for kids to recite, a great little device. The paperback edition is very affordable but I suspect you'll love this one so much that you'll want the hardcover in your library.

I remember being young, I don't know how old, but old enough to memorize every word. I had this Album, and wore out many a record needle listening to it. As I got to high school and attempted speech class, I knew there was one thing I knew backwards and forewards, chicken soup with rice, pick a ballad. And at auditions for plays or anything I needed to do, it was either johnny, the ballad of chicken soup, or Pierre. (I really didn't care which-inside joke to those who love pierre) anyway as I get older and see my friends have children and my relatives have children, I keep buying one book and tape over and over. This is one wonderful album which holds more treasures of memories than I can cram into any momorie book. and even to this day if you ask, I can still sing them all.

Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are is a fantastic book that explores the imagination of an unruly little boy named Max. Sendak combines dark and slightly scary paintings with some of the most vivid textual imagery any children's book could offer. Where the Wild Things Are has an underlying moral that enhances the meaning of the text without over doing it. Children will get bored with a book if the moral is too overstated. Sendak combines his moral in a way that children and parents alike do not feel beat over the head with it. Without giving away any of the story, I'd just like to finish up by saying Sendak's got a knack for rythem in his writing. His words flow together to create endless beautiful and sometimes frightening images. This is definitely a book for children of all ages to enjoy!

My oldest son, now 15, still knows the words by heart. My four-year-old daughter is learning them. Max is the not-so-bad monster in every little one; the one who is brave and wild and tender and imaginative all at once. He is the King of all wild things--and they love him, but not quite as much as his mother (who couldn't bring herself to REALLY send him to bed without anything to eat at all).

Enough with the PC rants about this book. Another reviewer said he was "snotty" and rude. Give me a break-what child isn't just a tiny bit too lippy on some days. It's life. The thing about the book is that while Max may be a little "snotty," he's imaginative, alive, and still knows that even after being punished, his mother loves him 'best of all.'

The illustrations are beautiful. The story is terrific. And I'm glad to say it was the perfect snuggle-at-bedtime book for every one of my children.

And I have the words retained in memory forever. I'll someday chant them to my grandchildren.

They're not called the "terrible two's" for nothing and the brilliance of this tale is in the fact Maurice Sendak has miraculously captured the rebellious and imaginative force of those in the thrall of the "terrible two's" in a way that anyone of any age can empathize with and appreciate.

Max. in typical terrible two fashion, has been a bit disrespectful to mom and is his room-sent there without his supper. A magical world arises and Max is transported to where the Wild Things are--whimsical "monsters" who manage to look both scary and ridiculous at the same time. Max, empowered in this world as he never is in his own, becomes ruler in this world and "manages" the rumpus that characterizes it--why, he even has the power to deny the monsters their own suppers!

In the end, however, Max decides to return to his room--to discover that though gone, he was not forgotten.

This is a truly marvelous book. It's fun to read aloud, allowing the reader to be as expressive and dramatic as he wishes. The illustrations are delightful--colorful, action filled and, best of all, always a true complement to the story at all times.

One of the best children's books ever written. May the Rumpus never end!

On the night of September 27, 1972, twenty-five year old Bob Lowe was just out walking his dog when he witnessed the brutal murder of his neighbor, Billy Logan. Lowe, an auto mechanic and family man living in a blue-collar neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, came literally face to face with the killer, Harry Aleman, before he jumped into an idling car and sped away. It was a vicious mob hit, plain and simple. Lowe easily identified Aleman, and with the assurance of witness protection, was willing to do his civic duty and testify. As he stubbornly told the police and his frightened family, "I saw what I saw." So began Bob Lowe's twenty-five year odyssey through two murder trials, political corruption and pay-offs, disillusionment with the system, depression, petty crime, alcoholism, and finally vindication, redemption and justice..... Fasten your seatbelts, Maurice Possley and Rick Kogan are about to take you on a very bumpy, suspenseful, and compelling ride through the mean streets of Chicago during the years organized crime had a stranglehold on police, judges, and politicians at the highest levels. This is a fascinating, intricate, and intriguing page-turner, made even more so because it's all true. The writing is crisp, intelligent, and engaging, the scenes vivid and riveting, and the characterizations, brilliant. But it's Possley's and Kogan's indepth, painstaking research and great attention to detail that makes this novel stand out. Everybody Pays: Two Men, One Murder And The Price Of Truth is a spectacular and absorbing story, rich in drama and history, and told with insight, wisdom, and humor. This is a novel that shouldn't be missed and should definitely find a place at the top of every mystery/thriller and true crime fan's MUST READ list.

This is a true story of a hit man literally getting away with murder in 1970s Chicago because of a pyramid of power and payoffs, only to have the story come full circle more than twenty five years later and have justice prevail in the end. The hit man, neighborhood wiseguy Harry Aleman, thought that he had gotten away with murder. After all, he had been tried and acquitted, and one can't be tried for the same twice on the theory that double jeopardy would bar such a second bite of the apple. Or would it? Well, more than a quarter of a century later, the Department of Justice thought otherwise. After all, how much jeopardy could Harry Aleman have actually have been in, if the fix were in?

This is a well researched, well-written, compelling chronicle of a case that would would have great impact on an eyewitness to a murder. It also a fascinating narrative on the influence that the mob once wielded over the criminal justice system in Chicago. It is a fascinating birdseye view into a criminal justice system so rife with corruption, it will keep the reader riveted to its pages. It is also the story of one man who tried to be a stand up guy and do the right thing under this corrupt system and found himself the one paying the price for its shortcomings.

Bob Lowe, a working class stiff who worked at a gas station, had the misfortune to stumble into the murder of Billy Logan, a neighborhood acquaintance, one night. In the mean streets of Chicago's West Side, Bob saw Harry Aleman blow Billy away with a sawed-off shotgun. In that one brief moment, simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Bob's life and that of his immediate family would change forever. From that moment on, it would be Bob, and not Harry, who would be on the run.

Placed with his family in a witness protection program that was ineffectual and problematic, characterized in a negative way by the corrupt judge who presided over the trial, and seeing a murderer vindicated at his expense, Bob Lowe saw his life, as he knew it, simply ebb away. He became awash in a haze of booze and drugs, doing some crime and doing some time. His life was a continual lost weekend, until he was finally able to pull himself out of the personal morass into which he had descended. Over a quarter of a century later, he would find himself finally vindicated at Harry Aleman's second trial for the murder of Billy Logan, as Harry Aleman would finally get the verdict he should have gotten over a quarter of a century earlier. The wheels of justice did, indeed, grind slowly.

On September 27, 1972, Billy Logan was murdered on his front lawn. Neighbor Bobby Lowe was an eye-to-eye witness. Hit man Harry Aleman had left his car to check on the victim when Bobby's dog leapt in front of him. For a few seconds, the two men stared at one another, Bobby in shock, and then Harry broke the spell and returned to his car, which then sped away. And Bobby's life changed forever.

Though Bobby told the police he had been an eye witness (much to his family's dismay) and had identified Harry's picture in a mug book, nothing happened. It was buried. Harry Aleman was well connected with the local mob and a nephew to one of its kingpins. Authorities estimated Harry had killed over 20 people. Four years later the case was reopened, and this is when Bobby's personal hell began. Before the trial (estimated to be a slam dunk), Bobby, his wife and three children were placed in one seedy motel after another. They had to give up their jobs, the children changed schools on a weekly basis, and they lived off fast food. The trial was a farce, Aleman was found not guilty and the Lowes entered the Witness Protection Program without adequate identification to secure a decent job. Bobby spiraled down and lost his job, his family and self-respect. Finally, he got his life back together, discarded his false identity, and regained his family. In 1997, the case was reopened again, 25 years after the crime. Bobby had no choice but to testify again.

Possley and Kogan do a masterful job in presenting this complex case without wasting a word. Bobby's character is done so well, you feel like you have known him all your life. The research and documentation are meticulous. The only mystery that remains is Harry. He was an excellent husband and adoring father that just happened to be a cold-blooded killer. I would buy another book explaining to me what made Harry tick.

Sadly, the message I received was to never, ever admit to being a witness to a mob killing. The Witness Protection program, which is devastating and mind shattering even if it worked perfectly, was a farce for the Lowe family. "Everybody Pays" is true crime and investigative journalism at its finest.
-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer

Toquevilles' Democracy in America, written over a century and a half ago, is almost as relevant today as when it first appeared in print. Outside of the Federalist Papers, no book is as essential to a American student of political philosophy as this. This book is neither a manifesto of the right or left - both sides can draw powerful arguments (and lessons) from this work. Paramount to the book are the conflicts between equality and liberty, which today remains the core difference between the major political parties. Toqueville also predicted the rise of America and Russia, as well as the growth of the central government - a hundred years before it became reality. His praise of the American system of decentralized, voluntary associations is also dead on. A wonderful book.

The specific edition I am reviewing is the Heffner addition which is a 300 page abridgement. I also own an unabridged edition but I have only read Heffner cover to cover. What is amazing about de Toqueville is how uncanny many of his observations are over a century and a half later. He accurately predicted in 1844 that the world's two great powers would be the United States and Russia. He aptly pointed out that Americans are a people who join associations and he is so right 156 years later. Although there are both religious extremists on both ends, ie fundamentalists and atheists, he was dead on that, as a whole, we are a religious society but that our religious views are moderate. De Toqueville shows how American characteristics evolved from democracy as opposed to the highly class structered societies of Europe. From de Tocqueville, it could have been predicted that pop culture, such as rock music etc, would develop in America because the lack of an aristocracy causes a less cultured taste in the arts. In a thousand and one different ways, I found myself marveling at how dead on de Toqueville was. Most controversially, those who argue that we have lost our liberties to a welfare state might well find support in de Toqueville. Here, 100 years before the New Deal, he forsaw that a strong central government would take away our liberties but in a manner much more benign than in a totalitarian government. There are certain liberties that Americans would willingly sacrifice for the common good. Critics of 20th century liberalism in the US might well point to this as an uncanny observation. By reading "Democracy in America," the reader understands what makes Americans tick. De Toquville was an astute observer of who we are as a people and should be read by all educated Americans.

I want to note that there are several editions of this great work and in deciding which to buy, be aware that each has a different translator. I feel Heffner's translation is slightly stilted but, he did such a wonderful job in editing this abridgement that it, nontheless, deserves 5 stars.

Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocqueville is by far an in depth view of America as seen by the traveling Frenchman. It is written so well that even today almost one hundred and fifty years later it is still apropos.

The translation flows very easily and is not distracting. De Tocqueville has a wonderful writing style that could pass today even though it was written long ago... so well readable and quotable that you get the picture of American life, morals, and an astute view of politics all rolled into one.

You get a view and meaning of American civilization, for America herself, and also for Europe. You can tell from reading. that this view is ever-present in De Tocqueville's mind as if he is a comparative sociologist. Yet reading this book you get the impression that De Tocqueville had generations of readers in mind.

As De Tocqueville noted, "It is not force alone, but rather good laws, which make a new govenment secure. After the battle comes the lawgiver. The one destroys; the other builds up. Each has its function." So true even for todays war. After you defeat your enemy you have to build up the infratructure just as Marshall and Truman both realized.

Reading this book you see the skillful eye of the author noticing and recording what he sees and he is impressed. I found this book to be of great import for the observations of America and hope that our educators use this book for teaching our children about the great country we live in.