It is an excellent and appropriately illustrated paperback, in the format of an oeuvre complete.Eschewing flashy graphics, this book provides information about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's built work & projects in a clearly laid out manner, with b&w photographs, plans, sections, elevations, perspective drawings and sketches - combined with concise & straightforward text.Instead of passionate theorising and rich intellectualising, this Phaidon 1999 paperback reprint emphasizes upon Mies van der Rohe's way of work and his essential canon of absolute spareness and strong contours... A truly indispensable book for every architect and scholar!

Peter Carter, who studied under Mies at IIT, wrote this book in the early 70s, shortly after Mies died. It's been long out of print, and I paid dearly to get a copy of the original version, shortly before this rerelease was announced. A lot has happened in architecture since it was written and yet Mies's best work still shines as brightly. For anyone with an interest in Mies in particular, or modern architecture in general, whether as a professional or layman, this is a must-have book.

I walked through the isles of my public library looking for something to read. There was a large book with the words ' JIMMY CARTER' written on it that was sticking out of a shelf. I picked it up and decided to read it. This has been one of the best choices for reading I have ever made. Jimmy Carter is an extrodinary man, who's life is a lot more detailed and complex than I would have thought. This biography traces his life from birth, through the Navy, State Senatorial duties, Governorship and his Presidency. Jimmy Carter is shown as the admirable and honest man that he is. A real role model for all, Jimmy Carter is amazing, and so is this book.

"What's in the Cave" is a very good book. It has really cool and creative artistic work. For example, it has a lot of nice bright colors and the pictures pop out. The book's about a trip to a mysterious cave looking at a variety of animals such as a bat, a bird, and even more. There is even a suprise at the end of the book that you would never expect. I'm not going to tell you though because you'll just have to go to the local library. The book is very simple but it is a lot of fun to read.

jake lamotta might be the most eloquent, honest, and despicable man i have ever been exposed to. oddly enough, as much as i hated him throughout his story, i wanted him to win all his fights. it is the straight ahead grit he showed as a fighter and as a storyteller that kept audiences of these two mediums spellbound, amazed, and saddened.

One cannot help but admire the unflinching honesty of Jake La Motta in his autobiography. This book isn't merely a self-serving recounting of La Motta's rise and fall as a boxer. Instead, La Motta creates a geniune classic. There is no air brushing here. La Motta reveals the deepest, darkest secrets of his life: his murder attempt, raping of a virgin, his impotence, domestic violence etc. As a result, one begins to understand his fears and the utter rage that drove him as a boxer. LaMotta also helps explain something about boxing - that mixture of beauty and violence. La Motta's own honesty is the redeeming quality that delivers the book its greatness. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Jake La Motta made a good living punching people in the ring, rising in 1949 to the world middleweight championship. He packs the same wallop in his book "Raging Bull," the basis for the powerful 1980 film which was directed by Martin Scorsese and earned Robert De Niro an Oscar for Best Actor.

La Motta paints a brutally vivid picture of a youngster and young man growing up in a brutal Bronx jungle. The fighter they called "The Bronx Bull" writes about seeing rats in the cellar of the tenament where he grew up that were the size of cats. The neighborhood in which he grew up was so tough that he had thousands of fights, explaining that by the time he laced on gloves and became a boxer such conflict had become totally routine. To La Motta a fight was as commonplace as anyone else brushing their teeth, a simple, elementary part of life. He writes about his early life of crime, including the beating of one man he thought he had killed. In perhaps the most dramatic sequence of the book he reveals how he had lived in morbid fear of being apprehended for murder and in guilt for the act itself, after which he was shocked when the man he was convinced he had killed surfaces. Unaware that La Motta was his attacker, the man surfaces in Detroit to wish the fighter luck as he prepares for his winning title bout against champion Marcel Cerdan of France. The man explains that he was hurt badly but finally recovered, and is in town to wish someone from his old neighborhood luck in his title pursuit.

The raw power of the lightning narrative, along with its brutally realistic truth, makes "Raging Bull" one of the all- time great sports books, a true American classic.

I love it when a book makes me stop in my tracks and think, "Wait a minute, that makes sense. Why haven't I ever thought to look at things that way?"

This book incorporates not only the premise that problems arise within a family system but also within the context of cultural assumptions. Our society values earning and power, thus the Golden Rule (She/he who has the gold, rules). Though each marriage partner has individual problems, these problems arise from the patterns of relating we learn from our parents and our families of origin. Until we understand them, we recreate them in our own marriages. This book, along with David Schnarch's book, Passionate Marriage, will really get your brain churning!

This extraordinary book is about much more than negotiation. It is really about the nature of marriage. Through her successful family therapy practice and her own personal growth, the author has achieved tremendous insights into the assumptions that Americans bring to marriage, how these assumptions can cause problems for us, and how we can rethink our assumptions in order to make our marriages work, or work better.

Carter shows how the traditional model of marriage has not changed fast enough to successfully support the other ways that society has changed. The traditional model is one breadwinner and one homemaker in a heterosexual first marriage. This is how most of us were raised, and perhaps more importantly, it is the model that society, for the most part, is currently set up to support and value. While many young people today intend to share expenses and responsibilities equally with their partners, when we get married, especially if we have children, we tend to unconsciously fall back into thinking according to the traditional model. There's nothing wrong with both partners choosing a traditional marriage; the problem is that many of us do not make fully conscious choices about marriage. Instead, we unwittingly buy into a model that does not in fact (usually) serve either party well.

What's particularly brilliant about the way that Carter explores these issues is that she shows the reader why it matters and how it can change. The book includes useful stories about real people's marriages, and the emphasis is on what was making these people unhappy, what was keeping them from seeing all of their options, how they learned to consider and embrace new options, and whether and how their marriages changed. Because the stories are selected so well and integrated so nicely with the broader exploration of social issues, the book is easy to read and the relatively complex social issues are made very accessible.

The book does not say that money always equals power, but points out that the two are generally equated in American society. It also points out that without autonomy, people do not generally feel equal -- because they really aren't equal in the sense of having the same options. Autonomy--being able to stand on one's own--is so linked with money, not just emotionally, but in reality, that it is important for us to understand the implications of who makes how much money and how the money is shared.

The book also makes it clear that there are two kinds of power, "power over and power to." The book does not advocate that anyone use power over another person, whether that power is in the form of money, affection, or anything else. It does show us why people sometimes do that, and how to think about and deal with people who come from that perspective. It also shows us how people can learn to use the "power to" make themselves happier. Many women are uncomfortable with any type of power, including the power to be happy and even to protect ourselves. This book helps us understand why it is a bad idea to pretend that there are no power issues or power struggles in a relationship, and why it is a good idea to learn more about these dynamics. But its focus is by no means how to win a power struggle. Rather, it shows us how a better understanding of these dynamics can help us negotiate a win-win marriage.

It also, by the way, describes how to negotiate a win-win divorce, with emphasis on how to best support and nurture children during and after divorce.

The book also emphasizes the importance of looking at the family as a system, and shows how our experiences in our families of origin play a shockingly large role in our relationships with our spouses. It includes very helpful examples of how people have reconnected with their "impossible" parents in order to learn more about themselves and the family themes that have shaped their expectations and assumptions (which are often hidden).

In short, this is a book about how to be happier. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to be happier in a committed relationship.

A great book for those who want to make changes in their marriage/relationships. The main issue that she puts forth is that money=power. That equation changes the way that people communicate and negotiate in relationship. Examples abound as well as helpful ways to boost your negotiating power.(the main one being - get and keep a job even if its only part time!) This book could change alot of relationships for the better.

Just as Clement Moore gave us the definitive Santa Claus in "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (a.k.a. "The Night Before Christmas"), Charles Dickens gave us the definitive Christmas spirit in his simple but charming novella "A Christmas Carol". First published in 1843, this supernatural story of an elderly man's redemption from his mean-spirited, miserly ways takes place in Victorian London, but its universal theme of charity towards our fellow man has endeared this classic to many a generation around the globe. In addition to its priceless role as a morality tale, the book colorfully describes the Yuletide customs practiced in England during the early nineteenth century. This Washington Square Press edition of "A Christmas Carol" is unabridged, yet you can understand why so short a book is yet published in abridged versions, especially for schoolchildren. Not infrequently, Dickens veers from the main story line and goes into tangents of a philosophical or descriptive nature, much like the converser who abruptly changes the subject only to return to it with the familiar "Anyway, ... ". I assume children (and some adults) may find these tangents cumbersome and distracting, but they are still useful in that they reflect Dickens' thoughts while writing the book. It may still be difficult for some of us to think that cold-hearted Christmas-bashers like Ebenezer Scrooge exist, but look at human nature around you, and it will be difficult no more. At a time when "Merry Christmas" is being supplanted by a more vague "Happy Holidays", and the season gives way to coarse behavior and unchecked materialism, "A Christmas Carol" is the perfect guidebook to put things into perspective.

Well, I finally read it (instead of just watching it on the TV screen).

This is what you can call a simple idea, well told. A lonely, bitter old gaffer needs redemption, and thus is visited by three spirits who wish to give him a push in the right direction. You have then a ghost story, a timeslip adventure, and the slow defrosting of old Scrooge's soul. There are certain additions in the more famous filmed versions that help tweak the bare essentials as laid down by Dickens, but really, all the emotional impact and plot development necessary to make it believable that Scrooge is redeemable--and worth redeeming--is brilliantly cozied into place by the great novelist.

The scenes that choke me up the most are in the book; they may not be your favourites. I react very strongly to our very first look at the young Scrooge, sitting alone at school, emotionally abandoned by his father, waiting for his sister to come tell him there may be a happy Christmas. Then there are the various Cratchit scenes, but it is not so much Tiny Tim's appearances or absence that get to me--it's Bob Cratchit's dedication to his ailing son, and his various bits of small talk that either reveal how much he really listens to Tim, or else hide the pain Cratchit is feeling after we witness the family coming to grips with an empty place at the table. Scrooge as Tim's saviour is grandly set up, if only Scrooge can remember the little boy he once was, and start empathizing with the world once again. I especially like all Scrooge's minor epiphanies along his mystical journey; he stops a few times and realizes when he has said the wrong thing to Cratchit, having belittled Bob's low wages and position in life, and only later realizing that he is the miser with his bootheel on Cratchit's back. Plus, he must confront his opposite in business, Fezziwig, who treated his workers so wonderfully, and he watches as true love slips through his fingers again.

It all makes up the perfect Christmas tale, and if anyone can find happiness after having true love slip through his fingers many years ago, surprisingly, it's Scrooge. With the help of several supporting players borrowed from the horror arena, and put to splendid use here.

Master storyteller and social critic, Charles Dickens, turns this social treatise on shortcomings of Victorian society into an entertaining and heartwarming Christmas ghost story which has charmed generations and become an icon of Christmas traditions. Who, in the Western world has not heard, "Bah, Humbug!" And who can forget the now almost hackneyed line of Tiny Tim, "God bless us, every one!" or his cheerfully poignant observation, that he did not mind the stares of strangers in church, for he might thus serve as a reminder of He who made the lame, walk and the blind, see. Several movie versions: musical, animated, updated, or standard; as well as stage productions (I recall the Cleveland Playhouse and McCarter Theatre`s with fondess.) have brought the wonderful characterizations to the screen, as well as to life. This story of the redemption of the bitter and spiritually poor miser, and the book itself; however, is a timeless treasure whose richness, like Mrs Cratchit`s Christmas pudding, is one that no production can hope to fully capture.

Okay, first let's get the ugliness out of the way. The recent boom in memoirs has produced a really fascinating phenomena, the true life tale which any intelligent reader knows to be fiction. The most celebrated recent examples are books like Angela's Ashes, wherein Frank McCourt reconstructs his entire childhood and verbatim dialogue in such loving detail that we realize that his memoir is ultimately a fictional take on his own autobiography (see Orrin's review). But in The Education of Little Tree we have an even more audacious author. Forrest Carter's supposed memoir of being raised by his Cherokee grandparents after being orphaned at age 5, likewise recreates his youth in a level of detail that makes the story hard to credit, but in addition the characters he creates and episodes he relates defy belief. The simple old Cherokee couple living at one with nature in a marriage of equals seems to be a purely mythic creation, but then when the five year old joins them and helps them outwit government bureaucrats, Christian missionaries, big city mobsters, etc., in between trips to the library to get the classics of Western Literature which Grandma reads aloud each night, you can really feel the text leaving any claim to a basis in reality behind. Finally, as the story ends with Little Tree, now age 9, and his two loyal dogs, working their way across Depression America to get to the Cherokee Reservation, we've entered Cloud Cuckoo Land.

So I mentioned all of this to my Mom, who along with my brother urged this book upon me, and she said that she'd seen a People Magazine article about Carter a dozen years ago and it, naturally, turned out that the book is fiction. A little quick research on the Web turns up the fact that it's not just fiction, it's virtually a hoax. Carter was actually named Asa Carter. He was a rabid segregationist who adopted the pseudonym Bedford Forrest, in honor of the Confederate general who founded the Klan. He may or may not have been a speech writer for George Wallace, but he did claim to have written the infamous "Segregation Forever!" speech.

Now having said all that, there's one more thing that needs to be said about the book; it's terrific. In many ways it reminded me of The Power of One, both are books of such surpassing beauty and heartwarming humanity, who cares if they are completely unrealistic? Isn't one of the chief values of fiction the capacity to transcend reality? The Education of Little Tree teaches timeless lessons about the value of family, education and place and it preaches an abiding mistrust of government. If it also managed to snooker most of the touchy feely, do-gooder, Left, which desperately wishes that these were all Native American values, and not essentially Western ones, this merely allows us to enjoy it on a second level. After all, it's not hard to make Oprah & company look stupid, but it is fun.

GRADE: A

Forrest Carter - regardlesss of what he believed or how he lived - wrote a great book. The Education of Little Tree presents a unique way of viewing the world, for one sees through the eyes of a young half-Cherokee boy growing up in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee during the 1930s. I found the book realistic, being often humorous and occasionally sad. The adventurous episodes of each chapter are written in lively narrative, and I never found myself feeling bored or disinterested while working my way through the book. Little Tree's often sage observations and received wisdom from his grandparents help make this tale instructive as well as enjoyable. I can easily endorse this as an excellent book to read

The Education of Little Tree may not be a work based on facts. It may be true that the author was a member of the KKK. It may be true that this book is not an autobiography and it may be equally true that it does not represent the culture or values of those whom consider themselves Cherokee. However, I still believe that this book stands on it's own merits, not as a factual based book, but as a book which does indeed have many useful truths. The book is beautifully written and it is an inspirational read which accounts for a boy whom receives an education far different from one of the regular school system. His education deals more with the spiritual sense of humanity and the book articulates the message using examples and also through the well-woven narrative. Not reading this book for the very reasons of the negative aura surrounding it's truth is not reading a great book because it contains grammatical errors or profanity. They are irrelevant in the judging of the actual text itself. This is an important book, and it is a good book and the lessons in which it teaches are lessons every human being should learn as part of being human. As grandma says in the book about good spreading, indeed, I hope this book will spread as well.

I remember having these Fairy Tales read to me at bedtime when I was little. I bought the same book to read to my son. The stories are bit anachronistic and may not meet modern standards of being politically correct, but we love them anyway.

Although black influence may be discerned in many strands of modern popular culture, from sports to stand-up comedy, from music to fashion and movies, one couldn't say that this has also been the case for fiction. Professor Carter's book is a welcome first step in populating a compelling plot-driven narrative with characters we haven't heard from before (or at least, not to my knowledge). In "The Emperor of Ocean Park" black university graduates with high-powered jobs and all sorts of material comforts are resolutely center-stage. In Philip Roth's "The Human Stain", the main character must resign his blackness to achieve success and power in the academical world. Carter's characters never resign their race to be successful in the white man's world. The main voice is Talcott Garland's. He is a lawyer in his forties, a professor of law in an ivy-league-ish university, which in spite of Carter's denial in a post-scriptum is a straigth forward rendition of Yale Law School, where the author teaches. Garland is a complex man, not a cypher, surely a cut above the generic "cut-and-paste" renditions typical of modern popular fiction. He is slightly overweight, not very likeable (he is aloof and emotionally remote), very much his father's son. The father, the eponymous "Emperor of Ocean Park", is Oliver Garland, known in the book as "The Judge", a composite of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Judge Robert Bork and famous intellectual Thomas Sowell. A moderately conservative civil rights lawyer, he is appointed to a federal judgeship in the District of Columbia Appelate Court where he moves increasingly to the right. In the Reagan era he is nominated to the Supreme Court, but he must withdraw his candidacy when certain sordid associations become known to the public. He then joins a Washington D.C. firm as counsel and rakes in fat fees as a very popular public speaker. The Judge has shaped his children sometimes in ways he didn't mean to. The first born, Addison, is a rebel who refuses to be subject to his fathers very exacting standards of emotional self-control. His daughter, Mariah, the cleverest of all, has withdrawn from intellectual life to become wife of a rich white banker and mother of a large brood. Talcott has fled the rough and tumble of political life to become a tenured professor, and is stuck with Kimberley, a woman he adores, although she doesn't love him and may be cheating on him. A third daughter, Abby, died long ago, run over by a car that then fled the scene of the accident. This death is the catalyst of all that happens afterwards. The Judge is dead at the beginning of the book, and Talcott is quickly assailed by all sorts of shady figures who are looking for the Judge's arrangements. Talcott has no idea of what this means, and he struggles till the book's very end to find the arrangements and keep himself and his family alive. There is a complex chess problem (whose relevance is perhaps less clearly conveyed than the author intended) and several sub-plots to keep the reader occupied. Those thinking about buying the book should not be dissuaded by its heft. The book is a page turner and it has the right mixture of plot, action and rumination to keep the reader interested. It is also evidence that a book may be compelling without a single overtly sexual set-piece, without unnecessary profanity and without obsessive concern by fashionable slang or luxury good brands. This book will still be readable in fifty years without a special dictionary.

Many people have commented on the detailed rendition on the specifics of middle class lives. The big surprise is that these lives are similar to those of their white counterparts. Middle class blacks are hard working achievers, sometimes hindered by emotional distance and obsessive self-pondering. Perhaps one key point is that this is not the middle class as such that we are regarding, but the upper-middle class, with their large townhouses in Washington D.C. ("the Gold Coast") and their summer places in the Vineyard and the Hamptons.

We should expect this book to be slaughtered in the movie version, with Denzel Washington as Talcott, Morgan Freeman as the Judge, Hale Berry as Kimberley and Angela Basset as Maxine. Gene Hackman would be a good Justice Worthington. Read the book before you see the inevitable movie. It will only spoil the fun if you do otherwise.

Great story, but Carter didn't make the editing decisions that might've turned this into a classic. I loved the wonderful, sometimes poetic prose, but the writing occasionally revealed unwelcome glimpses of the author's other career as a law professor. Like many legal writings, this one was too long, affected and at times seemed calculated to impress. That said, though, anyone with the patience and will to trudge through the first half is rewarded by what turns out to be an enthralling work.
I recently finished another recently published first-time effort by a lawyer that provides a wonderful comparision, Dead Hand Control by Tim Stutler. Where Emperor reflects a law professor's sensibilities, Dead Hand's lively, direct prose reveals the distinctive style and world-view of a trial advocate. After reading Emperor, Dead Hand Control was a breath of fresh air. Accessible but occasionally beautifully written, it was a pleasure to read.
Both books offer themes of mortality and ambition and delve into tormented familial relationships. But Dead Hand focuses on the future and the relationship between the main character and his son, while Emperor looks to the protagonist's past and his father's sins.
Both authors share a wry, well-developed wit that I find missing from most modern novels. Both have a keen sense of timing (if developed at different paces). And both books showcase the rich diversity of this society.
Neither book fits neatly into the legal thriller category. If you're looking for an exceptional first-time literary effort by an American author to take along on vacation, I recommend toting both books. But if you have limited luggage space or patience (or a weak back), take Dead Hand Control and save Emperor for the easy chair at home!

What an amazing debut novel from Stephen L. Carter! The story itself is a magnificent mystery. It's not your typical "whodunit". Instead, it is a wonderfully crafted, deeply intriguing story about a family wrapped around some judicial mischief at the highest level of our court system. Senior District Court Judge Oliver Garland has died leaving his son to unravel what the author refers to as "the arrangements." Judge Garland's daughter, Mariah, is suspicious of her father's death and suspects their Uncle Jack, known for his organized crime affiliations, is involved. Her younger brother, Tal, remains unconvinced until their father's funeral when Uncle Jack stresses his need to know of "the arrangements" Judge Garland left behind. The "arrangements", however, have nothing to do with burial or estate planning. They do have to do with digging into some earlier family tragedies, getting involved with some very unsavory underworld characters, and hints of even more crooked judges at the Supreme Court level.

There are many hints thrown in throughout the book, woven into the ongoing dialogue lead you to think you know exactly where the story is going. But Carter's crafty and imaginative twists of plot, however, frequently deceive you. There is also a subpart to the story that brings frequent reference to the game of chess, and more particularly to the relationship of a black pawn and a white pawn and the importance of the black pawn coming out on top. Read the book and see what you think of all these references and subtle pieces of symbolism. The fact that he can leave us pondering all that is strong evidence of talented writing.

This book is not a fast paced, 48-hour thriller, but takes place over several eventful months. I enjoyed the complexity of the plot and the very human characters Carter created. The Garlands and their extended families illustrate how dependent we are upon one another and how easy it is to succumb to temptations. I encourage you to join Tal as he investigates pivoting points in his father's life, uncovers the Judge's legacy, and, ultimately, finds "the arrangements". I predict that we will see many best sellers by Carter. At least let's hope so. Highly recommended!

Doomsday World is by no means a bad Trek novel. Ordinarily, it would be entitled to the standard three stars that decent Trek novels are awarded. Unfortunately, the promise of having some of Trek's greatest novelists (Carter, David, and Friedman) teaming together falls way short of the mark. With few exceptions, each of their individual Trek novels have been several cuts above the norm; that Doomsday World never rises above the average makes the result all the more disappointing.

There are some good moments, including Worf saving the day with a barrage of phaser fire (then griping that if he'd been allowed to blast away when he'd wanted to they could have avoided a host of problems) and an amusing, if out of place, Monty Python reference ("What's the average air speed of an unladen swallow?" Geordi asks a bartender).

If you are going to read this one, do it because it's a Trek novel, not because of who the authors are . . . .

This book was written by Carmen Carter, Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, and Robert Greenberger in concert. I expected a book written by committee to be sincerely bad. The four authors in question are all good enough to rescue this book from that fate, but almost any book by any one of them is better than this one.

Frankly, I thought that the concept was weak; I've read and enjoyed other "shared world" books, notably the "Thieves' World" series and the "Wild Cards" series, but in this case, ALL writing in the Star Trek universe already has all the advantages of such a concept, and I think that, left to themselves, we'd probably have gotten a novel at least as good as this one from EACH of these writers in the time it took us to get this one from the four of them.

The one possible reason for writing a novel this way is that it is potentially more fun for the authors than writing solo. I can see no other reason for the concept. Hopefully, having gotten this out of their systems, they'll go back to doing what they do best: writing solo.

Other reviews have focused on the fact that it took four writer to write this book. So what? It's no giant novel, but it's still a goo story with interesting bit players. The planet's many secrets have fun conclusions, and the characters are well written. I would expect this one would have made a better episode than novel, so try to imagine the visuals. I, for one, would like to see the dueling ambassadors again.