Single mom Elizabeth Cohen records her life as her toddler daughter grows up while her father descends into Alzheimers (and she has sole care of both of them). Cohen finds poetry rather than tragedy as her daughter and father cross paths: daughter Ava surging into consciousness, learning new words by the hour, father Sanford finally forgetting even his name.

I am overwhelmed by the truth of this poetry, because I am in a similar situation: my father-in-law was diagnosed with dementia a few months after my daughter's birth. As Dad has declined, my daughter has thrived. It is undeniably sad. Yet they are central to each other's worlds; even on days when Dad seems to know no one, you can tell he remembers G. You can tell she loves him and he loves her even though they can't speak.

A greater theme in Cohen's book is the power of community; her neighbors help her bear her burdens (chopping firewood, shoveling her driveway, watching Ava), just as she helps her father bear his. Thus, even if you are not directly touched by Alzheimer's or the like, this well-written and touching book is likely to resonate with you too.

May the world still be this way when we are older.

How do you comfort a friend whose parent is slipping away to Alzheimer's Disease? Can you truly know how one feels when your friend tells you her mom forgets her birthday, her name, her parent-child relationship? That's what I was looking for when I bought this book as a gift for my friend. Maybe it would give my friend a glint of hope and humor with all she is going through. I couldn't give it to her without reviewing its potential for gloom and sadness so I began reading it and couldn't put it down.
Elizabeth Cohen had a way of connecting to me with all the "mind chatter" about her daily living.... mind chatter that we all have....... the worry about our parents, our spouses, our children. I feel I have found a friend in Elizabeth from her writing. I have been given the "Beartown Road" view of coping with a parent who is slipping away. Elizabeth has shown through her writing that with one memory, one tiny memory, there is hope and love.

Poignant, honest, beautifully written, this is the story of a woman of 40, her father of 80 and her daughter who is not yet 1. Elizabeth Cohen is truly in the middle as she struggles to care for both her father and her child, while working and trying to maintain some sort of life in an old farmhouse in rural New York. (Her young husband has found the stress too great and has taken off.) The author, who is used to viewing herself as the kind of person who receives help from others, does receive kindness and help from her neighbors, but also develops into a strong and loving person who can cope with life's hardships. As she struggles to keep things going, she stands back occasionally and watches with awe as her father and daughter cross each other in their own journeys, her father backward to a time of knowing/understanding very little, and her daughter forward to a place of knowledge, competence and understanding. The way the little girl and the old man love each other and help each other is also poignantly expressed. This book is unsentimental but emotionally powerfully, and told with a truth and honesty that grab the reader.

This book explores the remarkable journey of a Navajo women who leaves the reservation to train as a surgeon. It contrasts traditional Navajo practices with those of western medicine and illustrates how one women was able negotiate two worlds at odds with one another. The book provoked me to re-evaluate some of my assumptions of western medicine and heightened my awareness of cultural differences in philosophy of medical care. The book is thought-provoking and inspirational. A quick and easy read.

This book was outstanding. Once I began reading about Dr. Alvord's journey from Western Medicine to Navajo Medicine and back, I could not put it down. Those of us in the nursing field have often known about this connection to help patients heal faster and better. This excellent book describes a journey combining local medical technigues with western medicine. Highly recommended for all persons in the health care field, especially those of us in the Nurse Practitioner field.

The story of Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord's courage and determination to bridge the Navajo world with modern medicine is excellently written. For those of us who've had little exposure to the ways of the Navajo world, this book is part history and part culture. As America continues to find new ways to maintain and improve health care, it's refreshing to consider how living a balanced life has the potential to make a huge difference. Alvord's story, artfully told with the assistance of Elizabeth Cohen Van Pelt, a former New York Post reporter, is by turns heartwarming, soulful and inspirational. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should note that Elizabeth is now a co-worker of mine.

Bev Cobain has written a concise and informative book on mental illness that most teens will find easy to understand. The book is mainly about depression, but also explains other mental illnesses that are often experienced with depression, such as bipolar disorder, addiction and eating disorders. She presents the basic facts about mental illnesses including their possible causes and effects, different types of treatments, excellent tips on how teens can help themselves and some important resources for additional support and information. Cobain also includes short autobiographical stories by young people who have successfully dealt with these problems. Teens may find these stories easy to relate to and, hopefully, inspirational.

Although the book is informative, I don't think that it lives up to its subtitle that indicates it is a "Survival Guide." When a teenager reaches the point where he or she truly believes that nothing else matters, this book doesn't hit hard enough to invalidate that opinion.

This book extends a compassionate, knowledgeable, hand to teens trying to understand the complex and frustrating dynamics of living with depression. Author Bev Cobain demystifies mental health terminology with staightforward explanations about the various kinds of depression and the difference between "the blues" and more serious kinds of depression that need attention.

This is an interactive book where teens are shown how to take an active role in doing things to help themselves stay healthy. Young readers will find themselves in one or more of the stories told by eleven teens from many walks of life as they describe their struggles with depression. The stories demonstrate that young people can do something about depression and have hope for the future.

Parnts, school counselors, mental health providers, physicians and others who work with depressed teens, will find useful, practical, information in this book. Any depressed teen luckly enough to receive this book from a caring, concerned adult will find comfort. Indeed, it may save a life.

The day that i started reading this book i couldn't put it down because it was teaching me about my depresion. Now that i have completed it i feel that i know more about depression then i knew before.I shared it with my mom who is also depressed and she wants a copy of her own. iI think it is a very good book and i would defently would think that this book should be for depressed teens that want to learn more about depression. Even a teen without depression that wants to learn more about depression should read it. Thanks bev for writing this wondreful book.

Ivy Raymond is interested only in the antiques she sells and the past they represent. Then one December afternoon kooky old lady comes into her store and sells her a book of spells and she finds herself in the seventeenth century. As witchcraft seems to permeate the home of her rescuer, Julian Ramsden, Ivy begins to feel she has found her place in the world. This is a wonderful book for time travel junkies with characters that feel like friends by the end. Don't miss this one!

I just love a good "bodice ripper" novel and 'Enchanted Time' fits the bill with bells on. It's a great read for the person who just wants to sit down and enjoy a sparkling love story with a bit of a difference. The plot follows Ivy a young American bookstore owner who is transported through time when she reads from a book of spells a sweet little old lady sells to her one day. Ivy finds herself in 17th century England where she catches the attention of Julian Ramsden, a young man struggling to survive with his family under the puritanical rule of Oliver Cromwell and his Roundheads. Of course Ivy and Julian fall in love but not before all sorts of strange and wonderful things happen to them both. Without giving too much of the story away, 'Enchanted Time' is a fun book, with some genuinely witty moments, a lot of delicious love scenes between Ivy and Julian and a delightful plot that includes a time-hopping Granny, a mute child, and a very nasty Witch Hunter General who goes by the name of Josiah Feake. This is a great book to take on holiday as it doesn't tax your brain cells and has the added bonus of being fun to read as well.

I really enjoyed this book because I live in Northwest Washington and I love reading about local things...also I loved the way the story turns around at the end and Meg finds her Thomas...I laughed and I cried and I immediately recommended it to everyone

SIN AND SYNTAX should be a text in high school English classes. A generation of enthusiastic grammarians might rise up and wipe out the scourge of dangling modifiers. The mystery of lay and lie would be be solved at last. I teach adults how to turn their great ideas into the novels they've always wanted to write; and while the refinements of plot and character and theme are fairly simple to explain, grammar and syntax bedevil student and (this) teacher alike. But no more. With humor, clarity and excellent contemporary examples, this book helps me explain to my students why, after half a dozen rewrites, their sentences still sing off key, why I nag them about details, why some adjectives work and others just take up space on the page. A great resource book.

This book is probably one of the best grammar books out there, and it is absolutely a "Must-Read" for every writer (fiction and nonfiction, also journalists should read through it). The author is clear and precise in her explanations of grammatical concepts and possibilities, and she makes grammar fun. Some conventional approaches to grammar are challenged in this book, but the author Constance Hale--who currently teaches at U.C. Berkeley--is a qualified professional in her field. She's a maverick and she offers a healthy dose of motivation to be creative with your use of grammar in the new millenium. This book can really help to equip a writer with this certain edge in his or her writing projects.

Well structured, as it must be, Hale's guide presents both the nuts and bolts of grammar and the considerations of style that cannot exist without a sound grasp of grammar. The book begins each section simply, with the "bones" of the part of speech being explained, puts on the "flesh," and elucidates the "cardinal sins" and the "carnal pleasures" of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and so on. Even when the going gets heavy, as in her discussions of attributive nouns or appositive phrases, her clear, conversational tone smooths the way. She concludes with reflections about voice, lyricism, melody, and rhythm. One of the best features of her book is a glut of choice passages from the likes of Nabokov, Joan Didion, George Orwell, Jamaica Kincaid, and many others. Her well-read reach extends to rap lyrics and the wine labels written by the flip, clever copywriters at Bonny Doon Vineyards. The collection of quotations alone makes this book worth owning. At times the tone is slightly uneven, as when she follows a serious discussion of rules with the casual use of words like "gonna" and "wimps" (apparently she has a reputation for being hip to uphold), and she includes sentence diagrams without really explaining how they operate. Her advice to "go ahead and be ungrammatical if it feels right" may make some sticklers swoon. But these are minor flaws in a manual that is useful for beginners and seasoned writers alike. You close the book understanding how the rich inventiveness of English is rooted in its complex grammar and vocabulary, which are the reasons it can be so flexible, so magical -- the reason, in fact, that language creates reality. Includes a helpful appendix describing other grammar guides.

I LOVE this book. It seriously helped me through a rough breakup. I guess I should be grateful that the breakup happened around Valentines Day because that is the only reason I found this book. It was on a table full of other mushy poetry books, but I was drawn to the 'little black book' with the candy hearts on the cover. It hooked me from the beginning.

The book is broken up into different sections (anger, moving on, false hope, and eventually real hope)... feelings you actually go through during a breakup. And they are perfect. The poems for the ANGER section were exactly what I needed when I was so mad at the world.... and my ex.

The sections at the end, the real healing chapters, truly helped me. To know that someone else (and great poets at that!) has felt what I was feeling and that there is hope even when it does not seem like it, comforted me.

I really believe this book helped me through one of the hardest times of my life. I have recommended it to many friends who have also enjoyed it. Buy this book if you or someone you know needs help through a breakup or divorce!

This book is hilarious, profound, accessible, and absolutely perfect. Esselman and Velez break down break-ups into all of the stages you've experienced but never had the guts (or the sanity, at any given moment) to name--stages like rage, self-hatred, relapse, and moving on. Their commentary for the poems in each section is as intelligent and down-to-earth as the poems they choose. Read this, if you've ever even THOUGHT about being in--or out of--love. You'll find yourself entranced by the good poetry and comforted by the fact that no matter how you are trying to deal with a love lost, you aren't alone, or crazy: William Shakespeare, John Donne, Lucilie Clifton, and Billy Collins have all been members of the same lonely hearts club at one time or another...and, it seems, they've all come out laughing on the other side.

A charming collection whose only problem is the title. The title implies that the authors are angry and loveless when in fact they demonstrate a depth of understanding the full gamut of emotions surrounding the commitments people make to one another. My 20-year-old daughter (who knows less about poetry than I do) handed me me this book with the off-putting caveat "You probably won't get it, but I loved this!" I loved it too -- for the breath of the collection of poems, the witty and incisive commentary before each chapter, and mostly its affirmation of the beauty and bounty of finding love at any age and at any cost. I highly recommend that mothers give this to their daughters, fathers to their sons for Valentine's Day, but tell them first that this nifty book is, despite the cautionary title, a wise and witty book about how careful they should be to find and keep someone to love.

Required to read Henry for my AP English Language class, I came into the play with a bias. I honestly felt that it would be a boring political play. I was utterly wrong! A huge fan of Shakespeare, I found Henry V to be a formidable match for the Bard's more critically acclaimed plays, such as Hamlet and Macbeth. Henry has it all! Shakespeare's attitude toward Henry the King is certainly one of admiration. By communicating the fact that an effective monarch must have a complete understanding of the common subjects (Pistol and Bardolph and Quickly), Shakespeare sets up Henry to be the ideal Christian king. The controlled language of Henry's speeches, particularly his response to the Dauphin's idiotic insult, also glorifies Henry. I certainly recommend this play to anyone, fan of Shakespeare or not.

I looked long and hard (and asked many a scholar) for the "perfect" Shakespeare publication that I might purchase to study "King Henry V" (for a experiential education requirement, I had undertaken the translation of Henry V into American Sign Language). The Arden Shakespeare came highly recommended by everyone, and has lived up entirely to all its rave reviews.

I will never buy Shakespeare from another publisher. While these books may be slightly more expensive than a "mass market" edition, I believe that if you are going to take the time to read and understand Shakespeare, it is well worth the extra dollar or two. The Introduction, the images, and plethora of footnotes are irreplaceable and nearly neccessary for a full understanding of the play (for those of us who are not scholars already). The photocopy of the original Quatro text in the appendix is also very interesting.

All in all, well worth it! I recommend that you buy ALL of Shakespeare's work from Arden's critical editions.

On D-Day British officers read Henry's famous words to their men as they approached the beach. When Churchill needed material for his famous "Few" speech, his thoughts turned to the pages of Henry V. From "once more into the breach" to "we happy few, we band of brothers" this play resonates with Shakespeare's paen to England's warrior king. Oh, you'll be a bit confused at the start if you haven't read Henry IV parts 1 and 2, but this is primarily the story of Henry V's victory at Agincourt. Whether the play glorifies war or just Henry you will have to decide. There is much food for thought here for the perceptive reader. But then Shakespeare is always provocative.

This book is terrific, I loved it when I was little and I remember forcing my brother to read it to me over and over before I could read. It's an enchanting story, delightful for girls all over, it was the first book I thought of when looking for a book for my neice. Our local book store at the time was able to special order it for me, which was about 8 years ago. I have to admit my 5 yr. old son doesn't seem to be as enthusiastic about it as I was (we borrowed his cousin's book), which makes me think it is definately more appealing to girls. Anyone who was a fan of "Bewitched" or the current "Sabrina..." will like this book.

This book is really wonderful. I can't believe that there are others out there who are still commenting on it. I thought that it was just a book that I had read long ago that nobody else knew about. I love it because of the sense of wonder it conveys, as well as a little bit of fear. The reader really is gripped with fear that Minx will get caught by her hideous witch of a mother. My favorite scene is when she's trying out various potions at night. Somehow, when I was a child and came to these chapters, I thought it magical that a child would be awake all night by herself, trying to find something that she desperately hopes will release her from her family situation. I hope that I can find "Little Witch" on the internet soon!

I have read this book over and over and over again.I checked this book out so many times from the library that they had to put in 2 or 3 more cards and my name was the only one on them. It is funny and a really good book.Minikin or minx was a great character with loving feelings alothough her mother was very cruel.In th end averything turns out alright and Minx has her wish.i suggest everyone read it and im only 14 and i hate to read but this is one makes me want to write my own book.

Excellent book! Well written and superbly done. This book takes you from the very beginning user all the way through to being able to find problems. The most helpful areas are the ideas and links to products. Great tips and shortcut ideas. Super for both the beginner and the expert. A must have for anyone who plans on using the MAC. Easy to read and follow, this book is not "boring" like so many computer books. I would recommend this to anyone.

I have been using macs for about ten years and had read earlier editions of the mac bible and loved them. But after becoming an old mac hand (ignorance is bliss!) I had stopped feeling the need for newer editions of the mac bible. But last week my mother bought her first ever computer, a really sweet G3 Powerbook, and in preparation for flying across the country to tutor her I went shopping for some reference books to give us a hand. I bought the Mac Bible, the Mac OS 8.5 Black Book, and the Microsoft Office 98 Visual Basic Book. The Mac Bible is far and away the most helpful of the bunch. Easiest to read, most in depth and with valuable opinions, real life applications and a sense of humor. In fact I decided to return the Black Book and buy a Mac Bible for myself to take home.

The Macintosh Bible series has been excellent, but this edition is wonderful. So much so that I had to buy a 2nd copy; it's heavy to take to work every day and then home every night. But the detail is what even experienced Mac users need to deal with almost every relevant topic, day after day.

Virtually all facets of Macintosh operation are covered sufficiently to overcome some of the (alas) now-expected roadblocks even in my favorite computers; for example, Ms. Aker and I agree that when it comes to providing a trustworthy, loyal, helpful, accurate, obedient, friendly, and kind installer for a new operating system, the folks at Apple Computer have, as is the nicest way to put it, have made progress, but there's lots of room for growth. She ably steers you around the icebergs.

The book is quite thorough for people using up to Mac OS 8.0 or 8.1; also, there's more on OS 8.5 than I'd have expected, given the publication date. Many thanks to Apple for assisting this, providing enough material on the newer OS to let her deal effectively with it.

This book is not only elegant in terms of describing the use of an excellent computer; it is also written beautifully. If the author had shown it to our former College English Composition Board, she'd have scored at an enviable level. Making technically complex procedures easy is very difficult, but she succeeds admirably.

The jokes, brief historical anecdotes, and other details make it a pleasure to read and use. It sets a standard, in my opinion, not only for the present present but for the future.