If you are going to buy just one book about cockatiels, this is truly the one to own. It's well written and researched, and presented in an unintimidating, friendly manner, and covers all the basics you'll need to know to nurture and share a happy relationship with a devoted pet. There's excellent advice about choosing, housing, feeding, training and caring for one or more of this wonderful species of bird, and solid advice about handling emergencies, choosing a vet, etc.

And as other reviewers have mentioned, this book's insight into cockatiel psychology and development is exceptional, and it really helps to understand why a bird might be behaving in a certain way, and what this behavior might communicate.

Previous to acquiring a cockatiel, I owned a halfmoon conure for a number of years, and although I'm an experienced bird owner, I learned a lot from this book. I'll be sure to keep it handy in case I need to consult it in an emergency. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Wow! This is an excellent book! I bought this book because I'm getting a cockatiel for my birthday. I knew absolutely nothing about them. I got so frustrated because I didn't think I could take care of a bird and started rethinking my decision to get one. That is, until I read this book. Now I am so confident and feel so knowledgeable because this book really explained everything in plain old every day English. It was so easy to understand it even made me feel like I can even breed them! That's how confident I was when I got finished reading this book.
Thanks, Diane for the very good information and all your knowledge!

Hi All,
We first became familiar with Diane's expertise by reading her articles in the pages of Bird Talk Magazine. Diane's fabulous book "Cockatiels for Dummies" is a book for beginners, intermediate and expert Cockatiel lovers! No matter what your own level of expertise, there is something new to learn by reading Diane's book! Her great sense of humor combined with an incredible amount of information makes this one of the best and most enjoyable resources on cockatiels that we've ever seen! Even if you have other books on these Fun and Loving birds, you must add "Cockatiels for Dummies" to your library.
Have Fun,
Bill and Debbie O'Rourke

Even though it is unfinished, this book is one of the most amazing peices of fiction I have ever read. No one captures themes of wealth, power, and lonliness the way that Fitzgerald does. I have read all of his novels and this one is righ up there with Gatsby. It is structured, it moves quickly and the characters are really written well. It is really too bad that he did not get a chance to finish this. However, just reading a few pages of Fitzgerald at his best is worth the anguish that you will go through when you come to the "end" of the book. If you like Fitzgerald I think you have to read this, just to see whats out there.

I have read several translations of the Tao Te Ching and was very disappointed in this read. I feel as if much of the strengths from the original text are lost in this author?s choice of words and examples. This translation loses the beauty and appreciation of nature that the original texts focused on. (He refers to calculators and computers in some instances) I was also bothered by his addition of the Christian understanding of God as a character in his translations. Over all I really recommend finding a better translation than this to read if you are a first timer. (such as translation by Victor H. Mair) It is a bit more of a heavy read but caries over the interesting paradoxes that make the ancient document so intriguing.

Also read ?The wisdom of insecurity? By Allan Watts (a Beatnik) if you like the idea of Taoism

I agree with that other guy(girl?) in that this book should be about life... not leadership. -The concepts are adapted from Lao Tzu's timeless classic; put into easily understood interpretation makes one really grasp the idea of nonresistance towards the flow of creative juices. -However, this book would be a ten if it were about life. It has been my experience that in dealing with one's own demons, one has a better understanding of another's pain. I've applied this book to both leadership situations, and daily living (though I've had to read between the lines for that).

Heider, John. The Tao of Leadership. Atlanta: Humanics Limited, copyright 1985.

The Tao of Leadership is a book loaded with pearls of wisdom for any person in a position of authority to make a part of their repertoire of leadership strategies. The 3 themes of this book are: 1. Natural Law, or how things happen. 2. A way of life, or how to live in conscious harmony with natural law. 3. A method of leadership, or how to govern or educate other in accordance with natural law. This author looks at various principles of living that if utilized in one's life, can lead to harmony when interacting with others. He adapted these Tao principles from the Chinese culture, and many of the principles have been incorporated into the leadership styles of political rulers and sages of the Chinese people. At first, some of the principles were difficult for me to except because the effort to apply them seemed too easy to incorporate into my responses when interacting with others. But as I practiced the Tao thought, I realized that keeping my ego out of responses to outside stimuli required balancing the application of giving and accepting without allowing myself to judge the person involved; not an easy task! This is an excellent book for those who are looking for strategies to improve their leadership skills.