In this straightforward book, the authors coin the term stepcoupling to mean the "ongoing process of forming and maintaining a marriage when children are involved." We all know that we have to pay attention to our marriages to sustain our stepfamilies, and the authors tell us that our success "hinges on the willingness and ability of the partners to grapple with personal and family issues." Then they offer help.

The entire book discusses various personal and family issues that can threaten a stepfamily marriage. Instead of a lot of hard to understand theory, you'll find accessible advice that hits home with so many common problems. Gray boxes throughout provide questions for yourself and for discussions to have with your spouse. Autonomous questions pepper the text, and the authors follow them with practical solutions. Real stepparents, too, contribute their stories and feelings. You'll probably see yourself in several places in these comforting pages.

The book discusses a stepparent's expections of herself and her family. And in the very helpful section on boundaries, the authors discuss not only physical boundaries but also boundaries on relationships, including the need to sever the ties with former spouses and how to expand your boundaries to include your stepchildren. The section on "family acrobatics" tackles the issue of finding everyone's place in the family. You'll also learn how to strike a balance when your styles and values on parenting, money or anything else differ from your spouse's.

The final chapter is one stepcouple's story in their words, how they've survived twenty-nine years to become the close family they are. You'll find encouragement, advice and compassion in this book that truly understands stepfamilies.

I read this book in 48 hours and now use it to refer to whenever a crisis hits our stepcoupling relationship. Susan Wisdom dares to tell the straight facts about being a stepcouple while affirming that you can feel all the difficulties and still be considered normal. My children are all grown and at 50 I never expected to raise small children again but here I am in a love relationship that includes five year old twins and I need help. This book clarified the feelings that are associated with forming a stepcouple and allowed me to understand how it all takes time. An excellent book that I highly reccomend!

Here is the encouragement and advice many of us need to move forward in our lives along with the techniques and instructions to successfully deal with what faces us on a daily basis. There are so many factors that can complicate the life of a stepparent and 'Stepcoupling' addresses many of these problems head-on with real life stories and straightforward advice by ultimately proving that your marriage, as the foundation of your stepfamily, is the most important relationship you have.

The book labels itself as a "manual" and if ever there was a stepfamily 'How-To', this is it! After you follow several couples' experiences throughout the book, you will find a great surprise in the last chapter that rounds out this book perfectly. The 'How-To' flows through 'Stepcoupling' not only through the authors' life experiences and stories from stepcouples, but also by letting you fill in the blanks with your own life by allowing you to share honesty about your feelings between the pages of the book and yourself.

There are two ways to look at the future: either rapid advances in technology are ultimately beneficial to society, or they're ultimately going to be what breaks society down. Kurzweil takes the former perspective in "Age of Spiritual Machines", and his single-minded, almost dogged optimism is what keeps this book from achieving greatness.

The book is basically a list of Kurzweil's predictions for the future until around the year 2099. He doesn't give much in the way of supporting facts or dissenting opinions, except to offer his own theories, which are interesting but often fail to prove anything. He also predicts that once they pass the Turing Test, robots with highly advanced artificial intelligence will be accepted on the whole by human society without humans so much as batting an eye. What with the current Neo-Luddite movement and the growing suspicion of our reliance on technology, I can't imagine that happening as smoothly as Kurzweil predicts.

The style of the book, however, is interesting, as Kurzweil presents it as a palette of information that can be read in any order. And even though his optimism sometimes clouds his judgement, it is still interesting to see his well-educated perspective on the future of a world where spiritual machines seem not only feasible, but inevitable. As long as it's taken with a grain of salt, "The Age of Spiritual Machines" is a thought-provoking, unusual read.

A prediction of the future with a strong scientific basis to back it up. This is what sets it apart from most other predictions. To reiterate what others have said about what this book contains, it describes Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence and how these may change the world in the future.

It describes how by 2019, computers will have the memory capacity and computational ability of the brain. This will be coupled with computers replacing most of what humans do. Then, by 2029 nanotech will replace humans in production and agriculture. Machines are easily passing the Turing test. Then, by 2099 enough of the brain will be known to create fully conscious machines. We could then merge our brains with them, and live in a virtual body and/or a cybernetic body, effectively achieving near immortality.

As well as this, Kurzweil describes the technologies that will advance and allow us to achieve this. This is where he is weakest, because he does not go into enough depth. His final chapter, "How to build an Intelligent Machine" has some very clever ideas on combbining neural networks with genetic algorithms but does not explain it in enough detail.

Overall, the layman will find it fascinating, but the more technical reader will have wanted something more scientific.

I did a very strange thing the minute I finished reading this book--I turned immeadiately back to page one and began reading it again! I don't remember being more excited by an author's vision. I was particularly intrigued by Kurzweil's insights into the spiritual nature of advancing technologies and the transformation process these changes are creating.

Just because we must evolve beyond humanity, and soon, doesn't mean we can't make some important choices. We can have an impact on the future and effect its course. Kurzweil sheds light on our options. He argues that the prime question we will be asking in the next millennium will be, "Who am I?" We will be rapidly evolving, so the answer will necessarily be a moving target.

In any event, the sizzle the future is offering, as far as I am concerned, is in the journey. Kurzweil envisions an eternity in which we will expand our spiritual quest for greater understanding--now that is something for which I can choose immortality.