As someone who is learning Norwegian (which makes Swedish, the language of Sodergran's poetry, intelligible to me), one of the strong points of this book is the that the poetry appears in its original language facing pages of English translation. This is always a great idea when reading translated poetry, and happily it's done here. Katchadourian is a very fine translator as far as I can judge, but it's still nice to see the original and "check" your own translation against hers. There is a time or two I interpret something differently!

Edith Sodergran was a very talented, singular poet in her own time, and the power and beauty of her poetry hasn't faded. That is most likely because she was ahead of her time in both the form and content of her poetry, and because, like all great poets, the particular truths of her life echo and illuminate human existence, period, and she writes with a great sensitivity to language. This volume contains selections from each of her books, and although how Sodergran wrote about things changed as she experienced life and searched for peace and truth through various philosophical/religious traditions, there always remain her underlying themes: a reverence for nature, a respect for her particular experience as a woman, and a concern for the meaning of various forms of suffering--war, poverty, hunger, disillusionment, illness, loss, and loneliness make up the short list! In her own time, Sodergran's poetry was, for mainstream Finland, a shock, a scandal, or a joke. Nowadays, it isn't--or at least is less so. I hope this fine translation continues to widens her appreciation in areas outside of Scandinavia. I would recommend this book to fans of what one might call feminist poetry.

After a three-week trip to Finland in summer 2000, a great friend gave me this book as a going away present. Rarely has a single book or poet so deeply reached my heart and soul. Edith Sodergran is a wonderful writer, who should be much more well-known worldwide than she is. She was far beyond her time; give her your time now. You will not be disappointed, and I promise you that Sodergran will make a place in your heart.

"We are the least expected and the darkest red,/
tigerspots, taut strings, fearless stars." --Edith Sodergran, "Violet Twilights"

The marvelous poetry of Edith Sodergran is unfortunately not well known outside of Scandinavia. Stina Katchadourian has done a nice job of translatiion, (always difficult with poetry), and the bilingual presentation lets readers get some of the flavor of the original. The translations in the Bloodaxe Press series are in some cases better than Katchadourian's, but this book is stil well worth reading. The description of Sodergran's life in the preface is a little overromanticized as well - while not generally popular during her lifetime, she was appreciated by many in the younger finlandssvenska reading public.

This is the first in a wonderful trilogy.

Susannah is beautiful enough to make any lord proud to call her his lady, but she is not part of the aristocracy. Her brother manages to arrange a visit for her with Warwick Jones, one of her brother's business contacts. This will allow her to meet and greet the cream of the crop as Warwick is accepted in every drawing room. But she finds her love very close by, in a friend of her hosts' - the beautiful Julian.

Warwick watches them grow close with happiness at first, then pain as he realizes that he loves Susannah. Now Susannah must decide who she belongs with - and how to do so at the expense of someone else.

Edith Layton writes a fabulous story full of romance, intruige and fun. If you love a great historical romance - this is a great one to read!!

Layton did not set out to write a trilogy (according to her own website), but this book ended up the first book in a trilogy. The other two books are #2 THE GAME OF LOVE (featuring Arden Lyons, a secondary character in this book), and #3 SURRENDER TO LOVE (featuring the [person] of this book).

Layton sets up the book a bit like THE DUKE'S WAGER, in that there is a triangle, with two men, both friends, competing for the love of a single woman. Except that this is not THE DUKE'S WAGER, where both men are titled, wealthy, and out to seduce the girl. This is actually a far more complicated story.

One of the men - Mr Warwick Jones - is a wealthy untitled gentleman, with considerable social clout but he prefers to be a recluse. He is very good with women (in bed), but believes that he is unlovable (reference is made to his unhappy childhood but it is not beaten into the read). Warwick is a tortured hero in that his feelings of inadequacy do not warp him but they leave him feeling that he is undesirable to women and ultimately not loveable. The other is a Viscount, but a Viscount who is virtually bankrupt, except for one entailed estate.

At the start of the novel, we meet an unusual coachman who turns out to be a viscount - Julian, Viscount Hazelton. Lord Hazelton is down on his luck, and earning money with the few skills he has left. At a country inn, he runs into an old friend - Warwick Jones. Warwick persuades Julian to mortgage his entailed estate and to invest that money with him.

When some thugs attacks Julian in the street,he ends up recovering at Warwick's home. It is at this point that Susannah moves in complete with chaperone (taking up a prior invitation from Warwick to her brother). This is when the relationship between the three actually develops.

Warwick seeks revenge for the cowardly attack on Julian, and his search carries him into the heart of London's underwold, presided over by a leonine giant, called naturally Lion. Who he is, remains a mystery in this book. [Find out who he is from Bk 2 - THE GAME OF LOVE]. The criminal element forms an important part of the story, tied as it is with Warwick's family history and Julian's occupation.

At the same inn where Warwick and Julian met, they run into one of Warwick's Cit partnersm (the son of a fishmonger made good) and his only sister Susannah Logan who has been well-education. She is too well-educated for Cit men, and she is too under-bred for society, except for those lords seeking to repair their fortunes through marriage, and she won't have them. Susannah is however interested in this particular lord - both for his golden looks and for the fact that he is trying honest work. This is a lord she could marry.

Julian Hazelton (Lord Hazelton), the other "hero", is however in love with a lady far above his reach. She is the Incomparable Lady Marianna Moredon [sometimes called Lady Moredon, an error like a few other errors with titles]. His lady is however under the guardianship of her brother Lord Robert Moredon [actually Lord Moredon] who hates both Julian and Warwick since their schooldays. Why? Read the book to find out.

So, we have Susannah pining for Julian who is pining for Marianna. And we have Warwick pining for Susannah, but also deeply conscious both of his friendship with Julian and that he is not attractive to women (or so he thinks). Susannah believes that her low birth makes her unacceptable not just to society but to any gentleman of rank, except Julian and he is unavailable. Warwick believes that he can only purchase the physical aspects of love and not find genuine happiness. And Julian believes that he is in love with Marianna Moredon and that she will wait for him if she can.

By the end, the love triangle has been sorted out. Obviously Susannah cannot marry both men. She gets her wish, sort of. She also gets the right man. She has done considerable growing up in the course of the book, and both her suitors have learned quite a bit about themselves and love.

Unlike THE DUKE'S WAGER, where both men set out calculatedly to ruin the heroine for a wager (making them unlikeable to many readers), in this book, both men behave honorably, more or less. Both have physical relationships with women for the night (portrayed briefly but tellingly)

My only regrets were that Warwick's family - his mother, his stepfather and his step-siblings - were mentioned only during his childhood memories. Even told second-hand , I would have liked to have seen a little more of them.

The story is told with a lot of introspection and narrative. While there is dialogue and action, the story is slower than a Regency historical might be. But things do happen, and the action ranges all over London and outside London. There is plenty of excitement, and a dazzling wealth of characters from different walks of life. But the story itself is centered firmly on the three characters we meet early in the story - the lady Susannah, and her two gentlemen.

On a re-read it was interesting to see how certain secrets were hinted at earlier through an episode here and there, or the description of one character through the eyes of another. This is a longer traditional Regency (a Signet Super Regency), albeit with frank if brief portrayal of intimacies. It is not quite a historical, in that stress is played on introspection and character growth.

Rating = 4.9
Recommended = Very Highly

P.S. If you are interested in what Warwick should look like, please check out the drawing on Layton's page ... I hated the cover (talk about a hero groping the heroine!).

Layton takes the usual regency stereotypes (a blond god of a hero; a dark, mysterious, cynical hero; a gorgeous, fiesty blonde) and turns them into people you care about. There is a love triangle, and I usually LOATHE love triangles, but you care enough about the people involved and the circumstances are so well laid-out that it doesn't feel contrived.

It is more than a piece of fluffy writing (though, thank goodness, it is that too.)in that you do see how the main characters mature -- and realize they've grown up, or have become vulnerable.

The secondary characters (Lion, an underworld kingpin, a countess/chaperone who fades in and out of the scene, a barmaid, even the dreadful beauty that one of the hero yearns for) are great too. They are interesting but don't steal the stage from the main characters.

The repressed villian was over-the-top, but, after all, we are talking regency here. And actually he wasn't entirely unbelievable or even unsympathetic. . . (when he started raving about the golden god's beauty, for some reason I was reminded of a Monty Python routine . . . maybe the crazed, obsessed barber?)

I'm a new reader, but now I have to hunt down every book this woman has written. She is AMAZING.

Thank you, Ms. Layton, for adding class and good writing to the romance novel!

More than a quarter of a century ago my sisters and I were captivated by E. Nesbit, and particularly by THE MAGIC CITY. Long unavailable (I have scoured used book shops and the Net for copies for various children) it is great to have it easily available once more. I am happy to report that my own daughter was as taken with it as her aunts and I a generation earlier, and like us she at once began building magic cities of her own. I realize that I risk the wrath of Potterites everywhere, but I suspect that in a hundred years children and their parents will still be enjoying The Magic City while Harry is at most the subject of earnest dissertations on odd trends in the early 21st century. If you have a spark of imagination and an eager child handy, grab this book.

Years before I even heard of Harry Potter, my mother picked up the 1910 Macmillan hardcover version of this book at a garage sale for a mere fifty cents. (Imagine, a turn-of-the-century copy of a great book for fifty cents!) At first I was put off by its volume (333 pages with illustrations) but I managed to lap up every last word of it...about seven times, I think.

Philip Haldane, our hero, and his half-sister Helen are orphans. Helen has been Philip's sister, teacher and playmate for what seemed like all his life, and there wasn't a shadow of a doubt in his mind that this would go on for ever; he wanted it to. But the unimaginable happens -- Helen marries and goes honeymooning around Europe, leaving Philip at his new residence, friendless and bitter. But soon his new, seemingly dreary life is changed by his embarking on an exciting adventure, so splendid and picturesque that he never would have dreamed that he had built it with his own hands. You see, Philip had always played building games, and he built not with plain old building blocks but with...well, everything -- everything from ink-wells to bronze Egyptian figurines! And it was while he was in the depths of his misery and pining harder than ever to see his sister again that he, the Creator, discovered it -- his Magic City -- and its delightful secrets.

Now, to look at it from a Harry Potter fan's viewpoint. I shouldn't be giving any clues, you really should have read this book at least once before comparing it with HP, but I'll just say...Philip is of course the Harry Potter of this book, but he is also the Ron Weasley because of his initial malice towards his new stepsister, Lucy -- the Hermoine Granger of this book. The Grey Nurse is the Snape/Malfoy/Voldermort figure of this book. The Great Sloth is rather like Scabbers, and Polly is somewhat Hedwig-like. And Mr. Noah is almost EXACTLY like Professor Dumbledore; if you look at the part of the book when he goes to visit the prison, you'll know what I mean :)

If that still doesn't grab the average Potter fan's attention, how about this: J.K. Rowling favours E. Nesbit as one of her must-reads! Enjoy...

Edith Nesbit is one of the most imaginitive children's writers around - and she's been around for a hundred years!

This is her best book. A boy dreams and finds himself in an equally real world, made up of the pretend cities he's made while awake.

I read The Magic City back in 1989 and spent years searching in second hand books stores for my own copy until I tracked it down on amazon.com!

I like that book on Mrs. Spitzer's Garden and I gave it to my grade 5 teacher from 1999 & 2000 named Mrs. Laureen Murphy for her husband for christmas!

I like gardening and this book.

Cute, cute, cute. This is a darling book with delightful illustrations. The flowers have faces, which fascinate our 2 year old. She just loves it. It's colorful and cheerful and a real delight to read. It's one of the first ones she chooses to read before bedtime. A great book for toddlers and parents too!

What a joy to read! The illustrations are beautiful and add details to the reading. It's summertime and the principal gives Mrs. Spitzer some seeds to plant in her garden. She does all the right things and up come the sprouts. Plants and children--a wonderful analogy of what goes on in a classroom during the year. Teachers, you can't miss making the text-to-self connections. Kids love to hear this book too.

William Baldwin writes for the novice as well as for experts in the field of hypnosis. His technique for releasing blocks and "dark" energy is greatly enhanced with actual accounts from clients in his spiritual work. As a hypnotherapist, I recommend this book to anyone in the field of hypnosis and related modalities. Thank you Dr. Baldwin for your research and thoughtful writing.

I am not going to try to add more details about what's in the book because the previous review covered it all. I can honestly say that I have learned more from this one book than any other book I have ever read. I have read so very many books on hypnosis, past life regressions, spirituality... you name it, I've read it. What makes this such a must-read is not it's significant background information (which it has), nor is it the specific examples of exactly what to say given different situations (these are invaluable - I wish I had read this book the first time I was suddenly confronted with an "attachment" because my skeptic self very much freaked!), but it's the many, many examples provided. So many! Not only did I discover a whole new world of knowledge but I didn't want to stop reading as there were so many stories. Every therapist needs to read this book. It is a masterpiece.

Reviewed by Roger Woolger, Ph.D.

William Baldwin's eagerly awaited book, Spirit Releasement Therapy, A Technique Manual is a brilliant, daring tour de force whose appearance I am delighted to celebrate. Dr. Baldwin has integrated an enormous range of techniques and much accumulated wisdom gleaned from past life therapy, spirit possession syndrome, soul retrieval, inner child work, multiple personality disorder (MPD), or dissociative identity disorder (DID), and traditional psychotherapy.

In the Introduction he offers a very useful and concise overview of spirit possession and its treatment throughout history. In section two, Regression Therapy, he presents an up-to-date survey of the principles and techniques currently used in present life and past life regression therapy by clinicians working in the field. Dr. Baldwin outlines induction techniques, ways of working though the life, remembered traumatic events, the death transition and many other techniques, and includes useful examples of how to apply them.

Section three, Recovery of Soul-mind Fragmentation, though relatively short, is in many ways the pivotal section of the book, theoretically speaking. Dr. Baldwin outlines and integrates the shamanic concept of "soul loss" in reaction to trauma with psychiatric views of personality splitting and the kind of dissociation to be found in extremis in MPD (DID). The key concept here is the idea of subpersonalities or fragmentary souls. This notion figured quite prominently in the early psychiatric work of Jung, Janet and Assagioli, and later came to form the basis of those techniques for the psychotherapeutic integration of the personality developed by Psychosynthesis, Jungian analytic psychology, psychodrama, Gestalt therapy, Voice Dialogue and, most recently, Inner Child work.

Section four, Spirit Releasement Therapy, is the longest of the book. It contains the highly original battery of techniques developed by Dr. William Baldwin during years of research and therapeutic practice. Because of its extraordinary comprehensiveness and mass of critical detail, will surely stand as a major reference source for years to come. Dr. Baldwin describes and illustrates therapeutic strategies for working with a huge range of possessing entities or psycho-spiritual formations. Most importantly, he provides specific lines of inquiry that enable the therapist to make a differential diagnosis in difficult cases (e.g. sub and alter personalities vs. human spirits, dark force entities, and those from "far away" that might be designated aliens or extraterrestrials).

This highly important breakdown of these confusing phenomena into three orders or types of possession necessarily implies a different metaphysical and metapsychological status for different possessing entities. There are different strategies for releasing a human entity and a demonic entity, or working with a multiple personality alter, for example. It is precisely such crystal clear differentiation between the different orders and types of attachment, along with an abundance of clearly illustrated case examples that makes this section so valuable and quite unique.

The notion of attributing numerous varieties of psychopathology and physical conditions to the intrusion of non-resident spirits or entities is one that has been assiduously resisted and ridiculed by main stream psychologists and psychiatrists for most of the century. If the straight psychological world scoffs at past lives and reincarnation it is openly contemptuous about practices that go by the name of exorcism, depossession, or spirit releasement therapy (Baldwin's own user friendly coinage). After all, they would say, haven't the great advances in psychoanalysis and the grounding of psychological research in empiricism and scientific method come about precisely because the old superstitions about ghosts, witchcraft and magic have total discredited?

Apparently not. Much of the populace at large still continues to believe in "the presence of other worlds" (to borrow a phrase from Swedenborg) while the open antagonism of the split between religion, channeling, esoteric healing, etc. (the perspective of spirit) and psychology (the perspective of soul or psyche) refuses to go away. The very fact that Dr. Baldwin does not publish separate books on past life therapy and spirit releasement therapy is of crucial significance in and of itself. And secondly he implicitly recognized that regression therapy and spirit releasement therapy complement, in the sense of complete each other. They are part of a greater endeavor, as Dr. Baldwin himself puts it:

The purpose of regression therapy is to heal the scars of the soul. Nothing is left out, no human experience is denied; the aim is uncovering the truth. No amount of narrowly defined professional training, no restrictive religious training, no arbitrary limits of any kind can be allowed to interfere with the exploration of the spiritual reality (p.38).

This long overdue reintegration of the spiritualist/shamanic perspective back into psychotherapy and spiritual healing is, I believe, the next and essential stage in the development of psychology, a kind of return to the source. And right at the vanguard of this reunion we have William Baldwin's remarkable book. It is a milestone we will all look back to. I predict it will be referred to and argued about for years.

The tobacco industry is one of the most evil industries allowed to operate in America. From child labor to seductive advertising to distribution of a deadly product and ending in mountains of money in political bribes, The US Tobacco Industry has just about every imaginable negative attribute of corporate America, all rolled into one, neat package.

Tobacco War puts a face on a faceless industry, and it is not a very pretty face. From exposing the hidden truths of the seductive advertising schemes and the green blood that flows through the veins of America's political system in every level, Tobacco War doesn't simply archive news stories, lawsuits and events, but connects the dots and presents the reader with a realistic picture of how big tobacco operates.

Likewise, tomorrows activist are reading this book today to gain the edge in a climate of misinformation. Provides grass-roots information for activists to develop and deploy campaigns.

Think your cigarette maker cares about you? They have you hooked, and you are the least of their worries. They are working to reel the next generation of smokers in for the kill.

And so far, the catch is coming in... wallet and all.

"The Tobacco War" is part social and political history, part "how-to" manual. Not a dry catalogue of events, but written with a sense of the human drama surrounding each twist and turn of the tale. Co-author Stan Glantz, involved so deeply in the movement, offers the most incisive, comprehensive, and definitive perspective on the California anti-tobacco effort available. I was astounded to read of the intrigue and jaw-dropping audacity of the Tobacco Industry and its allies in the State government on one hand, and the incredible courage and tenacity of those fighting it in the most aggressive and effective way in history on the other. The growth in political savvy and will of the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association, and the American Cancer Society is catalogued in detail, as are the machinations of the State legislature, the governor's office, and lobbyists and pressure groups when money comes up for grabs. This is an outstanding text for the social or political scientist, activists of any type, and anyone in state local politics. It is a remarkable and practical instruction manual for anyone in tobacco use prevention today. These heroes have not left the field. Their enemy, the Tobacco Industry, is immortal.

I could hardly put this book down. The battle being fought is truly a life and death matter, alliances and strategies evolve on both sides, and the Tobacco Industry uses their multi-million war chests to mislead the public over and over and over again. Even when you think you can relax after a victory by the anti-tobacco forces, in the next chapter the Tobacco Industry is lurking behind yet another door with a butcher's cleaver, which ends up being wielded by tobacco funded politicians and the California Medical Association to cut tobacco education funds and to weaken the anti-tobacco media campaign. Really this book is about much more than California and its battle with the tobacco industry. It is the best book I've ever read about why we need campaign finance reform and effective sunshine laws. You are shown all the nitty-gritty details, the back room deals, the closed-door bargaining. You'll emerge from this book well-prepared to detect lies in future wars, and to read between-the-lines in daily newspaper coverage.

I'll second everything written in the previous review. Efron also exposes the fact that the 1970s laws explicitly favored any study that might blame a chemical for cancer over any study that might exonerate it--EVEN IF THE FIRST STUDY WAS DEEPLY FLAWED. In the cases of red dye #2, the study that "proved" the chemical's guilt was one in which the researchers abandoned the rats in their cages and came back later to find many of them starved and dead. With evidence rules like that, you could probably find that water causes cancer.

But the even more important finding in this book is the presence in our culture of an astonishing belief system, "an apocalyptic movement" as Efron calls it. It predicts the ending of the world as we know it (extreme predictions of a cancer epidemic) unless we all immediately and drastically change our ways. When you put a bright light on this belief system, it sounds downright medieval.

Efron focuses exclusively on the issue of cancer, but it's impossible to ignore the apocalyptic overtones of modern environmentalism as a whole.

I've read this book cover to cover twice and would love to see it updated. But even if that never happens, it stands as an important cultural document.

An outstanding expose. Efron reveals the agenda of environmentalists: the destruction of industry, and with it human civilization. Efron demolishes the "one molecule theory" approach to chemical regulation. This approach holds that, since we cannot know precisely how much of a given chemical is likely to cause cancer, we should ban any chemical that test show to be a "potential carcinogen". Many "experts" testifying before Congress advocated just such an approach. The problem is that chemicals are not just by-products of industry. They are found naturally, in plants, water, the air, soil, etc. Efron demonstrates the prevalence of some of the chemicals on the EPA's list of "potentials" in nature. Efron also exposes the fraud behind the determination that a given chemical is a "potential" carcinogen. The EPA largely relies on high-dose animal tests. In some cases, the doses were so high that the animals died from poisoning, not cancer. Furthermore, with numerous examples, Efron details how some chemicals cause cancer in some animals, but not in others, and that there seems to be no real pattern. Nor does there seem to be any animal that is a good proxy for humans. Overall, this is an outstanding book for anyone who wants to understand the politics of environmentalism, and how public policy is shaped. While it was written in 1984, the same scenarios described in the book are played out today, with new names and new scares. Unfortunately, it is out of print, but perhaps it can someday be revived.

Body, Text and Science establishes Marianne Sawicki as the contemporary authority on the phenomenology of Edith Stein in the English language. It builds on the foundations laid by Mary Catherine Baseheart (e.g. Person in the World, Kluwer, 1997), but limits itself to the philosophy of the young Edith Stein (On the Problem of Empathy (1916) and Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (1922)). Its major achievement is to define the kind of contribution Stein made to Husserl's Ideen II. This unfinished work is often invoked to document Husserl's positions on empathy, constitution, the body and intersubjectivity. But Sawicki establishes that the work in fact was co-authored by Stein and that both authors attempted to expose their own doctrine in it. Stein thought that Husserl should rethink the problem of constitution in relation to empathy, but she also complained he never did. In contrast, Stein's doctrine of intersubjectivity relies on an understanding of constitution that integrates empathy.

So, the title of the book, at first sight quite long-winded, is justified. It is about the 'literacy of investigative practices and the phenomenology of Edith Stein', but more significantly it is about 'body, text and science'. These three keywords symbolize both what brings Stein and Husserl together and what separates them. Stein affirms that individualization takes place in relation to the body, whereas Husserl affirms that it takes place before experience. These contradictory affirmations occur in the same text, Ideen II. In it, moreover, Stein insists that intersubjectivity is the foundation of science, whereas Husserl holds on to the transcendental ego as what founds it. This oscillation between Stein's and Husserl's identification with and differentiation from each other's textual productions is portrayed throughout the six chapters of Body, Text and Science.

In Chapter One: 'The Genesis of Phenomenology' Sawicki traces the sources of On the Problem of Empathy. The result is spectacular. She documents the roots of phenomenology in hermeneutics, the cultivation of this germ in the Munich Circle, and its transmission from there to Göttingen. The themes of personality, motivation and science are compared in the investigation of the philosophies of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Lipps, Pfänder, Conrad-Martius, Scheler and Reinach. This, however, is only the build-up towards an investigation of the problem of empathy in Chapter Two: 'Husserl's Early Treatments of Intersubjectivity'. Husserl inherited his interest in intersubjectivity from Lipps, through his Munich-students. Lipps had (a fact somewhat overlooked by Sawicki) understood empathy to be a co-constituting (mit-konstituirender) factor in the object, providing it with independence (Selbständigkeit). He thus presented Husserl with the two terms that were to determine his later thought: constitution and empathy. These fundamental concepts are, however, traced by Sawicki through the Logical Investigations and Ideen to Ideen II. She discerns in this last text what she terms 'two alternative solutions' to the problem of intersubjectivity: the 'priority of bodily life' and the 'priority of transcendental constitution'. The first solution, which is Stein's, takes identification of the self and of the other to take place within experience, whereas the second solution, which is Husserl's, affirms the unity of the transcendental I as the unity of experience. Sawicki argues that Husserl did not publish the work himself because he considered it to be incoherent. Perhaps he also viewed Stein's Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities as the answer to the problems he grappled with in Ideen II, and saw no need to publish his own attempts. In any case Sawicki's analysis means that Husserl's doctrine of intersubjectivity no longer can be read without recourse to Stein's Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, as this latter work constitutes not only the first commentary on Ideen II, but also the finished form of one version of it.

Chapter Three: 'Edith Stein's Hermeneutic Theory' is a fairly literal commentary facilitating, but not dispensing with, the reading of Stein's On the Problem of Empathy, which in turn is necessary for the understanding of Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities. The commentary is critical to the point of being irritating, because Sawicki is annoyed by what she sees as flaws in Stein's analysis. The accusative method, addressing Stein directly as 'you', most efficiently avoids complacency, but does not entirely steer clear of being unreasonable.

The remaining three chapters of Body, Text and Science concern science. Chapter Four: 'Edith Stein's Hermeneutic Practices' criticizes Stein's scientific contributions, including her 'ventriloquism' in and 'chiseling' at other philosophers' publications, as well as her self-interpretation/presentation in her autobiography. Chapter Five: 'Interpretations of Edith Stein' categorizes and assesses various ways of understanding Stein according to their ideological drift. It distinguishes three ways of reading: 'docility', 'echoing' and 'adaptive reception', whereof the author prefers the last, because it preserves a relative equality of reader and writer and airs the aggression which is subdued in the other two types. Chapter Six: 'Science as Literacy' attempts such an 'adaptive reception' of Stein's theory of science in (what has since been translated by Sawicki as) Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities. It confronts this theory with psychoanalysis and feminism, which share with phenomenology the ambition of founding science. Despite the rather insufficient analysis of Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, this chapter makes the book more than a study of the philosophy of Edith Stein, because it envisages a kind of application for it in a general theory of what happens when minds meet. An Auseinandersetzung with the hermeneutical theories of Heidegger and Gadamer may be indispensable to bring this theory to completion.

I have read Dr. Sawicki's book in it's dissertation form. She presents the philosophy of a great thinker overlooked by history due to gender and ethnicity. Stein's epistemology was a unique divirgence from Husserl's positivistic viewpoint.

Academic nursing has used the phenomenology paradigm for over a decade to study the "lived experiences" of health care consumers. Given the fact that Dr. Edith Stein served as a nurse in WWI, one would think her phenomenology would have attracted the attention of nurse scholars. Disregarding her nursing service, one would think Stein's feminist epistemology would compel nurses in academic hierarchy to study her work rather than her contempories who opportunistically eclipsed her.

Dr. Sawicki has written a work of painstaking detail without sinking into obfuscation. Her wit emerges in unexpected places. Her portrayal of Edith Stein is not a pencil sketch, it is a fully fleshed portrait. This is a significant work which surely places Dr. Sawicki among the foremost living authorities on Dr. Edith Stein.

An English gentleman, Alfred Kensington, newly arrived in the colony of Virginia, rewards the bond-boy who saved his son's life by buying his indenture papers, freeing him, and offering him employment in his household. The boy is strong, good-looking, reliable and intelligent, and eager to please. The only fly in the ointment is that he insists that he's actually an earl - that he was kidnapped five years earlier and sold into slavery. The boy has to be mad!

But some years later, when Jared is now 27, he announces that he is going back to England to try to prove that his story is true. He has no expectations of regaining his title and lands, but he wants to confront his uncle, the one who arranged his kidnap. In the meantime, Alfred's daughter Della has fallen deeply in love with Jared, who only sees her as a sister.

The scene then shifts to England; Jared journeys to his old home, only to find that the present earl is his younger brother Justin, whom he'd believed dead all those years. He's quickly ensconced as the earl, lord of all he surveys and owner of all the lands and money which go with the title. But he can't help feeling a lingering, nagging sense of guilt about taking everything away from his brother. Even Justin's fiancee, Fiona, was actually betrothed from birth to the Earl... not the earl's younger brother. And it seems that Fiona would be only too happy to switch her affections to Jared.

It's into this tangled situation that Della arrives some weeks later, visiting as part of a last-ditch effort to persuade Jared to see her as a woman instead of his sister - and if he won't, to say goodbye. But she quickly realises that there's more going on here than she expected; Jared the Earl is a very different man from Jared the merchant in Virginia. Does she stand a chance with this new Jared?

This is a love story, but it's also a story about a man finding out who - and what - he really is. Jared was degraded as a young boy, and he carries the scars of that part of his life still: some visible, such as those on his back, and some invisible and carried inside himself. He can't accept that he is worthy to be an aristocrat, because he was brought so low. His friends and family must convince him - and he must convince himself - that true nobility comes from within, regardless of someone's birth or upbringing. Jared's soulsearching is very well told; sometimes painful, and always engrossing.

Very highly recommended - if you can get your hands on a copy, snap it up! One of Layton's best.

Come along on the emotional roller-coaster life of Jared Bellington, the Earl of Alveston, kidnapped and sold into bondage at the very young age of seven, while his six-year-old brother was drowned. Wicked uncles are such a hazard to young heirs who are also orphans! His bondage brings him to America.

There, at the age of twelve, he saves the life of a young boy, is bought by the boy's father, and meets for the first time, the five-year-old Della Kensington. Drawn to each other in spite of the disparity in their stations of life--their purported stations in life, that is, for no one believes Jared's story--they grow up as not quite sister and brother. Jared has but one goal in life; to return to England and reclaim his inheritance. Only then will he be whole again.

By the time Della is nearing twenty, Jared is finally ready for the journey to his past. He encounters surprise after surprise, the first being that the current Earl is that younger brother, Justin, whom he thought dead. The second is the warmth and sincerity of the welcome offered by the new Earl, and his fiancée, Fiona, from a neighboring estate. She has been promised since her cradle to the Earl of Alveston, and is perfectly willing to switch her allegiance to whomever holds the position.

Into this mix comes Della, a young woman wise enough to know that sometimes freedom binds stronger than chains. As the two couples wind their way through Georgian society new dangers appear.

This is truly an emotion-packed story of star-crossed lovers. You won't want to put it down. Most likely, you won't be able to, either.

This is a book for all age readers. I picked it to read a few pages to grad students in my reading methods class as a tradebook that could be used to teach local area (VA/MD/PA) history, realistic way of portraying war, character development, or just a good read. Thank goodness I read it ahead of time--I cried at the ending. Beautifully told with uplifting ending even tho' the main character dies in battle (as he did in real life).

Through suspense and and comedy this book portrays a realistic character. When you read this book you feel like you are right there. Charley seems just like the hundreds of young men who jumped at the chance to serve their country. Written by Edith Morris Hemingwy, I would recommend this book any day.