After Business Buy the Bible, I would rate this book; Success: American Style as Cook's most important book to date.

This is why foreigners have saved and planned to come to America.
It's SUCCESS: AMERICAN STYLE.

This is why we have FREE ENTERPRISE here.
It's SUCCESS: AMERICAN STYLE.

This is why Americans are far wealthier than people in any other country. It's SUCCESS: AMERICAN STYLE.

And this book tells me and all of us a lot about Mr. Wade Cook,
SUCESS: AMERICAN STYLE and a very proud American no doubt.

Notice there are no negative reviews here. I guess that tells us a lot about the bashers. I seriously doubt if Wades ever present bashers will ever read this book. Too bad--It's their loss!

And what a great book to shut Wades ever present detractors up. Only in this great country, does anyoe and everyone have the opportunity to reach the stars.Success American Style: Unfortunately terrorists and Wade bashers will never read and benefit from this outstandin work.Great book Wade. Keep em coming.

America is truly the land of opportuity.I found this book very motivational, inspiritional and rekindled my faith in the American Dream.This may be Mr. Cooks most important book to date (especially after 911). I also recommend Business Buy The Bible and Don't Set Goals The Old Way.These books will get your attitude tuned and help you reach those lofty goals that all too often lay dormant inside you.

As always, this collection of Dunn's is enlightening and rewarding. He's our best living American poet...

Local Visitations is a selection of free-verse poetry by Pulitzer prize-winner Stephen Dunn. Elegant and brief, these poems study the foibles of heroes who are only human. The Animals of America: The animals have come down from the hills/and through the forests and across the prairies./They are American animals, and carry with them/a history of their slaughter. There's not one/who doesn't sleep with an eye open.//Our of necessity the small have banded/with the large, the large with the large/of different species. When dark comes/they form an enormous circle.//It's all, after years of night-whispers/and long-range cries, coming together.//To make a new world the American animals/know there must be sacrifices. Every evening/a prayer is said for the spies who've volunteered/to be petted in the houses of the enemy./"They are savages," one reported,/"Let no one be fooled by their capacity for loving."

Opening with a playful and vivid poem, "Bowl Of Fruit" that, as always with Stephen Dunn, weaves its way confidently from bananas and oranges to yet another poignant and sincere statement on desire, Dunn's 12th book of poems revises familiar themes with an eye more towards celebration than despair.

Dunn hints of a Blake gone fiendish in lines such as "But surely by now you've come to realize/there is no worm, only this bowl of fruit/made of words, only these seductions." For a second, at least, the famed "invisible worm" of Blake's "The Sick Rose" is kept at bay in favor of the world's fleeting but "seductive" pleasures; a rather drastic change of tone from the almost ceaseless morbidity that characterized Dunn's previous volume, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Different Hours.

However, Dunn is hardly about to recant much of his past 11 collections of warnings in verse against the illusion of happiness, as in the wickedly enjambed poem, "Circular": "a belief in happiness bred/despair, though despair could be assuaged/by belief, which required faith . . . and best to have music/to sweeten a sadness, underscore joy."

Despite Dunn's urge towards life's morose truths, though, images of a modern-day Sisyphus daring a smile in the midst of his punishment, "a smile so inward it cannot be seen," and notions such as "at the bottom of depression, says James Hollis/is some meaningful task waiting to be found" suggest that Local Visitations is a kind of reconciliation with the harrowing blues of Different Hours.

If Different Hours advised against desire's inevitably painful temptations, many poems in Local Visitations transcend caution and despair in favor of delight and wonder. "The problem is how to look intelligent/with our mouths agape/how to be delighted, not stupefied/when the caterpillar shrugs and becomes a butterfly," Dunn avers in "Knowledge." If life's grander pleasures fail us, perhaps we might turn, instead, to its smaller joys. If the human being is doomed to fallibility, perhaps we might learn "how to love amid the encroachments," as Dunn suggests in his uniquely poignant plainspokenness.

But if, after so many books of thwarted longing, Dunn's observations on "how boring sorrows are" is not enough of a refreshment to his seasoned readers, then the playful, imaginative and engaging section of poems in which he escorts a cadre of famous authors through the landscape of his Native New Jersey serves as a remarkable new dimension to Dunn's distinctive and persistent voice.

"Because the famous usually have little to say/to each other after the first paeans of praise," Dunn explains, "the poet thought that for their own sakes/he'd have them live in separate towns." Pivoting off of this introductory poem, Dunn leaps into a succession of poems with titles such as "Chekhov in Port Republic," "Charlotte Bronte in Leeds Point," "George Eliot in Beach Haven," and "Twain in Atlantic City."

With his imagination tuned to a fever pitch, these particular poems read like short stories in verse, brimful of ideas, wit and confidence, guaranteeing the well-versed reader's pleasure. "Occasionally the weak survive/because the god that doesn't exist/wants to give us something to misinterpret/That's what Crane was thinking as he washed up on Longport Beach," Dunn narrates in "Stephen Crane in Longport."

While Dunn's playfulness here is more indicative of the work of Billy Collins or Deborah Garrison, still his voice maintains its gravity and cunning as he delves beneath the hearts of his subjects, revealing the alienation that burdened the young, brilliant Stephen Crane: "It's pointless, Crane wanted to say/wherever you're all going/but he knew they'd think he was lying/or maybe not even hear him."

Though a familiar tinge of helplessness enervates the book's tendency towards an awareness of the world's smaller, more manageable delights, it does not overwhelm or sour Dunn's attempt to emerge from the smolder and ruin of Different Hours. Local Visitations is likely one of Dunn's boldest and brightest books, suggesting that the resignation pervading Different Hours is only a temporary waiting room for those whose eyes are fixed on that "meaningful task waiting to be found."

Having read most of Dunn's poetry, and in particular, having read this book several times, I find that Dunn is a writer I can always come back to. His style is unique, and always gets to the crux of what seems to drive human actions. Not only are his poems accessible and inspiring but they exemplify why I read poetry.

Whether you're a novice of poetry or the next "Great One," you'll connect with these poems by Dunn. Not only is he truly a master of the language in free verse form, but also a master of bringing any subject matter to life. He has an understanding beyond what many poets often do, but at the same time he communicates this understanding through very accessible and clear writing. I am always going back to this book of poetry by Dunn.

(in particular, be sure to read "The Routine Things Around the House" and "At the Smithville Methodist Church")

I love Stephen Dunn's work for many reasons, for his clear, direct prose and his honesty about all subject matters. Circus of Needs embodies these reasons to the best of Dunn's abilities.

In this collection of poetry, there is a sense of sadness that is comforting. Dunn points out that life is not perfect, that all is not well; he speaks for the everyday, common man and acknowledges the beauty in our world that slips by unnoticed too often. The standout poem is "Instead of You," in which Dunn explains that "from the start all I wanted to explain was how things go wrong, how the heart's an empty place until it is filled, and how the darkness in forever waiting for its chance." The point is that Dunn is writing for us, the readers; he extracts and dissects subject matter, wanting to breathe a new life into the normal while examining it closely, like a butterfly. Although "there's no way to keep the ugliness out, ever," Dunn writes in an effort to understand what we all ignore, so that he can "pull you from the wreckage and kiss your bruises, so black and gold."

Every poem in this collection, from the aching "Sister" to the comical "Belly Dancer at the Hotel Jerome" to the lovely predictability of "Introduction to the 20th Century" brings fantasy and pleasure to the real. Dunn spins our boring reality into something intangible and surreal; he allows us to see with new eyes what might have been, what could be still. Circus of Needs is not his best collection (Between Angels gets my vote), but it is certainly unique and beautiful in its own right. From a lesser poet, this collection might be a pinnacle; from Dunn, it allows the reader to glimpse the distance he has traveled in his abilites and the possibilities open to him in the future.

This Book is about a king who lives in a castle. He has a baker called Adrian.The King always eats eggs. Adrian makes the king chicken eggs,goose eggs,duck eggs.Then he shouts More More More! The Next day he read in his Newspaper that a dodos egg was spotted on an island.So he told Adrian to prepare the boat.To get to The island.

Reading McLaughlin's poems is like listening to Janis sing. You feel this gutsy broad way down deep in your bones. She didn't just write these poems. She's lived in them and with them all her life.

While I have not read this entire book, today I heard the author himself read the (20 min!) poem, "Loves" from this book. After speaking with Stephen Dunn at the 1999 Millenium Future Leaders Summit, in connection with the White House Millenium Lectures, I can assure you that he is a highly interesting person, speaker and poet. His works are very introspective and offer a lot of entertainment, education, and thoughts to ponder! This is, I am sure, an excellent book.

Stephen Dunn has a beautiful voice that is in no way preachy or condescending to the reader. His poems are easy on the eyes and healing for the heart. S. Rea

Stephen Dunn is genious and I feel this is his best work yet, I have read this book at least twelve times, and I have't owned it that long.

Stephen Dunn is a wonderful writer whose work has evolved over the years from terribly funny to terribly poignant. He is also one of the nicest men you'll ever meet. If you've never read him and wonder what you'd think, find a copy of this book in the library and read the first poem, "The Guardian Angel," which is my personal favorite of all his works. If you like it as much as I did, you'll buy the book.

Stephen Dunn won the Pulitzer in 2001 for his collection of poetry, Different Hours. And unlike other Pulitzer winners (Carl Dennis' Practical Gods for example), this one might actually deserve the award. It is a pretty good collection. The poems are lyrical and interesting. Dunn isn't obsure. He doesn't ramble. It's a solid collection, with several really good poems ("Evanescence", "The Death of God", "Optimism", "John & Mary", "returning from an Artist's Studio", and "Story").

What a wonderfull book. I read this book twice and will read it again.His poetry settles in like a old friend. Read anything by Dunn that you can find.

Stephen Dunn allows us another ride into his life and his soul.

This is one of the better offerings from one of the better postmodern poets. Dunn, an academic, is amazingly proficient at avoiding the talkativeness of the academy poets, and he seems able to finish a poem without forcing it, a real treat. "Tuscon" involves a variation of evil encountered in a redneck bar, and is effective, and ditto for "Wild," set in Spain during what I would assume was the poet's youthful, "hippie" interlude. I especially enjoyed "Grace," a poem concerning the 1993 Phillies, in particular pitcher Terry Mulholland's willingness to forgive Mitch Williams for his unpardonable sin. Best of all, however, is the title piece ("Loosestrife") which concludes the book. From the vantage of his rural South Jersey home,Dunn reflects on Nature, on impending political change in Washington (circa 1994),and the changing seasons."The impatient, upstart crocuses/ and daffodils fell once again/ for the lies of March./They simply wanted to exist. The warm sun must have said Now, /and they gave themselves/ to that first, hardly refusable touch." Thanks to Dunn, and to the likes of Gluck (The Wild Iris)and Dobyns(Cemetery Nights), well written poetry, enjoyable poetry, poetry capable of exploring the mortal, the sinister, and the tragic, appears to be making a comeback.

I have recently read the book Loosestrife: Poems, and i highlyrecommend it. Stephen Dunn has magnificently described Purpleloosestrife and it's threat to our society! Please read this book andstop the spread of purple loosestrife! These poems are an inspiration to everyone! I recommend that everyone read this book! THANK YOU Stephen Dunn!