I've been in business 35 years and thought I knew all the communication techniques. Boy was I wrong! This is a fast read and when I was finished I couldn't wait to try improving my voicemail communications. Of course in today's environment of Voicemail Hell that is easy to do. I left detailed, upbeat messages and I got informative and friendly responses. I'm ordering the book for two sons who are business owners. I know it will help them. I strongly recommend this book for anyone who runs a business, sells for a living, or has a family on the go. It will be the best few dollars you spend. P.S. I wish I had written the book!

Everyone uses voicemail, but few actually use it effectively. This book tells how to use voice mail productively and how to avoid pitfalls.

This book is a quick read that provides us with great tips on how to be more effective in our use of an underutilized tool -- voicemail. If followed, the ten tenets should make every reader more efficient in their day to day business and personal lives and free up that most elusive resource -- time. The examples given after each of the "ten commandments" are fun to read and really drive each of the writer's points home. This is a book every business person -- and really, non-business person, too -- must read and follow. If everyone obeyed the tenets of the book, it would make all of our lives alot easier!

I bought this book for my 14-year-old daughter and wish I had gotten it two years sooner. She read it quickly, couldn't put it down, and laughed out loud more than once. She said the humor in the book really made it easy for her to accept the "messages" that the authors were trying to deliver. She especially liked the "Kids with a Clue," and wants to take the book to her Health class at school for the teacher to recommend to other students. We both feel that the book approaches a difficult subject with humor as well as great advice (Yes, I read the book, too, BEFORE I passed it on to my child). Well worth the read!

This book was an excellent source of information on pressures facing teens today. I read it hoping to gain some insight on how to relate to the issues that will face my children in the upcoming years. I was well-informed, and extremely entertained. This guide will certainly help parents to see things from the perspective of their kids, as well as teach the kids who read it some valuable lessons. And all of this is done in a light tone that never somes across as preachy! A truly terrific book!

"Surviving Peer Pressure for Teens" is a wonderful guide for educators! As a teacher of Middle School children this is an enlightening guide to the inner workings of their lives. You may not think Middle School students faces 'these' issues but unforuntately today they truly do!The book deals with everything from acting cool, to dressing cool and includes a poignant chapter on drinking and drugs. The authors, who openly admit they are just 'two chicks' use phrase and 'lingo' that I hear from my students in school--language that kids will enjoy hearing and would be able to relate to. The authors also adequately note and encourage teens to seek out help, beyond the confines of the text. The book also has sections called 'Kids with a Clue', where real teens open up about their personal experiences and how they were dealt with.
I recommend this book to any educator teaching middle-high school. Although some of my Middle School children aren't offically teens you can be assured they are experiencing this pressure ten-fold. As teachers we must understand our students, just like parents. This book is certainly able to provide a greater understanding of the pressures that "our" children face each day. I would also agree that giving this book to a Teen, for whom it truly is designed, would be most appropriate! Perhaps, teens would be intially frustrated by receiving such a text but would change their opinions as soon as they begin reading Chapter 1. Kudos to the authors. Thank you for helping me gain a greater insight into the lives of my students.

I love this book!

Although it's focus is specifically on facilitating participatory decision making, it is an excellent resource for all who facilitate or teach. I particularly like the concrete suggestions on how to navigate a whole-room discussion (stacking, mirroring, paraphrasing, etc.).

However, my favorite part of this book is a beautifully done 3-page section describing common difficult situations - someone is making jokes in the back, your audience is falling asleep, one person won't shut up. The book goes on to detail the ways that facilitators usually deal with these problems, every one of them a power play of some sort, and offers suggestion for BETTER ways to handle the situation. As a trainer myself, I rely heavily on this book when I conduct "train the trainers" sessions.

Especially for those who train around sensitive or controversial issues, this information is invalauable. Thanks for writing this book!

Although I had never facilitated a meeting before, this book provided me with plenty of good practical ideas and just the right amount of theory to help me successfully facilitate a major brainstorming meeting. I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs to get up to speed quickly on the subject of facilitation.

I've been facilitating for several years; I often have people ask for a book recommendation , and this is always the one I name. You will find this book useful if you are facilitating for the first time, or if you are an old pro.

Since you can read the table of contents for this book, I won't repeat it here. My favorites are the model (mentioned in several other reviews) and the different ways to build consensus.

There are other books that have more in depth coverage of each of the topics. What Kaner and his colleagues have done is get to the "gems" of those books for you. It is as if a friend read a bunch of literature on this topic and boiled it all down into one easy-to-use manual. (No, I don't know any of the authors :-))

My only complaint about this book is the format. I find the graphics and the multiple fonts a little difficult to read. I usually hand out the book with the disclaimer "it looks a little hokey, but the content is really solid." If you can move past the graphic design, you'll love this book.

This is a beautiful story of how we are loved and acceptable to God even though we are imperfect creatures. The gist of the story is the crippled lamb was not allowed "to run with the herd", but was very welcome in the stable where the Baby Jesus was born. He was honored above all lambs by being in the presence of such a gift as the Christ Child.

So many children have low self-esteem. This book offers a boost. The crippled lamb would have been totally out as a sacrifice in ancient Judea, but he was totally in the circle of Jesus's love.

The illustrations are excellent. This book is a new classic in Christmas literature.

The illustrations in this book are absolutely beautiful! They capture my children's attention and even I can't turn the page without looking at the artwork. They story is equally as beautiful. It is about a small lamb who doesn't feel he belongs because he is not as "perfect" as the other lambs. He has a tremendous friend, named Abigail, who always reminds him that "God has a special place for those who don't belong." I cannot count the times this book as been read to teach my children how to be a friend to someone "different" or how to stand the trials of being the one who is not like everyone else. It is a touching story that no matter how many times you read, will choke you up and bring tears to your eyes. Abigale and Joshua will remind you of how special God creates each of us and how important we each are in "life". This is a must read book

The Crippled Lamb is probably the most moving story I have read in quite some time. I had read it on the internet, but when I received the book, it somehow seemed different. I read it to my granddaughters tonight and with some difficulty kept the tears from coming. This book shows children (and adults) that it isn't always hard to be different. Joshua was surely different, but being different was the best thing that happened to him. God has a plan for everyone, even those of us who feel left out. I can't think of a better way to teach children of God's love for each and everyone of us. For that matter, I can't think of a simpler way to teach adults the same thing. My granddaughters loved the book and the CD. Almost as much as I do.

Sara's Children is about the survival of 4 sisters and 1 brother before, during and after the Holocaust. The gradual signs of anti-Semitism are presented in such a subtle and realistic fashion that it's chilling to read. The psychological terror they endured in the camps almost seems worse than the deprivation. In spite of the horrible, depressing subject, this book is uplifting and inspirational because you come to know this loving, courageous family. The fact that they had the strength and faith to survive is nothing short of a miracle. The Garfinkels story needed to be told and they are fortunate to have had Ms. Hagstrom tell it. Her journalistic background really lent itself to the telling of a story such as this as she chronicled the events in such a clear, clean and gripping way. It is very well researched and she has done a wonderful job in reaching her readers.
This book should be recommended reading in high schools.

The mere fact that five children of a family survived the horrendous ordeals of Nazi concentration camps is a miraculous story and one that needed to be told. To be told by an author that has a historian's scholarly approach to researching the facts, as well as having the ability to give an extremely realistic depiction of the Jewish situation, makes this book totally amazing, unlike other accounts of the Holocaust that I have read. At the beginning of the book, there was joy and hope for the Garfinkle family, then terrible evens that took them to the extremes of sadness and despair, to the present time of Sara's surviving children to experience joy and hope once more. Suzan Hagstrom has written a book that is both documented and personalized by her style of writing and her personal interviews with the surviving Garfinkle family that brings the times and the characters together in an unforgettable saga. Suzan's dedication to "telling" this story is amazing, by writing this book in her "spare time". She is to be commended for her excellent work and determination. I will recommend this book to friends and also my book club!

I highly recommend Sara's Children, by Suzan Esther Hagstrom. This moving, inspiring book tells the story of the miracle of survival of five siblings through the Holocaust. It gives a complete picture of daily life in the close-knit Jewish community of Chmielnik before the Nazi invasion of Poland, with the survivors' personal accounts of their upbringing within loving, devout families. Meticulously recounting the strangulation and the elimination of this community by the Nazis, the book makes the unimaginable come alive. Even more, it chronicles the internal landscape of the spirit -- how the memories of their selfless parents' teachings sustained the Garfinkel children through their suffering and led them each to sacrifice for one another. It reminds us that the tale of every Holocaust survivor is unique, involving unprecedented triumphs of the spirit and unpredictable strokes of pure luck. It is a profoundly memorable tribute to the Garfinkels and their fellows, who struggled and succeeded - against all odds - in defeating every effort to kill them and all of their kin. This book is a magnificent achievement.

This is an amazing book. It captures all the horror of the holocaust, and her story is told with heartbreaking honesty and and feeling. She survived through all her hardship through just courage and hope; hope that was so easy to lose under those circumstances. I would recommend it to anyone who is wants to read a story that makes you laugh, cry and touches your heart and soul. It is definitely a book you cannot set down.

This was one of the most frightening and interesting books I have ever read. I stayed awake many nights after reading this book and contemplated what life must have been like for Seren. I think people of all ages should read her story and discuss it with family (especially children) and friends. We must all remember Seren's bravery and the tremendous tragedy of the Holocaust to prevent it from happening again in the future. I wish Seren were still alive. She would be on my list of top ten people to meet.

The Seamstress is a spellbinding book, and is certainly unlike other books about the Holocaust. A moving posthumous memoir, this book should make everyone's "must-read" list. The author tells her remarkable and unusual story with grace and power. She was a rural Romanian Jewish woman born at the time of the rise of the Nazis and virulent anti-Semitism in early part of the 20th century. This book reminds us of the importance not only of courage itself, but how courage combined with other strengths can permit us to survive (if not always overcome) evil. A fine, fine book.

Author Sara Corbett was granted exclusive access to the 1996 US women's basketball team, and this amounts to their authorized biography. Corbett is a good writer and manages to convey a series of themes: the tenuous existence of women's basketball in the US in 1995 when the team was formed, the heterogenous backgrounds of the players and coaches, the incipient rivalry between two nascent professional leagues for the allegiances of the players, to name a few. And Corbett is to be commended for managing to integrate this disparate material into a single narrative. But in basketball terms she is a "homer" -- and one wonders whether the exclusive access that she was given, implicitly or explicitly, informs this relentlessly positive depiction of the team. That said, it is probably a very good book for teenagers of either gender interested in basketball.

Venus to the Hoop is a motivation to every kind of athlete. If you have ever played basketball you may be able to understand the situations these women athletes were put in. The detailed descriptions of the players and their coaches and staff allows you to understand the atmosphere they had to play basketball in. If you want to read a good book and also get some posative thinking out of it, read Venus to the Hoop. This book has really helped me keep a positive attitude about sports, teammates and life. I loved the way the competitors from the past pulled together and played as one on the same team. The way they helped eachother out in games and off the court helped me realize that they loved playing basketball. Keeping a positive attitude is important to me, and this book made me look at my life more positively.

Sara Corbett, who wrote this book, had the opportunity of traveling with the winning U.S. Women's Basketball Olympic team from their early tryouts in April 1995 to their glorious gold medal in Atlanta in 1996. She was there when they for the very beginnings and the selection process; she was there for their rigorous training under their coach, Tara Vanderveer; she was there during meals and long boring flights.

Through a series of in-depth interviews, as well as 14 months of personal

observation, she has written the book that defines the major milestone in women's basketball gaining the public's awareness and acceptance. Each of the 12 women on the team as well as their coach are skillfully profiled, and their stories credit, Ms. Corbett, kept the focus on the game. She lets the player's hopes and dreams and divergent personalities emerge through the sport. Of course we get their backgrounds too. We see Sheryl Swoops and her adoring husband, we see the explosive personality of Dawn Staley who likes to make side wagers on everything; we see Rebecca Lobo having trouble keeping up with the training; and Lisa Leslie's love for dressing up. But most of all, we see them play basketball.

In 1995, there wasn't even a basketball league for women. But during the time of their training for the Olympics, the possibility of two different leagues emerged -- the WNBA and the ABL. This was the major source of conflict between the members on the team during the course of the year. They had to put their disagreements aside though, and play basketball.

And that they did. They played and played and played, wining every single one of the games they played during that year. The women's college teams were easy, but they struggled with the team from China and the team from Australia. They constantly traveled, and the fatigue and frustrations of a life on the road was clearly examined.

Now, just a few years after the Olympics we take the WNBA for granted. American women now have an arena to play basketball professionally after college without going to Europe to play. The experiences playing for the European teams were usually unhappy. They were alone in foreign countries with a cultural barrier between themselves and their teammates. They were treated poorly, and sometimes punched and sexually intimated by their male coaches. It was never a pleasant experience.

The women were proud to be on the Olympic team, but the pressure never let up. Each game was a different kind of challenge. I loved the descriptions of the games, and even though I knew the final outcome of each game, found my heart beating during the play by play action. The game became more than just an unidentified player running around the court. It was Sheryl and Teresa and Katrina and Dawn. It was Rebecca and Jennifer and Lisa and Carla. I followed the action. And I was right there on the court with them.

One of the greatest things about this book, too, was how much it stirred me to learn more. My experience with basketball is limited and so I found myself screen. I therefore found myself going outside the confines of the book, asking questions of the basketball experts in my life, and looking up each player on the internet to find out where she is playing now and how she is doing.

I loved this book, carried it everywhere and couldn't put it down. I was right there with the team all the way and shared the very real swells of emotion they were experiencing . I shared the pain of their injuries, the strain of their training, the adrenaline rush during the games. I shared he plays that didn't make it and the plays that did. I heard the roar of the crowd, felt the strain and the pain, and experienced the glory of the victory.

The story of women's basketball is more than the story of this individual Olympic team. it is about the real opportunities that have opened for women in the world of sport. And, as a whole new generation of little girls are growing up with these possibilities now a reality, it is about the future.

Highly highly recommended.

It is rare that a book actually makes a change in your life but Noah's Garden did for me. Years ago my husband and I tried to explain to a landscape architect the natural effect we wanted. He did a pretty good job but suggested all sorts of exotic plants. If we had only had Sara Stein's book then! It is full of lower care native and natural planting tips and information. For those of you who find the sameness and sterility of suburban landscaping unattractive, Sara Stein has paradise waiting for you in this book. Do you wonder why you no longer have fireflys? Find out why and how to right this in Noah's Garden. A great, great book

Noah's Garden is a lovely, gentle book that all home gardeners should read. I thought our over grown garden was an eyesore until I read this book. We now not only leave the "weeds" that grow next to our creek, we also do not mow the big patch of clover in the middle of our lawn. This is for the butterflies and bumble bees. Thank you Sara for a wonderful book.

Being a writer of similar book on the same subject I've read many books of ecological gardening. When I was researching for my latest book which would be called in english "THE WILD GARDEN-a gardening guide for the lazy" I drew extensively and benefitted greatly from Ms. Steins book. Of all the books I've ever read on the subject this one is absolutly the tops. Ms. Stein has a way of making the reader aware of the disastrous muck-up we've done to ecology blissfully ignorant of our actions. At the same time she refrains from preaching and her prose is fluid, easlily understood and fun to read. It is my opinion, and I truly believe this, that Ms. Stein has done more for the conservation of nature than many national and international institutions.

One can find the answers to most of life's little (and big) problems in this classic work. It does everything from helping one determine why the backyard just doesn't feel right to describing the problems with sprawl. I hesitate to label it as an architectural work because it can be so much more. Certainly, it illustrates how architecture can play a much larger role in shaping our lives than it has during the past fifty years.

The format of the book is effective in that it allows one to follow the connections between various design rules/patterns that might otherwise not be obvious. The use of these "links" within the book could have been a source of inspiration for web designers. This book will appeal just as much to the lay person as it does to the legions of architectural professionals who use it as a guide on a frequent basis.

In an effort to build a philosophy of the human use of space, Berkeley professor of Architecture Alexander and his colleagues also managed to set down many of the big ideas of the 1960's in this magisterial book-- proclaiming in their careful observation of human settlements, a "timeless way of building" accessible to everyman.

The core idea is the elaboration of a series of patterns inherent in the way we build any habitation--from a garden bench, to a sleeping room, to a house, to a university, town, or region. The patterns; written, concrete and specific, can be interlocked and extended--like a language--in unlimited ways. These patterns are not blueprints for construction. They are more about behavior than about decoration, more about relationships than about dimensions. Thus, the pattern, "Sunny Window", when joined to another pattern, Thickened Walls" leads to just the right arrangements for a window seat-- a fitting place to sew, or read, or day-dream. When we build aright, says he, we inevitably follow these patterns, and enjoy the fullness of our humanity as we inhabit them.

Alexander is a radical, an anti-architect. He says that the best buildings are vernacular structures; the ordinary furnishings, gardens, rooms and houses that evolved slowly as ordinary people built what they needed and repeated what worked. What one might call "right building", as opposed to architecture, is not about style or the individuality of the professional designer, but the discovery of transcendent and inherently beautiful supports for the human functions of work, play, intimacy, and family living. Then you build it yourself. When we remodeled our own small urban house, we wove many of the patterns (there are hundreds) into the new space we built, and were happy with the results.

Twenty years after publication, it's a scandal that there are architects and designers who have never heard of this work. (ours--a professor of Architecture, hadn't). Alexander's ideas are reflected today in Stewart Brand's recently popular "How Buildings Learn", and there's surely a vast underground following out there, people who have, or want to build or renovate their homes, or landscapes with an eye to more sociable and spiritually nourishing places. Perhaps as more and more of us work at home, we will turn to this kind of resource to help us enrich our sterile, enfenced suburban environments(Alexander found a lot of his patterns in pre-industrial villages of Scotland and Wales).

Yes, Alexander will be back! This book is one of two that sits out on our reading table constantly. I cherish it and recommend it to anyone who wants to take a more active role in the design of their lives as well as their homes and gardens. END

I've read all three books in this series, and I thought this was by far the best and most accessible. The first, "A Timeless Way of Building", introduced the author's philosophy and was, I thought, a bit bogged down with New Age jargon. I prefer to think in terms of comfort and relationships, though ultimately I agree with just about everything the author-as-designer states and obviously went on to read his other work. I thought the third book, photographs of a project completed by the author, should have been the most informative, but ultimately didn't do justice to the author's ideas. But maybe it was just the poor quality of the pictures. IMHO this is the masterpiece of the trilogy. Christopher Alexander's Empire Strikes Back. Its concern is the practical application of the author's ideas, and one could only wish to live or work in a space designed with this philosophy. His thinking is pragmatic AND beautiful, bringing balance and harmony to space.

Having made the case for his system of architectural and social design in his earlier work, the author here goes on to formalize a system of 253 patterns, ranging in scale from towns down to benches. Patterns 1 through 94 define a town or community; numbers 95 through 204 define (groups of) buildings; and numbers 205-253 define a "buildable building". The individual patterns are themselves evocative and inviting, and cover a myriad of human social and environmental relationships: number 1 is Independent Region, pattern 2 is Distribution of Towns, 10 is Magic of the City, 57 is Children in the City, number 62 is High Places, number 63 Dancing in the Street, 94 is Sleeping in Public, 203 Child Caves, 223 Deep Reveals, 235 Soft Inside Walls, 253 Things from Your Life.

One example of developing the pattern language for a specific project using a subset of the author's Pattern Language is that of the front porch, composed of 10 elements: private terrace on street, sunny place, six-foot balcony, outdoor room, paths & goals, ceiling height variety, columns at the corners, front-door bench, raised flowers and different chairs. Alexander gives many such examples and eloquently details the process of exploring patterns and moving between them in a search for the proper set. And that is one thing that makes this book special and fun. He does not say a 'successful' set of elements but a 'proper' set of elements. At first that might seem like a lot of hot hubris, but on reading you find that there is a reason that a balcony should be 6-feet square .... THAT is the minimum space required for people to have a comfortable discussion around a small table. It is a charming and useful way to look at one's surroundings, and each of the 253 patterns is given the treatment as the author goes on to detail each element's specifications, definition and purpose. These expanded definitions are often quite charming; for instance, under pattern 57, Children in the City, he specifies a very safe bike path that meanders past workplaces and shops with windows so that kids can see the diversity and alive-ness of the place in which they live. Lovely idea.

While others have noted that Alexander's ideas inspired changes in software engineering, I would also like to note that the author's ideas were, in turn, most likely informed by others, such as neuroscientist Karl Lashley and, in particular, linguist Noam Chomsky. Chomsky developed the idea of a generative grammar, composed of constituent symbols, a set of rules and a set of terminal elements, which together describe all possible sentences in a language. This was considered revolutionary at the time and is quite similar to Alexander's characterization of his patterns, described as a context combined with a system of forces or rules generating an infinite number of solutions in the form of sets of specific design elements. That configuration, in turn, becomes the context for another pattern. The theory's dynamism and scalability render it very powerful indeed.

I think another interesting approach to this philosophy would be to reverse engineer our own environment. To say, Obviously there is a Pattern Language at work in the larger world in which we live, and it is decidedly in opposition to what Mr. Alexander and others, including myself, believe is preferred. What are the rules of that language? What is the context within which those elements operate? The author codifies a desirable Pattern Language. I'd like to see his principles used to turn an eye toward decodifying our own milieu. This is the kind of book that leads one to think and imagine, and isn't that a wonderful thing?

What I didn't like about this book were that neither ideas nor photographs were credited, which is frustrating for someone who wants to follow up on these ideas, and not fair to those whose work contributed to the author's. The author apologized for this in his first book, but then repeated the discourtesy here; the second time is less forgivable. Also, there is no index, which is especially painful for a librarian :-) I would have liked to have seen a more diverse selection of examples, and some attempt to address the implementation of a pattern language after more conventional designs are already in place. That said, I agree with the many others who have stated that this book changed the way they looked at their surroundings, and I'm profoundly grateful to the author for his work, which stands up well after a quarter century.

Even when mediocrity (or worse) is the order of the day, there are those voices in the wilderness who speak to a better understanding and envision a better world. In codifying an aesthetic relationship among elements of a viable, living environment and describing a system of scalable self-sustaining systems, the author joins visionaries like R. Buckminster Fuller, who bring a philosophy to architecture that is as much about living as it is about building. I would encourage anyone who is interested in architecture, design, a philosophy of organic wholeness, or creating a more humane environment, to read this informative and provocative book.

Sara Nomberg-Przytyk is an incredible woman. To have survived such a horrendous experience like the Holocaust and still have the inner drive and strength to retell your story to the entire world on paper is awe inspiring. In certain parts of this autobiography, I had moral troubles believing many of the conditions and treatments the inmates of the concentration camps were forced to endure. At one point, I actually questioned whether or not this story is really a work of fiction. The events were described by Sara in such detail that I could sometimes smell the burning flesh from the crematoriums and the screams of women being beaten by the SS guards. This is when I stopped reading for a while and took a break. I would recommend this plan to anyone interested in tackling this brutally realistic acount of the Holocaust.

For English, I was assigned to read a Holocaust book.I went to the bookstore and browsed through the holocasut section. I picked the book that was the shortest. I am so glad I picked this one. This story is amazing. You could not tear me from this book. I was glued to it. It is an awesome book. Buy it. You won't regret it. Keep in mind that this advice is coming form a 14 year old.

The images in this memoir are extremely powerful. You will not forget them. The language is clear and concise. The writing is so alive that it takes you right there, to the camp experiences, to Auschwitz. This memoir is particularly poignent for those interested in women's experiences in the camps. The author's retelling of the resistance movement in the women's camp, the children born there, the medical experiments and other similar events are unique to women. It stirred my emotions and made me think about the Holocaust and this period of history in ways I had not before. I found myself taking time between each chapter, just to "sit" with the experience, feel it and process. It is an intense read. It will change your perspective and enhance your knowledge. Read this memoir.