I thought this book was great! The pictures of the objects are beautiful. Where a picture could not be obtained there is usually a detailed sketch of the object. The descriptions give not only insight into use of the archaological object but also surrounding information like similar objects and archeological context. Then the essays descibe the time period and unknown/debated issue of Egyptian Archeology. As a newbie to Egyptian Archaeology I found the book easy to read and felt that things were explained well.

This is a book of photographs about Robert E. Lee, and features photos not only of Lee but of the people, places, and events that were important in his life. The book has some commentary on the photos, but the focus is the photographs, not the text. The book is designed to complement Thomas' biography of Lee. As a stand-alone book, it provides a brief overview of Lee's life.

Without a doubt I have been a diehard fan of Emory Thomas since I attended one of his guest lectures promoting the highly acclaimed biography on the man and soldier Robert E. Lee. His words on the death of LEE were most memorable.

His recent pictorial essay embodied in this new publication chroniclizes Lee throughout his lifetime in vintage photographs. When I met Lee's great grand daughter Anne Carter Zimmer, I realized that some rather poignant pictures existed, but this book supports the fact.

This book should be purchased as a bedtime companion to Thomas's brilliant biography of the icon we know as Lee. The layout and selection of photographs in this publication truly satisfy one's soul in meditative reflection. Don't miss.

Self-help is big business. According to Gerald Rosen (1993) as many as 2000 self-help books are published each year. However, only a very few have been evaluated empirically. This sad state of affairs is a poor response to the appeal made by Rosen (1987) that self-help books should first be evaluated empirically before being sold to the general public. Additionally, the little research that has been done on do-it-yourself treatment books sometimes demonstrates major limitations in their usefulness. Yet psychologists continue to develop and market new programs with increasingly exaggerated claims. This is potentially a problem. Especially as psychologists often use self-help books as adjuncts to their clinical practice (Starker, 1988). The good news from research (e.g. Gould & Clum, 1993) is that certain self-help programs can be quite effective. Fairburn’s Binge Eating Disorder treatment (Carter & Fairburn, 1998) and the Albany protocol for Panic Disorder (Barlow & Craske, 1994) are two good examples. In Gould and Clum’s (1993) meta-analysis, fears, depression, headaches, and sleep disturbances were especially amenable to self-help approaches. Sometimes with effect sizes as large as for therapist assisted treatments.

How can busy clinicians keep up with the flood of new self-help books, and know which to recommend? Guilford Press offers a solution. In an attempt to help the clinicians a guide to self-help resources in mental health has been published. It includes ratings and reviews of more than 600 self-help books, autobiographies and popular films. It also includes hundreds of Internet sites, and listings of online support groups. The book addresses 28 prevalent clinical disorders and life challenges – from Schizophrenia, Anxiety and Mood Disorders to Career Development, Stress Management and Relaxation.

To determine the usefulness of the self-help resources a series of national studies have been conducted over the past 7 years. The methodology consisted of a lengthy survey mailed to clinical and counselling psychologists residing throughout the USA. A total of 2,500 psychologists contributed with their expertise and judgement in evaluating the books, movies, and Internet sites. The self-help resources were rated on a 5-point scale (-2 to +2). These data were converted into a one to five star rating (negative ratings were given a dagger). On this basis, 19% of the self-help books were rated as “very helpful” and fortunately only 1% as “very harmful” [e.g. the assertiveness training book Winning Through Intimidation by Ringer (1973) and the weight management book the Beverly Hills Diet by Mazel (1981). Interestingly, many of the books by Scientologist guru L Ron Hubbard are categorized as extremely bad].

When looking more closely at a specific disorder, let us say for example panic disorder, there are some good books that I feel are missing. This is probably because of the rating criteria. In order for a book to be included in this self-help guide the psychologists used as referees had to know about the book beforehand. It was their rating of previously read books that mattered. Hence, if there were good books out there that had not been read by many referees [like the Australian panic disorder workbook by Franklin (1996)], they would automatically receive a lower rating. Thus, a low rating does not necessarily mean that a book is less helpful than a higher rated book – only that it has not reached a wide audience. For example, an excellent book, An End to Panic (Zuercher-White, 1998), previously recommended in a review article (Carlbring, Westling, & Andersson, 2000) was described as “highly regarded by the psychologists in our national studies but not well known, leading to a 3-star rating.” (p. 79). Another thing that disturbed me was that this particular author’s name was misspelled. Instead of Zuercher the surname appeared as Luerchen. No wonder the book was “not well known”! One wonders how many other errors this survey included.

In a perfect world all self-help books would be scrutinized in the same manner as other treatments. However, as a majority of the published books still have not been evaluated, this new guide to self-help is a step in the right direction. Despite questionable inclusion criteria and a few errors I thoroughly recommend this excellent guide to self-help

From books and movies to the Internet, Authoritative Guide to Self-Help Resources in Mental Health provides a strong survey of self-help resources in mental health which reveals the good ones, bad ones, and how general consumers can tell the difference. Five national studies involving over 2,500 mental health professionals lends to a rating of over six hundred titles and films, along with Internet sites evaluated by a clinical psychologist.

This book contains reviews / lists of the best (and worst) of self-help books / movies and internet resources. It has been compiled using surveys of 1000's of mental health professionals and gives essential guidance on which resources are helpful, and which are best left alone.

The book is clearly-written and well laid out - each chapter relates to a specific problem area eg mood disorders, men's issues, abuse, anxiety etc.

I found the recommendations on books particularly helpful - one can immediately determine which are the best books to read on their own specific problem. Clearly, the input of mental health professionals gives a "scientific" basis on recommendations which in turn leads to a systematic process of choosing which resources should be given credence.

Essential reading if you want to build up a collection of serious (i.e. most useful) self-help resources.

Very Interesting book for those avid readers interested in the few years before and after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The book shows how England decieved the Arabs by making false promises of independence once the Arabs completed thier revolt against the Ottomans. Arabs ended up with British and French mandates instead. Lawrence was himself betrayed by his own government. The book gives a lot of detail on the daily life of bedouins, so some might find it interesting. The author should have dealt more with Lawrence's view of Zionism and the Balfour declaration and British policies in the region.

Because I spent three summers at Arlington House as a National Park Service ranger, I've read a number of books about Robert E. Lee and his family, including Freeman's four volumes twice. Thomas's biography is well written and was especially helpful to me in sorting out aspects of Lee's pre-Civil War career that hadn't made sense to me before. Thomas' treatment of Lee's feckless father, Light Horse Harry, hits close to the mark, and I'm ready to accept Mrs. Lee as more small-minded than I would have credited ten years ago. Thomas is perhaps a bit tough on Lee's father-in-law, G.W.P. Custis, and I would have liked the author to spend more time with Lee's mother-in-law, Mary Fitzhugh Custis, whose influence on Lee and his family was enormous.

Thomas' attempt to read double-entendres into Lee's early pleasantries with younger women is at best strained and at worse anachronistic. Thomas also has an imperfect understanding of evangelical religion in the nineteenth century and seems to think if the low-church Episcopalian Lee didn't discuss a conversion experience, then his confirmation in the church at age 46 was little more than a formality "to support his daughters' conviction" and "to honor his mother-in-law's piety." Thomas' attempt to substitute "God" for "true gentleman" in one of Lee's ruminations about ethics and read into it an "intriguing theological insight" is downright silly. (p. 397)

One serious mistake needs to be corrected: the sensational charge that in June 1862, Lee was so preoccupied with his duties that he forgot his grandson had died and wrote to the boy's mother asking her to "kiss [him] for me." Thomas might have reflected on the improbability of this story and double-checked the primary sources. Actually, the boy died in July. It is a notorious example of information both true and sensational-but with the sensational untrue and the true not sensational.

Lee was not, of course, the myth that he started to become by the end of the Civil War, and Thomas is correct to emphasize Lee as a tragic hero. Nevertheless, Freeman's Lee, the uncomplicated man of duty is closer to the truth than Thomas' paradox striving "to be independent, to be free."

Emory Thomas is ambitious but ultimately correct in proclaiming his compelling Lee biography a post-revisionist portrait. He attempts (with admirable success) to balance his respect for Lee's character and ability (without Douglas Freeman's blatant worship and apocryphal stories) with honest accounts of his faults and contradictions (minus the carping of Connelly's 'The Marble Man' and Nolan's 'Lee Considered'). In the process, Thomas has captured as much as any writer is able the humanness of Lee. I was struck throughout the book by events and words that mirror my own aspirations and failures. I think the highest praise I can offer Thomas's book is that this avid Lee fan and Civil War buff felt like he had met Robert E. Lee for the first time

Thomas presents Lee in his most human form possible and does a great job in separating the myth from the the man. Lee the man was a great American hero, a model in leadership and character for all Americans, but also a tragic figure in a lost cause. The book presents an objective account of the human side of Lee as well as the military genius that he truly was. I enjoyed the book from beginning to end. Emory Thomas displays a flair for a balanced accounting of this legend.

This book should probably only get one star but I gave it two because it does give the reader a good look at Lee the man instead of the saint. The problem is that it goes too far. It is hard but possible to make a much loved figure human without going to the extreme Connelly goes to. A happy medium would have been much more likely to bring us the real Lee. Sadly instead of going after the real General Lee Connelly goes on the attack and gives us a picture of a sad person who does not reflect the real man. Was Robert E. Lee the pure figure he is often pictured as? Not likely. On the other hand he also was not the pathetic figure given us by Connelly. In an attempt to destroy the myths of the past Connelly creates a set of his own half truths and myths. Shame on him!

This book might be approached as an examination of how a well-known personality is transformed for a human being into a cultural icon. Sequentially and chronologically Connelly takes his readers through that process using Robert E. Lee as the item of investigation. Along the way, Connelly makes commentary on the differences between the cultures of the north and south and how Lee's legion spread because of those cultural differences. That context has been well-established by numerous writers. Connelly simply uses it for a closer examination of Lee. For example, on page 102 he quotes another historian, Bradley T. Johnson in writing "Environmental factors had forced North and South to develop contrasting socieites. The North, 'invigorated' by constant struggle with nature, became materialistic, grasping for wealth and power. The South's 'more generous climate' had wrought a life-style based upon non-materialism and adherence to a finer code of 'veracity and honor in man, chastity and fidelity in women'"
This book helps a person to understand how history evolves in the process of retelling over a period of several generations.

This book is not just a revisionist look at Robet E. Lee but also an objective evaluation of the Southern Lost Cause Syndrome that utilzed Lee as their flagship for a just cause. Thomas Connelly is a great writer of the western theater notably the history of the Army of the Tennessee and of the western Confederate cabal that had conflicts with Jefferson Davis. Connelly offers what southerners and partiucularly Virginians may find as a harsh evaluation of Lee during the war. This book also includes some psycho-analysis that offers some reasoning for Lee's very formal demeanor which is in far contrast's to Joe Johnston whose troops would pat him on the head on occasion but not dare approach Lee in such an informal manner. In my opinion the book demonstrates that Lee was simply not infallible like amy man who has overall responsibility, he must accept some of the blame for failure. There is also the question of whether Lee was too aggressive with limited manpower (Gary Gallagher has referred to this as crucial, that the Confederacy was in serious need of military victories for morale). The Lost Cause contingent made up of Jubal Early and company always gave Lee total credit for victory but not in defeat, Early & company always made someone other than Lee a scapegoat in their version of history. Gettysburg serves as the grand indictment of this philosophy where Longstreet becomes the total goat at Gettysburg in the 1870's while one of his accusers, Early, covers his own lackluster performance by publicly hanging Longstreet. Early raps himself with the cloak of Robert E. Lee to deflect criticism of his own actions and post war exile. To my mind, Connaly expolores better than anyone else the self serving relationship of Jubal Early to the Lost Cause syndrome in Early's attempt to rewite history. Connelly brings out that Jackson was the south's great hero until Lee's death and the emergence of Lee's rise among southern writers. He also argues that Lee lacked a national picture of how to best serve the Confederacy by his opposing transferring troops west to bolster those failing armies with limited resources. He argues that Virginia was Lee's first and main focus. Highly reccommend this book, whether you agree or not, Connelly makes you look at the facts presented and while not meaning to destroy Lee's image of a competent and charismatic general, it tends to show him as human and mortal who like everyone made some mistakes. We all have to look at historians presentations carefully, even Douglas Freeman in Lee's Lieutanents slightly diminishes Jackson's role and he makes Longstreet shorter, fatter and a plotter of self grandization. This is an intellectually challenging book best appreciated by those that have an open mind. This book most likely helped foster Alan Nolan's "Lee Considered."

lawrence is a fasconating character, that's for sure. Only, I could imagine more exciting pieces of literature, sometimes it is quite boring...