The themes and scenes found in this book are an uncanny mixture of Anne Rice and Hunter Thompson. All of the characters seem blindingly real, even those that simply could not be real, and the story line is strong, compelling, and makes one wish for a sequel when you turn that last page and reach the end! I always enjoy reading books with a local connection when I travel to a region, and I would at the very least recommend this book for anyone who plans to vacation in Yellowstone National Park or nearby areas! Not to suggest that this novel is in any way a travel guide.... but the setting of the Rocky Mountains, the grizzly bear habitat, and so on, are as key to this work as are the philosophical questions about religion, cultism, videography and sex!

First place, novels, Idaho Press Women's 1997 Communications Contest The judges said: Only an author with multiple areas of expertise could have written this book. This mystery novel gives the reader a great deal of education in Indian and Mexican beliefs, an understanding of how Satanistic cults can recruit and terrorize, as well as information about Yellowstone Park, animals, fishing, and camping. The author is a master at weaving many different stories and backgrounds into one novel. I was afraid at the beginning it was going to be the typical sex and vulgar language romance novel, but the author soon set the stage for an intricate mystery novel. This book would make a great movie.

Mystic Warriors of the Yellowstone is one of the most fascinating books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. The characters just can't be made up! No one has that great an imagination without some basis in fact. This alone makes Mystic a truly great read. Another thing? After almost 2 years, the characters and story are still with me. I wonder about the fate of the characters (good and evil) and what has happened with their lives, plots, romances, and psychic warfare since the last book. I hear there's going to be a second book, and I CANNOT WAIT! I'd read anything written by Elizabeth Laden! One of those can't-put-it-down-and-I-know-it's-3:00-a.m. books! Get it and read it. Even if you can't get away on a vacation, Mystic will transport you to a different place on many levels.

This book is loaded with top quality National Geographic photographs of the National Parks, and the written commentary and the important park information included is excellent. A must book to have for anyone visiting any of the USA parks. In fact, you can stay at home and page through this book, and it is just like a mini-tour of the parks. It is printed on glossy, heavy weight paper that resists tears and spills of over active children, and it allows one to toss it into a backpack or car glove box with minimal damage. Another quality National Geographic publication that deserves 5 stars.

Like all National Geographic titles this book is packed full of great photographs and details about the parks. Having visited many parks already - I am amazed by how up to date all the comments are, together with very good suggestions for times to visit and accomodation available. The layout of the book is superb - its like a travel directory - taking you from one park to another without stepping outside your front door. I feel this guide is essential for anyone visiting America's National Parks - its also just the right size to take with you !. My aim is to visit all the parks - this book has made it easier ! Please get in touch if you have any questions.

I just visited 5 national parks in the last two months. I picked up this book today. I read all the section about the parks I visited. The information is up to dated. Each section also highlight nice spot to visited. This is a good introduction of the national parks. More details can be obtained later on ... the government website for national park.

These Cognoscenti things have done to maps what cooking did to food. They are highly palatable (readable) and edible (don't make me dizzy). I used to get into auto accidents using giant maps that would cover the whole windshield while I tried to drive, so you can imagine how skeptical I was when my friend told me about Cognoscenti "Map" Guides. Turns out these things are so clear ANYONE can use them. With my Cognoscenti Map Guide in hand I felt like I could help people around New York! It truly made New York accesible to people like me. Thanks Cognoscenti Map Guides.

Who are the people of Cognoscenti and how have they suddenly come to be making such wonderful map guides? It is as if they have plummed the depths of every wayfarer's knowledge of the great city and are out to tell all. I am an old man, wary of travel, easily confused, hesitant of adventure. But this guide has taken care of everything - well-labeled maps, distinctive descriptions of sites, a concise history of the area, suggestions for a memorable evening. Well worth it.

After causing several car accidents due to large fold-out maps covering my windhsield as I attempted to roar down interstates I was a tad skeptical when my friend Joey told me Cognoscenti Map Guides were the best guides he'd seen. I was used to large guide books which would weigh me down and take up space in my pack I could have used for skotch. But this guide has it all. Tons of info AND a slim and sleak design. Thank you COgnscenti!

The Global Citizen is a really great resource for people who want to learn about the on-line resources available to work, study, travel, and just find an experience that will suit each person abroad. Kruempelmann does a wonderful job of dividing the book up in sections to suit people with all different interests, backgrounds and approaches. She applies not only her broad base of knowledge but personal connections as well to give commentary on their enriching experiences abroad. A great resource for students at any level and really for anyone looking for an experience abroad!!!

The "Global Citizen" is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to travel or work abroad. Most importantly for me, this book has a wealth of information on careers abroad that I had not thought of before. Most career guides are so narrow in scope that I rarely find much use in them because they are so "8-5" in nature.
The other cool thing about this book is that it's full of websites with info. on every aspect of living, working, or volunteering abroad.
I love the personal stories in the section "A Global Citizen's Perspective" because, as a traveler, you can really connect to the experience of the author and other people who have done what you want to do.
If you are looking for a a life changing adventure, then travel abroad. If you want to stay abroad, then get this book!!

What a fantastic book! I don't know what I was expecting, but not such a rich compendium of resources and ideas for aspiring travellers. It has an attractive mix of formal and informal (personal) information from the author's experience. And it's good read too! I've been dipping in at various points and forming a picture that way. It works. I can see the busy reader who doesn't want a novel, and only wants to find the best way to the metaphorical departure lounge. The reader will be informed, encouraged, enabled by this book, as I was!

I'm putting this on my Christmas list for all teenage people I know, who could use an exotic, creative experience.

This is simply the best book anywhere for campus leaders.

I admit that I'm one of the co-authors. But keep this in mind-- as editor of Student Leader magazine, I don't lend my name and reputation to just any project.

I was, and am, proud to be associated with this uplifting and inpsiriational book. It's written similiar in style to the Chicken Soup series, including lots of heartwarming stories written by campus leaders themselves nationwide.

This book is perfect for leadership retreats, workshops, and seminars. It would be the perfect addition to any leadership classes as well.

If you're the parent, friend, or relative of a student government leader, resident assistant, Greek leader, or other campus leader, this book would be the perfect easy gift!

As soon as a student becomes involved with leadership positions and experiences on campus, his or her "roller coaster ride" begins. These student leaders are constantly juggling meetings, deadlines and activities with their academic responsibilities. Most student leaders need some motivation and inspiration in order to alleviate the overwhelming stress. Inspiration for Student Leaders offers the encouragement and support student leaders are seeking so desperately to find. This paperback is a collection of stories about leadership that will undoubtedly bring new insights to all readers in search of a little inspiration. The stories are diverse in their approach, reflecting the broad range of interests and talents of the people who wrote them. Some stories are humorous while others take a more serious tone, but each is compelling in its own right. Most importantly, this is a book by college students for college students.

The book also serves as useful resource for student affair professionals as they engage in efforts to guide and mentor promising undergraduates. The stories in this collection can be used during meetings, retreats and group activities. This is just another valuable tool for student affair professionals and students' "leadership tool bag!"

Above all, these stories clearly demonstrate that "leadership is about having a passion, not a position." I hope you enjoy the book as much as I have enjoyed being part of this exceptional co-author team!

OK, I admit that I'm one of the co-authors. But I don't lend my name as editor of Student Leader magazine to just any project.

Inspiration is simply the best book ever for its audience: campus leaders of all types nationwide.

Similar in style to the Chicken Soup series, this book features dozens of inspirational, uplifting, and heart-warming stories written by campus leaders themselves nationwide.

The book would be perfect for leadership training classes, workshops, or seminiars. I could see schools ordering in bulk to give as gifts to participants in their off-campus leadership and planning retreats.

I'm proud to be a small part of this book and humbly suggest that it's well worth your investment.

Institutions of religion and learning take note: Elizabeth Lesser's "Seeker's Guide" is proof positive that personal experience is equal to tradition and scholarship as a pathway to truth. Elizabeth's life of seeking, organizing, promoting and teaching spirituality is disclosed beautifully in this multifaceted work. She shows by her own story, by her inspiring writing, and by her practical guidelines for meditation how ordinary mortals can create the sacred space for spiritual fulfillment in their own lives. Readers will find scripts for specific spiritual objectives, pearls of wisdom for the refrigerator, models for parenting, friendship, and marriage, holistic prescriptions for mental and physical health, deep prayers, profound wisdom, and the best bumper-sticker slogans in the universe. Her use of resources is erudite without pedantry or scholasticism. The book is at once a spiritual autobiography, a systematic theology of spiritual formation, and a useful handbook for spiritual practice. Personalities of some of our greatest spiritual leaders come to life as real people in the mix. If Elizabeth had only shared with us what she has learned from her years at Omega Institute, that would have been plenty, but she has also added her own powerful voice to the rising chorus of teachers and leaders of the New American Spirituality. Seekers who pick up her book will turn every page to the end and say, give us more, Elizabeth!

Cross cultural awareness, an appreciation of the common truths underpinning various religious traditions practiced in America today, and an integrative grasp of the relationship between human psychology and spirituality -- all are present in Lesser's inspirational work. She combines practical spiritual advise, with wisdom, gained while meeting the challenges of her own personal spiritual journey. Her insights, into the withering effects of a predominately patriarchal work environment on the souls of working women, are particularly enlightening and validating. "The New American Spirituality" is definitely a keeper -- a "must read" for the modern American spiritual seeker.

Eliabeth Lesser's book, The New American Spirituality, is a highly readable, thoroughly informative, and deeply felt dispatch from the frontier of America's ever-evolving spiritual journey. As a cofounder of Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, Lesser has been in the thick of it for almost 30 years, organizing workshops and conferences nationwide, meeting and nurturing extended relationships with the leaders in the field--from Maya Angelou to Ram Dass--and helping put together the nation's largest and most successful learning center that seeks to explore and weave together many of the emerging threads of a country in the throes of perhaps the most extraordinary spiritual rebirth since the nineteenth-century Great Awakening. So much more than an academic treatment of the subject, this book is also part memoir and part guidebook. It is perhaps no accident that Omega Institute began in a small, white clapboard settlement that had belonged to the Shakers, who even in their heyday were considered a fringe movement. But much of what was once marginal about Omega is now moving into the mainstream. After defining spirituality and its context in American life, a good part of the book is then devoted to grounding the often ethereal world of spirituality in four different "landscapes"--the landscape of the mind, the landscape of the heart, the landscape of the body, and the landscape of the soul--which provide a kind of map to guide us through this exciting, rich, though often strange new world. Although she's a member of the cast and applauds a world she helped create, she does not suffer fools or pander to the excesses that this so-called "new age" movement throws up and expects us to admire. She makes us laugh, and laughs with us. This is a big book and, if you like, can be read in sections that happen to appeal to you at a particular time. But you'll want to read the whole thing and come back to it like you would a spiritual practice. The repeated visits are sure to nourish you.

I am a HUGE Barbara Michaels fan, quite possibly because she has the ability to encompass mystery, thrills, and romance, without dwelling too much on one aspect. Which holds true for this book as well. You will absolutely love Francesca, Stefano, and Miss P., for their wit, and intelligence. I wish this book were turned into a movie, so all of us visual people can watch all the events unfold, IN STEREO! At any rate, if you're a closet romantic, history student, or mystery buff, this is sure to enthrall you!!!

I have collected and read many of Barbara Michaels' Books and this one is My favorite. Set during the Italian Revolution, it gives you a different perspective of Italian History, through English eyes. It was very well written, so much so, that you feel as if the excitement in the book, is very real!! The main characters are intelligent, witty, and daring. You cheer for them throughout the book. I wish this were made into a movie, so visual people, like myself, could indulge in it further. Whether you're a closet romantic, history student, or mystery buff --- you'll want to read it twice....like I did!!!

I LOVE THIS BOOK! I've read nearly every Barbara Michaels book-and this is by far my favorite. I once spent two hours describing this book to my friend in minute detail-and she loved it! Dashing Andrea, dreamy Stefano, vivacious Miss Perkins, ever-changing Francesca are the key players in one of my favorite stories. Bravo, Ms. Michaels, for writing this story!

The book Dear Ellen Bee by Mary E Lyons and Muriel M Branch is a great book. You can't leave the fifth grade wihout reading this book. Dear Ellen Bee is a book about two union spies named Miss Bet and Liza.Liza is a freed slave and wants to be an artist,but Miss Bet wants Liza to be a teacher so therefore Liza and Miss Bet argue alot. If you like the civil war you'll really like this book. I hope you'll read it!

Liza, a freed slave, hates having her life all planned out for her. She thanks Miss Bet for freeing her but she doesn't want Miss Bet to plan her life for her. After returning from school in Phildelphia and after getting married to a free black call Wilson she finally gets to live her own life. So when Miss Bet comes up to her to plee for her help in the fight against the Rebels in Richmond she is hesitant. Working at the rebel's president's house is going to be one hard thing for Liza to do. However her decision is finally made up when she sees how the Rebels treat her husband Wilson. When he finally escapes to the North and joins the Union army Liza begins her spying in the President's Residence. Through secret codes and letters she and Miss Bet use the code name Ellen Bee to communicate.

Written in diary from with drawing and scrapes from hear and there this book was really a very good book that gave great insight into the minds of two Union spies. I recommend anyone who likes this book to read the Dear America Series which is also historical novels written in diary form about different girl's lives in different parts of history.

Hi I am in the fifth grade and I read Dear Ellen Bee. It is a civil war scrapbook and there is a girl named Liza. She is black and her teacher is white her name is Miss Bet. Their two Union spies and they are the main characters in this story. Miss Bet wants Liza to be a teacher, but Liza wants to be an artist, Liza goes to college for a teacher. Well that's all I can tell you or it will spoil the book for you. I hope you read it.HAVE FUN!!!

I just got my book in the mail today. I bought the book because I homeschool my 6 yr. old daughter and thought that this book would shed some light on the subject of other countries and the way they live. The book is absolutely beautiful. Each page has information and pictures of where the children live, the climate, friends, family, where they go to school, food they eat, animals, what type of work their family does. This is a book that is suppose to be for children, yet I found myself wanting to creep off into the next room to look at the book alone. I even took the book to my dad's house and he liked it so much that I left it for him to look at. I would highly recommend this book for any age. Once you get it, you wont want to give it up. I believe my daughter will relate better to this book than any other book, because it deals with kids her own age. Make the investment. You wont regret it.

This is a truly marvelous piece of work featuring so many different children from so many different parts of The Blue Planet! Those young folks all present a very insightful slice of their lives in such an amazing diversity of cultures that will really open the eyes of a typical kid here in America and everywhere else. Then he and she will learn that not all kids come in a similar package and that "the small world" is not really at all small in its great variety of human beings and their ways of life. So let all those wonderful kids take you on an eye-feasting tour 'round the whole globe!

I used this book in my third grade classroom. My student population was very diverse and it was a great way to help discuss not only the many ways that we are different but also the many ways we are all the same. My students loved to see how other kids dressed and were especially interested in what other kids ate!! A great book to have in any classroom and I even bought it for my two year old son's library.

Elizabeth has the responsibility of taking care of the money for the school's Christmas party, but instead gives it to Al and Suzannah Glass so they can have a home for the holidays. When Jessica demands where she put the money, Elizabeth has to tell Jess that she lost it. In the chaos of having to cover up the fact that she gave away the school's money, Elizabeth gets everyone mad at her. When she wishes that she had never been born, her wish comes true. A girl named Laura, who claims to be her guardian angel, shows her just how important she really is. Through a series of humorous and tragic incidents, Elizabeth learns that you have to stick around, because everything may turn out to be all right. I liked this book because everthing was described in such a realistic way, you feel as if you're in the middle of the story, watching every event, hearing every wisecrack (compliments of Laura), and seeing how every plot turns out. Overall, this is the best book I have ever read. I've read it six times, each time better than the last. I highly recommend this book.

This is my favorite Christmas book of all time. In this story, Elizabeth Wakefield lends the money for the school party to a poor family so they can have a home for the holidays. But soon everyone turns against her for "misplacing" the money, and Elizabeth wishes she had never been born. Suddenly her wish has come true, and the Angel Laura comes down from above to be her tour guide, so Liz can see what life would be like without her. Elizabeth must see what life is like if she had never been born, and it isn't happy. This is an excellent book and it really gets me into the holiday spirit. I've been reading it every Christmas since I was in second grade, and it gets better each time! This book shows us that we all have a purpose on earth, even if we don't realize it. God has each of us here for a reason, and we have to remember that this holiday season. I would recommend this book to anyone!

Elizabeth Wakefield has been put in charge of her school's party money. But Elizabeth decides that a poor family needs the money more, and gives it to them, hoping her friends will understand. But her plan backfires when the family still doesn't have the money to move into the apartment, and her friends are furious with her. So Elizabeth, upset, goes to the Sweet valley Mall and silently wishes that she had never been born.
Elizabeth meets up with a girl who claims to be her guardian angel, who shows her how important she really is.
By far one of the more touching books in the Sweet Valley Twins series, "A Christmas Without Elizabeth" is a touching yet funny story about Christmas.