An excellent and easy to read book that should be available in all universities and libraries world-wide for scholars and anyone interested in studying the history of Europe's Middle Ages. Croatia as a country and nation has been sadly ignored by most historians, even though it is one of the oldest continuously existing countries in Europe. There has been a Croatia since its people appeared in the 7th century and settled in about the same land as today's Croatia. First a Principality, then a kingdom in the Middle Ages, it kept its identity and a Parliament throughout its history, in spite of the take-over, first by Hungary, then Austro-Hungary and finally by incorporation into Yugoslavia in the last century. Today Croatia is a sovereign country again and its history should finally be acknowledged. This book serves as an important part of such confirmation.

I'd just like to thank Dr Bocsa and Mr Karus for their insight into this wonderfully resourceful plant. Intelligent, thoughtful and concise, this book should put hemp back where it belongs...in our fields our shops and our homes. Keep up the good work.

Difficult to review a work which relies so much on primal writing to affect you. Each story seems to slash at a different fear or phobia, challenging and provoking you. There isn't a story which doesn't drag razorblades across your spine. Truly impressive.

As a chaplain, I find that this book is the best aid I've found in which to facilitate small grief support groups that foster closeness, and the sharing of experiences and insights without judgment. It is Christ-centered, biblically-based, and brings the use of scripture into application for one's life now.

I suggest that anyone facilitating with this book make sure every participant has her/his own copy. The price makes that very easy to do. This is not "just another support group" guide. The outcomes in healing and friendship make this a very worthwhile experience.

This is the best of a number of books that I have read that discuss the entire region - the writing style is accessible and the amount of information contained is quite comprehensive. Ten of my Hungarian, Slovak and Croatian friends who have borrowed my copy have pronounced it the best book on the region they had read in any language.

The format of this book is "just right" for grievers. Short sections allow the reader to read as little or as much as they can handle at one sitting. This is an excellent gift for the seasons of Fall and Winter when society inundates us with holiday celebrations and togetherness. Since September 11, 2001, this book ought to become a best-seller. I've given out at least a dozen copies to family and friends.

The trouble with this book is that it makes you rethink your whole reason for being! It is an insightful review of how professions have incapacitated the people and issues they set out to help. It focused on medicine, law and the helping professions but is relevant to all of us. It makes you think - am I creating a reason for being? should I be really working myself out of a job? Empowering for those who feel they MUST employ a professional for all things - think again.

Mama Duck is out leading her five baby ducks, and putting them through their paces. "Quack!" says Mama Duck./"That's the way to be!/Do like a duck does!/Do like me!" But who's that "creep-creeping" at the end of the line? He says he's a duck, a big brown duck, "Well, he has no feathers/and he has no beak./He has four claws/on his hairy-scary feet./He has two ears/that stick up a mile,/and a wicked/foxy nose/and a wicked/foxy smile." But shrewd Mama Duck isn't really fooled. She tells that old fox, "Do like a duck does", and pretty soon she has him waddling, scuttling, and strutting, jumping into mud puddles, eating bugs and beetles, running through thistles, and diving into the river. "Down go the ducklings, all tails up! And down goes the stranger. Glup! Glup! Glup!" Judy Hindley's entertaining text is full of rhyme, rhythm, and lots of energy, and complemented by Ivan Bates' engaging illustrations. Each action filled, two page spread is rich in farmyard detail, humor, marvelous facial expressions, and personality that bring the characters to life. And as that old "hairy-scary" fox slinks home with his tail between his legs, little ones will revel at being in on all the fun. Perfect for preschoolers, Do Like A Duck Does! is a joyous, manic romp kids will beg to read again and again, and that's sure to become a new favorite at your house.

One of the best ways to get to know a people is to learn what they believe, value, love, honor, and what they fear, loathe, and seek to avoid. One of the best guides to these attitudes and beliefs is what they do; this is the work they looked to to find out what to do. To learn it in their own words, articulately expressed and classically framed is a treat. To find it in a book that generations of a nation kept as their practical handbook for daily life is a marvel. It's like a combination of Emily Post, Betty Crocker, and the Old Farmer's Almanac, with elements of the Book of Common Prayer thrown in. You won't find critical analysis, postmodern theory, contextualization or anything condescending here -- just their own values and rules for living, as they held them. It ain't everything, but it sure is a leg up on knowing what even modern Russians are about. And it is intensely amusing. Communism, Maffia and modernity have taken their toll, but old Orthodox Slavic values are alive especially among some more traditional emigrees. You will find their prescription for living here, flatfooted, naive, often amiable, occasionally hilarious, and sometimes enough to make a genteel modern person cringe. Whether you want to revive it, analyze it, critique it, or just understand it, this gives enormous insight into a tradition we need to know about. It is of the nature of "source material," unless you are a Russian in search of a reference work for life. But it is well done, an important work to have translated. For anyone planning to visit Moscow during the rule of Ivan Grozny, this is almost the first thing to pack in your time machine--maybe right after your kaftan, axe, Slavonic Prayer Book and "prazdniki"-- travelling icon. It is well enough translated and introduced, but the text itself is its own best reason to be and be read. Pouncy does well to let it be in a good, accessible form, in our language, in our alien world.

To read John Simon's writing on poetry is to be held enthrall by a master. He doesn't waste his time or ours with theories. He doesn't believe that poetry has anything to hide behind. There was a lot I missed in school, and Simon is invaluable for catching me up with (fairly recent, as in the 20th-century) literary history. (So I'm willing to overlook the total absence of even one mention of my all-time favorite Elizabeth Bishop.) Although more famous for his scathing movie reviews, Simon is vastly more in his element as a literary critic. Which does not mean, in his case, spouting jargon. Even when he's chiding, more love shines through in this book than in anything else he's written. In fact, you may miss the "acerbic, mean" side of Simon if that's what you're accustomed to. (In fact, I don't think he's tough enough on Philip Larkin; Simon actually seems amused by Larkin's antics and disappointingly doesn't probe the essential Larkin contradiction --a political ultraconservative who loved jazz.) This collection isn't as rollickingly, savagely funny as his earlier lit volume Sheep from the Goats (a book that's devastating, hilarious and out-of-print). The introduction to Dreamers, in which Simon ruminates on and quotes at length from obscure, forgotten yet excellent poets is worth the price of the book alone. It may be the most moving, personal and incandescent passage ever to flow from Simon's pen. Pauline Kael once wrote of the British critic Paul Coates, "he leaves the dross out of criticism and goes right for the gold." The same might justly be said of John Simon.