I've done a lot of sports in my life, and have only rarely been given any guidance by coaches about how to address the issue of nerves, tension, relaxation, focus, and playing my best physical game while my mental side was going crazy with the tension of the moment. It's no easy task, but Jeff Greenwald's "Fearless Tennis" finally tackles a subject that affects all of us who play the game, any game for that matter. Relaxing and hitting our best stuff under the pressure of a match, at any level, has always been elusive at best. It's obvious when your hear this CD, that Jeff has "been there". His professional experience on the tour gives credence to his insights on how the pressure of a match can undermine so devastatingly our ability to hit the ball like we do when it doesn't count. I think Jeff has done us all a great service by combining his extensive match experience, knowledge of the game, and advanced psychological training to produce this CD. I feel like Jeff has lifted a real load of mental anguish off my shoulders every time I walk on a court. I'm playing more relaxed, hitting out more on the pressure points, and am making fewer errors. I have mixed emotions about letting everybody know about this great CD.
It's helped me immensely , I'm just not sure I want my opponents to know this stuff too!
Bill Dunn - 4.0-4.5

Jeff has done an outstanding job in blending his own success on the court with practical strategies we can all use to get out of our own way in competition and succeed on the court.

"Fearless Tennis" is an excellent tool for ensuring stroke and tactical skills are implimented during match play. The lesson plan is easy to follow and understand. The audio format allows me to listen with eyes closed and really hear what's being said.

Jeff's coaching points are clear and concise and his advise has helped me on and off the court. I picked up several great ideas that I plan to use regularly. If you're looking for the power to use what you know when you need it most- you can't go wrong with "Fearless Tennis".

Poet leaves a legacy of love, death and physics

By Michael J. Vaughn, Staff Writer

Northern California lost a great and provocative voice this summer when Santa Cruz poet Greg Keith succumbed to cancer. And I use "voice" both figuratively and literally; Keith was one of those poets whose words lived behind the microphone as well as on the page (ask anyone who's heard his famed railroad poem, backed by a mesmerizing, rail-clacking vocal inflection).

Keith's farewell gift is "Life Near 310 Kelvin," a collection of poems and essays from Berkeley's SLG Books that comes either alone or with a CD of readings by the poet.

The overwhelming attraction of Keith's work was his great love of science, and his ability to nudge its often-ponderous weight through the revolving door of poetry. Though he spent his last 18 years as a computer programmer, his preoccupation was clearly physics, and he had an incomparable knack for turning the faceless beings of subatomic theory into a vivid cartoon show of characters.

A fine example is "The Age of Light," in which the poet mourns the loss of one of his favorite notions, the nearly unfathomable distances traveled by stellar light before they reach earthling eyes, "...long trains of photons / coming on through the night, the future on its way / like fast freight across an interstellar prairie."

It seems the old theory has been replaced by a new one, "resonant scattering," in which the photons of that original starlight steadily give way to new photons which they meet up with in deep space. "...in the space of two light years these lonesome photons / meet someone, some lone electron in all probability / somewhere specific around a proton. The electron, excited / by a packet in the mail, leaps to embrace / the possibility of light, only to extinguish it / in its own unstable enthusiasm." The embrace produces a new photon, which continues on the old photon's path.

The poet finds this new view depressing, but two friends quickly change his mind, convincing him that the process is actually "the birth of new information." "I like that," says a guy in a bar. "Me too," says the poet. "The eye that big. Light that fresh. News that current."

Keith was certainly not limited to science. He showed the same observational acuity and humor in matters of the heart. "310 Kelvin" contains several tributes to his last love, Susan, whom he married a few months before his departure. Typical among poets, however, I derive more morose pleasure from Keith's more lonesome ventures. A fine example is "SWM," a personal ad ten miles deeper than any you'll read in the paper, a wish-list of amusing second-person generalities regarding the hoped-for companion. "You will have currents of your own," he writes, "nothing to do with me. / You will have spent some non-zero number of Christmases / alone." He concludes with an arresting, hopeful plea: "Meet me in the world. Wear that smile and those eyes."

Then there are poems in which the romantic and cerebral meet, like "Last Words," a trio of seemingly dry multisyllabic words he leaves on his ladylove's cubicle. "Callipygia" describes "...the condition you exhibit when you walk, / the sketch made in space by high tonus and articulate bones." "Gynephanic" is "...conducive to epiphanies of womanshine, / the stark, resonant reflection in the terminal glass / of you going by my door. This is not your fault. These / are my own bells swinging in the little wind of your passage." "Pneumoparoxysmic" means simply "...breathtaking / in its most sudden, poignant sense."

...; a novel from Soho Press (New York 1995>.

Greg Keith, who died this year, tragically, of cancer, is still alive in his poems. When you read them, you think he knew he would be. Life Near 310 Kelvin is a startling book--in its intelligence, its clear, strong sense of life, its sureness of voice. Keith uses the language of science in the service of revelation. He does it with the precision of a thinker and the passion of a lover. It's interesting to see which words a poet comes back to, as small clues to his obsessions. Keith likes words life "specific" and "exact." He likes to invoke the names science has invented for what we know of the world and the forces that energize it. But he also likes "moon" and "woman" and "kiss." He's interested in the way things work, but he's not afraid of his heart.

The power in these poems comes from an understanding both simple and complex: Keith knew that poems ought to be interesting; that they ought to tell us something we don't know or something we didn't know we knew, or both. They surprise and often delight us. We sense that they surprised and delighted him, too.

There's such willingness, an eagerness, to look things in the face. In "radiology," Keith, strapped into poisition for the X-ray machine, waits to find out the verdict. "No other place to go, no other thing to be," he tells himself with heartbreaking bravery.

There are other treasures in this collection--"Radical Equality" (the ending is truly wonderful), "Another Note to the Young," the lyrical "Journalism: Biological Constraints on the Spirit," the quietly humorous "SWM." Actually, I like nearly all of them. I was interested in the stories at the end of the book, but I confess that I left my heart in the poems. I wish there could have been more. --Charlotte Muse, excerpted from THE MONTSERRAT REVIEW, Fall 1998

I had the good fortune to have known Greg for a few years before his death. These poems are truly elegant. He writes in a style that is very accessible to everyone, but with many layers, so that each reading will bring new gifts. He faced his disease and, ultimately, his death, with an almost child-like curiosity. I learned about grace from Greg, I've never known someone to be so gracious and wonderful in the face of such pain. The book deals with the progression of his cancer, but it's also rich with love poems, including ones to his family, that are so lovely, you'll want to go out and fall in love yourself, hug your siblings, kiss your children! You can get the book with a CD-ROM and an audio CD. I love to listen to the "Train Passing" poem, it's so special, Greg made this train sound, soft at first, and woven between the lines of the poem, then louder as a train approaches, then soft again as the train moved to the distance. These poems are for everyone.

if you have read his other books, you will have read about half of these stories already.

Jeff Greenwald is the kind of traveler most people rightly want to be--insouciant, funny, compassionate and cyncal at the same time. He's seems to have been just about everywhere (I'm sure he'd scoff at that), and seen it all, but most of all one gets from his writing a special sense of hope. He clearly loves the world and all its inhabitants--and in the manner in which the whole wild and poignant panoply of life pains and delights him, he brings the reader to their own natural place of wonder. Even better (I've read three of his other books), I always find myself Greenwalded into an eddy of determination not only to make my own next trip real, but when I'm on it, to be a better observer and a better participant in the magic all about me.

Jeff Greenwald brings the enormousness of the world to our minds and imagination. His personal perspective and his tribulations and dilemmas are very well shared without him sounding too self-centered and absorbed with his own opinions. The best part of the book was his unannounced visit to the American expatriate-writer Paul Bowles in Tangier, Morocco. His visit (not his first) to Nepal and Tibet was a little overstated, but given his personal convictions, this is understandable. We may not all have the same degree of time, resource, and ardor that Jeff has for traveling, but this book is a beautiful reminder of the mystery, intrigue, and wonder the world out there has in store for us who are willing to appreciate it. And all this talk about global village, cyberspace, communication by email, internet, fax, cell phone, and quick transportation by airplanes have not diminished the lure of travel and the delicious danger that may lie ahead!

This book describes a voyage around the world that I probably will never be able to take, but am nonetheless intensely interested in. For anyone who wants a glimpse of the earth as a unique and cohesive organism. Along with the author I was able to find, literally, what the size of the world is, traveling it's girth by land and sea once around. It was as if I were along for the ride, experiencing the awe and splendour of far-off reaches plus the dredges as well. The author has a wonderful gift for humor and poinancy, never taking himself too seriously even when in some very serious situations. Never too many words nor too little, it was easy to picture in my mind the places and people he was describing, with all their beauty and flaws intact. The underlying current of a spiritual quest was never over-stated which could have lent a feeling of self-righteousness. Pilgrimages are very personal things, but the way Greenwald wrote of his own could be very easily related to by any thinking person. A book I would highly recommend to anyone with an interest in the world and her people.

I think it's interesting that the reviews of Size of the World presented here are either 5 stars or 2 stars, indicating that people respond very strongly to this book, in either a very positive or negative way. Personally, I loved it. It was great taking a journey with a travel writer who seemed so much more like a real person than the usual omniscient guides in more traditional books. Jeff Greenwald the author has flaws, true, but don't we all. He's not presenting himself to be an all-knowing master guide to the Universe. He acknowledges the discomfort and loneliness as well as the joy and wonder of his travel experiences and communicates them without that holier-than-thou attitude so many travel writers seem to wallow in.

As a result, I think people who respond to real, sincere, honest writing will love this book. If you're looking for someone cool and hip that will help make you feel cool and hip, go read someone else.

I think this book has probably touched many lives in a deep and spirtual way. It's also hilariously funny and as I stated in my one line review, thoroughly entertaining. Please don't let some of the negative reviews expressed here prevent you from checking this book out.

Patty S.

The blurb says 'insightful and hilarious'. Well, this book is indeed by turns insightful and hilarious, although not quite in the way the author intended it. Jeff Greenwald certainly brings his own wit, ideas and explorative courage to this book, but the problem is that he can't help patronising those he meets who don't quite fit in with his own Amreican ideal - very untrue to the trek ideal. Perhaps if he had left his blatant American rhetoric behind he might have been able to engage with people from different cultures without resorting to frankly offensive cultural steroetypes. If you like a good story or two (which are occasionly entertaining if you leave your good trek sense behind)then read this book - if you want to read something that's slightly more thoughtful and interesting then there are plenty more - far better - books about start trek out there.

Greenwald sets out to explain Star Trek's appeal, arguing that interest in the series soared only when the 'real thing' - the moon landings - had come to an end, and there was nothing else to serve as a vent for people's interest in space travel. The author spent time on the set of 'First Contact,' and he travels the world to interview Trekkers in the UK, Japan, Hungary, Germany, Italy, and India, where he describes how each culture puts its own spin on the Trek legacy. As well, he interviews a variety of celebrities about the impact of Trek. It sounds like a great formula, but somehow the end result falls short of its potential. The interviews of fans get a bit tedious, and Greenwald's style of writing up celebrity interviews puts too much emphasis on the interviewer.

Celebrities interviewed include Leonard Nimoy, Patrick Stewart, Gates McFadden, Kate Mulgrew (who comes across as the nicest of the bunch), Michael Dorn, Producer/writer Brannon Braga, Kurt Vonnegut, Arthur Clarke, and the Dalai Lama (yes, really).

To start off, I would not recommend this book to pre-teen readers, or anyone whose beliefs lean more toward the prudish side. Greenwald occasionally spins explicitly saucy yarns about various interviewees. The use of quoted explicatives is also prevalent.

Aside from the above, "Future Perfect" is a decidedly informative behind-the-curtain book that details both Trek's worldwide fan-base and the lives and thoughts of its creators. On the whole, nothing ground-breaking is discovered or brought forth that any left-of-casual fan wouldn't already be aware of. However, the MTVesque way the author abuts divergent ten page chapters against one another is refreshing for a non-fiction book.

My only true reservation about "Future Perfect" is that Greenwald seems to abandon interesting events, incites, and people just at the moment the reader becomes entranced. Depth obviously was sacrificed for the sake of slap-dash page turning.

If ratings allowed, I would give the book 3.5 stars.

Jeff Greenwald is a funny writer--we should get that out of the way first. From the first page of Mr. Raja's Neighborhood (never mind the title!), I smiled--Greenwald is both humorous and wise in his prose. One other thing on his style: few writers I've read are as brave or creative with a simile, and that makes for lively reading which, in certain instances, borders upon the sublime. But back to Mr. Raja's Neighborhood--the book's premise (it is non-fiction) is that Greenwald has come to Kathmandu, Nepal to write a novel. He felt he had to leave his home in Santa Barbara, California to do this. The catch: he gets half-way around the world and can't write anything. So Mr. Raja's Neighborhood becomes a book about not writing a book--an un-book, if you will. At times, and between laughs, you feel as if you are sitting up with a slightly un-sober Greenwald in his flyblown, noisy, cluttered Kathmandu flat while he neurotically tries to create the novel that, as the pages turn, you begin to realize he will not. And we might be the better for it. Because of Greenwald's year-long case of writer's block, we read his letters home, his journal musings, his abstract (and abject!) thoughts on life in Nepal. Even a newspaper clip published in The Kathmandu Post is included. When finally sandwiched between two covers, Mr. Raja's Neighborhood is a relatively light-hearted spin upon a rather serious theme: one man's struggle with himself and his acceptance--artistically, anyways--of his mortality. One other note: for any traveler who has found him or herself living in Kathmandu for an extended period of time, this book is a must read for its often hilarious insights and observations upon Nepali culture and customs.

the reason that i didn't really enjoy "the size of the world" is because mr. greenwald seems more heck-bent on letting the reader know what a hip and happening guy he is than on actually, y'know, traveling and stuff. he tells us all about how he left his parents' east coast home at an early age, hitchhiking with something like five bucks and a dime bag of pot. how bohemian. there are also several other examples which i can't really remember right now, i remember him talking about his huge jazz collection when it was really inappropriate and unnecessary to the story for him to do so. also he spends the majority of the book pining over his bondgirl of a traveling companion (the best quote of the entire book is "if intellegence is an aphrodisiac then she's an oyster dinner" or something like that). he demonstrates remarkable journalistic restraint by leaving it to the reader to discover that she's totally out of his league. basically, "the size of the world" reads like a college indierock geek's diary, forced and heavy handed coolness and everything. that's forgivable if you're eighteen. if you're forty and a professional journalist its a crime against dignity and good taste. also its boring. you have to give him credit for trying, though. i'm just sitting here panning it over the computer. makes you wonder who's really the geek, huh?

come to think of it, any apparantly average forty year old who actively pursues a twentysomething knockout like he's brad pitt is pretty cool after all. i take all the bad things back.

I thought this book was going to be about a man who traveled around the world without the benefit of airplanes. What the first two-thirds seems to be about is a man who is trying to beat the clock to get to Nepal in time to join an expedition to Mount Kailas. The universe seems to be hell-bent on preventing this from happening. Once this situation is resolved, the rest of the book is much more interesting. And if you can overlook the fact that the author is trying to actually get somewhere on a certain date, his adventures are a lesson in ingenuity. I was disappointed that there were no maps in the book, sending me to my atlas on a regular basis. Not that there is anything wrong with a little self-education, but when you are sitting at a coffee shop, the maps would have come in handy. I admire Greenwald for undertaking such a arduous journey. I also admire his ability to meet and connect with such interesting characters along the way. Maybe traveling alone left him more open for these encounters. The book left me wanting to see those places he loved and avoid those he didn't, but I think I'll fly.

First, I'm not real generous when it comes to giving a full "five stars" and have read easily over 100 travel essays. This book is the most enjoyable and enlightening I've read. I first read it over 2 years ago and have given copies out to several friends. Each one loved it.

I just picked it up again (a real rarity for me). It's every bit as good as I recalled. Insightful with respect to both the places he visits as well as the author's introspection. Wonderful imagery- articulate, adjective-filled.

Read this book.

The first stories written bu Jeff Greenwald I had chance to read in the wonderful book Traveler's Tales - Hong Kong, where he happened to be one of the contributors. So when I saw the book written by Greenwald himself, I could not resist but test his writing again. If you are looking for the enlightments or truly literary achievement, do not waste your time. This book will not give you that. However, if you are looking into exploring in 200 pages or less adventures of California man in search of perfect Buddha statue in Nepal, then go for it. The book will give you another perspective of expatriates abroad who are trying to make ends meet, but at the same time are genuinely drawn to the mysticism of the Far East. Mr. Greenwald is not pretending to be the one who will bring Buddhism closer to Western world's. Rather, in his own way he brings us to HIS story of the way(s) of finding perfect Buddha statue. Light read, lots of fun. And you can always give this book to a friend for fun read after you are finished yourself...

Greenwald offers to readers an introspective look at his visits to Nepal, and his desire to acquire the perfect Buddha statue. Intermingled with his discussions of his shopping expeditions are stories and analogies about Buddhist Gods and the Buddhist and Hindu religions. He also provides an historical look at Nepalese government, and the current (1990) state of the Kingdom.

Greenwald's writing is a bit scattered, yet it was easy to read and enjoy. I have a friend who reads quite a lot of travel books and I recommended this to him quite highly.

So if you are interested in world religions, politics and travel, this would be a light hearted treat.

I think travel, regardless of the country(ies) it might take you, is perhaps best approached with a touch of whimsy and a sense of adventure. Truly seasoned travelers have the ability and willingness to absorb another culture while laughing at both the experiences they face and at the preconceived notions they bring with them. I've just finished Shopping with Buddhas and Greenwald seems to be that kind of traveler.

I enjoyed this book because, among other things, it brought the colors of the subcontinent (where I grew up) to life. Greenwald spends most of the book in a near obsessive hunt for a perfect statue of the Buddha, only to find it when he is least expecting it and at a price he is hesitant to pay. Which, when you think about it, is an interesting reflection on how things of true value come to us when we least expect it, and ask of us a price we may not be willing to pay at first. I also like that Greenwald is unafraid to take whimsical potshots at his western outlook on many eastern situations! I grew up in the subcontinent and now live in the West, so I do exactly the same thing-in reverse!

An interesting read whether you are headed to the East or, like me, are a commuter dreaming of warmer climes!