This book really makes you think. I am inspired to draw closer to God and to be in a place to receive the blessings He has in store for His church today. I would definitely recommend this book to all Christians and those seeking His guidance.

I could not put it down. The stories and poetry will touch your heart and inspire you in your walk with the Lord.

This is a compilation of articles and poems that the author has carefully put together to inspire, to encourage and to bless others. The pictures are superb and the writing is well done.

I found this to be an entertaining story, which shows that there are opportunities in every situation if we only know where to look and how to take advantage of them. This book is an "easy read" and I would think young people, in particular, would benefit from it.

This extraordinary, Psychic,Author, Robert Petro delivers his message with fervor. He welcomes all readers through his step by step approach using his phenominal gift to further enhance the lives of others. Each reader can easily comprehend for himself how to achieve the road to success to their individual path. The book is fantastic!

This book was loaned to me recently and WOW! was I impressed. As a motivational speaker and entrepreneur I've encountered and taught piecemeal most, if not all, the "secrets". Here they all are in one package in STORY form. Some of us learn better by illustration and this certainly provides that opportunity. What a fabulous experience!

This suspense novel is quite good for a first time author. Although you are let in on "whodunit" from the very beginning there is still a desire to read the cat and mouse game between the killer and female Homicide Detective Paris Murphy. The book is fairly predictable but the great writing and the intriguing and likeable heroine make for an exciting time. The ending also draws to a satisfying conclusion.

If you like mysteries a little on the dark side this would make a fine reading choice. I look forward to reading something by this author in the future.

Theresa Monsour writes a lot like John Camp AKA John Sandford...Good.

... Monsour is a fine writer with an interesting story. Clean Cut reads very, very much like a John Sandford "Lucas Davenport" novel but don't believe for a moment that this is ripoff of Sandford's work. Monsour writes her own story with her own characters. Her main character is Paris Murphy, a St. Paul police sergeant chasing down a well-bred "clean cut" psychotic killer of hookers in MN. About a third of the book is told from the perspective of the killer. Monsour handles the change of views effortlessly and IMhO it makes for a more interesting book. ...There is sex and violence in the book but it's part of the story. Monsour does NOT play Paris Murphy as some sex obsessed bimbo, she gives all her character a suitable amount of depth.
... I really look forward to seeing more novels from Theresa Monsour. I'm sure she is going to get tired of being compared to John Camp but since I consider Camp to be the best of the best I hope she takes it as a compliment.

He is one of the most esteemed plastic surgeons in the Twin Cities and is connected, through his relatives, to the people in power of St. Paul. Dr. A. Romann Michaels is married to a high society woman and has two beautiful daughters. After having a fight with his wife, he leaves his country cabin and returns to the city. He does what he does best when the buzzing in his head becomes too loud: find a longhaired prostitute to rape, kill and cut off her hair as his trophy.

St. Paul homicide detective Paris Murphy doesn't realize at first that she is dealing with a serial rapist killer when she is assigned the case of the murdered prostitute. The case doesn't begin to take shape for her until a Catholic priest is almost murdered in the confession booth, holding the prostitute's cross in his hand. As the death toll mounts, Paris and Michaels are involved in a cat and mouse game that will only end when one of them is dead.

This is Theresa Monsour's debut novel but nobody reading this exciting police procedural would ever believes it. The characters are well developed to the point where the reader ever understands even the killer's motivation. CLEAN CUT is fast-paced and the plot is believable but the heroine is the star of this work. She is determined to find a way to bring the antagonist in so justice can be served even if it means putting her life on the line. She is courageous and spunky.

Harriet Klausner

The book is lovely, it includes the script, a foreward by Paul Newman, wonderful photos and historical background. A must have for fans of the movie. However, the hardcover version of this book has only 150 pages (including the index) not 208 as advertised, so you are getting more than a quarter less book for your money.

I got this after falling in love with the movie Cradle Will Rock, and it did not fail to amaze me! It balances a script with so much historical information to back it up, insights, and pictures both from the movie and the real moments of Cradle Will Rock. It has informational blurbs about Marc Blitzstein: Composer and Enigma, Orson Welles, Hallie Flanagan, Christopher Marlowe and the questioning of him being a communist, the real Olive Stanton, the death of Vaudeville, Diego Rivera, and so many other things. It also has great pictures from the film, including some candid shots. I used it as a source on my paper on the Federal Theatre Project, it's an excellent source of historical information, but it's also very entertaining to read! The day I got it I spent hours going through it. It's well worth the money, my favorite coffee table book!

This book includes movie script, many photos and the historical notes about the U.S. in 1930s.

The main plot is as follows: In the age of the Great Depression, the Federal Theater Project gave many U.S. people encouraging entertainment, and gave many actors and artists their jobs. The movement gave birth to Marc Blitzstein's masterpiece 'Cradle Will Rock' (directed by Orson Welles), but the play offended the reactionary congressmen. They made their soldiers lock out the theater. 'Cradle Will Rock,' can't the play see the light? Or...

In addition, the movie has the clash between Diego Rivera and Nelson Rockfeller over the Rockfeller Center's mural, etc. And the book has the detailed background notes of the movie. They are a great help for me. For example, I thought red-hunting movement was made by the Republicans, but it's my misunderstanding. And I learn that Harlem Renaissance (I like Zora Neale Hurston) wasn't an isolated and mutant movement. Etc, etc.

The movie and the book represent artists' courage. In the afterword, Tim Robbins says 'I believe threre are already too many artists who censor themselves.' I, too, think so. Bravo, Tim and his comrades ('gangs'?)! A toast to your brilliance, effort and bravery!

While I've enjoyed reading other Idiot's Guides over the years, I was very disappointed with this particular Idiot's Guide. The authors seemed to be out of touch with the concerns of pregnant women, skimming over important topics like what drugs are safe to take during pregnancy; how to cope with infertility, pregnancy loss, or a high-risk pregnancy; and the emotional highs and lows of pregnancy for both a pregnant woman and her partner.

Instead of picking up this particular book, I'd suggest that you pick up the pregnancy books that I recommend to the parents who sign up for my parenting courses: The Unofficial Guide to Having A Baby by John Sussman and Ann Douglas (for parents who want a highly comprehensive and yet very readable guide to pregnancy); The Pregnancy Journal by A. Christine Harris (for parents who want a journal that's packed with interesting facts about pregnancy); and A Child Is Born by Leonnart Nillson (for parents who want an illustrated guide to fetal development).

I agree with you, James! Dr. Gliksman is the best doctor I've ever had! She delivered both of my daughters by c-section (for different reasons). You can't ask for a kinder, more understanding OB. If you live in Bergen County, NJ and are not her patient, than you're nuts. Her book is wonderful, too!

This book tells you all - from insurance to first weeks of your baby.
I and my husband both are very happy with this book.
It provides summaries, key points etc. which makes it easier to get to the core of the issue/problem in mind.

Good book, new author to me, but needs to tighten up that plot line, and the "what about Daddy" ending was just a bit too much. Great beginning, a lot of extraneous information, and too many incidental stuff going on, but basically well done. Will buy the next one, hope it's just a bit better.

As a mystery author, I read THE LAW OF THE DEAD as preparation for an author panel I was moderating at a recent Left Coast Crime mystery convention. Written by Tess Collins, a coal miner's granddaughter, THE LAW OF THE DEAD gives the reader a taste of life in Appalachia. Set in Contrary Kentucky, the book features a strong female lead. Alma Bashears was born and raised in Contrary, yet she relocated to California. Now she is home in Appalachia, relearning her old turf, and dealing with a series of seemingly random acts of violence. This novel succeeds on many levels. Terrific plot. Memorable characters. Excellent capturing of the locale. Tess Collins has written an excellent book. Read it!

Contrary, Kentucky, the setting of this novel, is by no means Mayberry RFD. This Appalachian town is brought to life in appearance and smell and feeling--in atmosphere. It's a good-sized modern-day hill town, with strikes at the factory, corruption in government, social manipulation, and murder. The characters in the novel are as flawed and human as those in your own home town. Am eager to find out where the next book takes Alma Bashears, a protagonist so real I sometimes wanted to shake her for being so single-minded.

This book is really good. It is sorta boring at the beginning, but its good at the end. My favorite part is when they took the monkey to the zoo, and got chased. I think you should read this book because its about a monkey that has a big effect on a girl. I would recommend this book to you.

I think this book is good because it has a lot of action. My favorite part was when they got chased in the zoo. I think you should check this book out because its grabs your mind. We read this book in our Principal's Book talk, so it has to be good. At the very beginning its not as good as you think it would be, but at the end it gets better.

A monkey, an island, a secret treehouse, and a cast of characters to fall in love with -- who could ask for more? This was a wonderful book that I won't forget! I am recommending it to all my friends. I'm also going to pick it as a monthly selection for my kids reading club. I loved this book!

In her story of the Cretan snake-princess, Auriellia, Theresa C. Dintino points all women in a direction where through meditation and experience they will find meaning regarding themselves. At a young age, Auriellia hears voices and sees things; the Cretan hierarchy interprets this as a divine calling to the priesthood of the snake. Under the tutelage of Barbara, Auriella undergoes the bitter journey of the acolyte, where when bitten by the snakes and saturated with their venom, her visions form prophesies that are recorded by the council of elders. She sees a future where the goddess is no longer worshipped and sadly women are persecuted for their herblore and mutilated by the world of men. Horrified, Auriellia is driven to look further into the meaning of her own life and to insure that people of the future remember the ancient mysteries.
Dintino manages to create the vibrant doggedness of Auriellia's character yet fails to give the reader the sense that she is a woman of another time. Her selection of the matriarical society of Minoan Crete to backdrop her message while intriguing was lackluster. I did not get a sense of the people or community. Mostly I would have liked to see more myth wrapped within the tale. Case in point, as the labyrinth is detailed within the story's structure as an intitiation ground, I would have enjoyed a reference to the minotaur myth. . . but, perhaps Dintino's tale predates this.
Overall this was an interesting spiritiual read; Auriellia's awakened feelings as a mother are right on the mark and beautiful to read.

This book transports you to the exotic within you. It is a mythic journey that we all take. However, for all its spiritual growth and aesthetic appeal, the characters are as relatable as your cousin. This is no new age grope fest. It is a gorgeously written tale of love and personal evolution. You feel part of a powerful goddess sisterhood while staying with these intriguing women; however, the book is lovely in that it loves and respects men at the same time. I can't wait for Dintino's next book.

I found the book mesmerizing. The content was uncomfortable at times but always thought provoking. I loved the spirtuality and depth in the book. I found myself wanting to share and discuss the book with a friend to absorb even more than I could by just reading it once. It captures the complexity of being a woman and leaves me feeling proud,purposeful and sad all at the same time.

As we continue down the numbing path of modern "civilization," the anarcho-primitivist critique becomes more obviously true. As I made my way through Zerzan's essays, a radical split emerged in my consciousness. On the one hand, we're enmeshed in day-to-day struggles and anxieties, the all-consuming attention required just to scrape by and maintain some sense of sanity (and this in one of the more affluent societies on the planet). But Zerzan's stance is like a slap in the face. I began to see just how ridiculous and dehumanizing the entire modern system is. This dissonance between civilization's maximum-seriousness demands and our personal awareness that it's all a huge sham is essentially the substance of alienation, a theme which most liberals have abandoned, but which Zerzan always keeps central. Alienation is still the most explosive analytical tool for confronting our current situation.

Anarcho-primitivism may not have the most useful prescriptive program, but its descriptive power is unparalleled. The anarcho-primitvist goal is certainly utopian, but that is a good thing. Without utopian goals, we can have no transcendent position from which to challenge the present order. The intermediate mechanisms of change, through which we must work toward the utopian anarcho-primitivist future, should be the true program of liberalism. The left has condemned itself to irrelevancy by ignoring its utopian strand in favor of technical tinkering. We must recover our utopian roots in order to bear anarcho-primitivist fruit.

What a wonderful book! After reading it, I had so many question, I felt the need to talk with author in person. After tracking down his number, I gave him a call (noting how odd it was to be talking with an "anarcho-primitivist" on the phone), and we set up a meeting for the following week.

Before I knew it, I was down in Eugene, OR, walking through the infamous Whitaker district - well known for it's vagrants and black-block anarchists - searching for Zerzan's co-op. He greated me at the door, and invited me into the small frontroom/study. It was filled to the brim with old ragtag books and zines, but otherwise well-kept and austere. After talking for an hour about anarchism, ecology, history, technology, society, permaculture, natural farming and ecovillages, we then went to a local coffee house to chat some more.

What struck me about Zerzan was his humility, patience, kindness, and penchent for critical thought. I mentioned my suprise that he had a telephone, and he agreed, in an ideal world he would not need a telephone. But, he said, he does not have a computer, watch, or any of the other things that weight us down and distract us more than they help us. And, he reminded me, a certain degree of compromise must be made for those who wish to stay inside civil society and reform it. Sure, he could pack up and go live in a commune, but how would that help? The global economy would still spin out of control, and people would continue to live in ways that destroy the planet. Aside from the phone, which keeps him connected to the larger movement as well as curious people like me, Zerzan purposefully chooses to live like as "primitive" (a word he esteems, although it is now used merely in the pejorative) as possible. In fact, for reasons outlined in his book, he prefers it.

I highly recommend reading RUNNING ON EMPTINESS even if you are an avowed progressive or technophile - if only for the sake of balance. As Zerzan shows in the book, progress is not a unilinear process of self-refinement. It has also alienated us and, as with the case of people like me, made us sick. For those who have already begun to notice that civilization is not all roses, this book is absolutely essential. There is perhaps no better perspective on this subject. Zerzan will enrich and deepen whatever nascent criticisms you already have. A must read.

Zerzan does not compromise, and his research and philosophy hit hard. This book is a collection of essays dismantling everything we might think as 'civilized'. Although at times depressing, because of the scope of our enslavement to technology and destruction -which he brilliantly shows to be irremediably linked-, and the debunking of everything we might have thought 'cool', or even acceptable -the critique of Star Trek is so on the money-, he presents a possible to our sealed fate. Perhaps THE philosopher of the already grim 21st century.

Barbara A. Gutek and Theresa Welsh believe that companies can improve their relationships with customers if they find the approach that best fits their business. The authors emphasize the difference between real relationships - ongoing, personal contacts between a customer and an individual service provider - and mere encounters - where the customer's relationship is with the company and a random variety of service employees. Many companies confuse the two, trying to turn encounters into relationships, and ending up with pseudo-relationships that alienate customers. Instead, realistically determine what you offer customers and what customers want, and then adjust your systems or policies accordingly. This excellent book provides executives and business owners with an insightful analytical framework for understanding customer relationships. While clear and well organized, it is sometimes repetitious - perhaps to be sure we all get the idea - but we [...] recommend it highly for the soundness of its concepts, if not the economy of its prose.

This is an extremely well-written book. The authors are obviously excellent communicators and give wonderful examples in order to make their points. They segment different approaches to customer service brilliantly. The fundamental message is that if you can't really provide a mutual bond of trust with your customer (i.e., a relationship), then don't bother trying to fool anyone by saying all of the right things (i.e., a pseudo-relationship). In today's commodity marketplace we find an even greater emphasis on what was originally Fred Taylor's model of efficiency, via chain stores and vast corporate bureaucrasies. This outcome, say the authors, lends itself more to encounters than relationships. By enhancing encounters, therefore, companies can still satisfy the customer without the high cost of developing a relationship.

The only down side of the book for me was the discussion of technology (as well as several rather malicious pokes at Peppers & Rogers). The authors clearly chose only to view computer technology as an insidious and poorly implemented medium that threatened to reduce front line "encounter" people to automatons (albeit mildly useful in relationship environments). Although no one will argue that IT practitioners often do not understand business, the fact is that technology today is evolving into a very powerful tool for augmenting customer relationships. Granted, we hear a lot of unfounded hype about e-business, CRM and ERP systems. However, used appropriately, emerging technologies will help encounter businesses understand the needs of individual customers to a far greater extend than has been possible up to now.

Overall, a very worthwhile read.

The subtitle is correct. The authors do indeed provide strategies for effectively "aligning customer relationships, market strategies, and business structures." They make a key distinction between encounters with customers and relationships with customers. As Jeffrey Gitomer and others have already observed, "customer satisfaction" is measured in terms of each transaction whereas "customer loyalty" depends upon a relationship of repeated transactions. Gutek and Welsh obviousy agree. In the Preface, they assert that "This vital -- and misunderstood -- distinction between the two fundamental ways to deliver service is the catalyst to structuring the business for maximum success." Their excellent book is then divided into ten chapters which guide the reader through a step-by-step process.

For example, Chapter One "looks at customer perceptions of some common practices that result from mistaken ideas about what constitutes a relationship." Chapter Five identifies several different types of encounter and then examines one specific kind: "when the individual service provider is replaced by a machine." In Chapter Ten, the final chapter, the authors bring the reader back to the central question (ie What are the basic causes of customer dissatisfaction and how can they be avoided or eliminated?), then discuss "the trends that will be important for success in the years beyond 2000."

As technological connectivity rapidly and extensively replaces so much of direct human interaction, it is imperative to understand the differences (as well as the implications of those differences) between an encounter with a customer and a relationship with a customer. Gutek and Welsh have made an invaluable contribution to our understanding of those differences...and to our understanding of how to achieve and then sustain enhanced relationships with those whom we are privileged to serve.