Joseph Korn's story of his father's triumph as a young man surviving the worst experiences of the holocaust caught me by surprise. I was not expecting such a spiritually uplifting story. Abe Korn not only survived the most arduous physical and mental trials through the most horrifying of experiences, he survived with incredible humanity intact that bore no hatred or malice to his captors. This is the most spiritually uplifting book I've ever read on the holocaust, and of the rare type that surely must have insprired Roberto Benigni in his Emmy-award winning movie 'Life is Beautiful.'

Abram Korn was a man of great courage. After suffering at the hands of the Nazis in a ghetto and, later, in many concentration camps, he still did not lose his faith, his courage, or his humanity. In fact, he ended up marrying a German girl! This book lets us have a glimpse of what day-to-day life was like in the camps, and how much survival mattered.

This is a wonderful book. It showed that to be a survivor of the Holocaust required ingenuity, resourcefulness, luck and faith. The ending of the book brought tears to my eyes. Abe Korn was the epitome of the meaning of the word Mench.

I'll make this short...For anyone interested in Chinese history, literature, or culture, this volume is an absolutely essential collection of primary sources, and includes prefaces and explanations by China scholars. There is no one better than de Bary, and this new edition includes everything from the 1960 edition up through the Jiang Zemin era.

I've read a little of this and that about Chinese history and religion, and I needed a book to fill in the basics and the details. This was perfect.

First, the selections included excerpts of almost everything I'd ever heard of: Shang Oracle Bones, the Analects of Confucius and the Confucian classics including the I Ching; Mozi; the Tao Te Ching; Zhuangzi (who famously dreamed that he was a butterfly); Mencius; Xunzi; the Zuozhuan; Sun Tzu's art of war; all kinds of stuff about Chinese schools of Buddhism including the Lotus Sutra and the Flower Garden Sutra and the history of Guanyin and Wutai Shan; Li Po (Li Bo) and Tu Fu (Du Fu); and neo-Confucianism (which was so influential in Korea). In short, this is really, practically the "Eatern Canon" and the selections are deserving of such a label. I was in turns morally and intellectually challenged, uplifted, informed and surprised; but rarely bored and never disappointed.

Second, the introductory essays were exactly what I wanted to know: who might have written it, and when, and who read, and what it meant to them. For all that information, they were still brief and the bibliography was sufficient to help me chase the points that left me curious. An important thing these essays did was to cover the political, historical and social backgrounds (and foregrounds) of the texts, so I learned about Chinese history as well as literature and religion. If that is what you want to do, this book will serve you well.

The binding is excellent, and while the price might look steep I have to say it's a bargain considering what you get.

I didn't read Volume Two, and so I don't know if it is as good. It is certainly a lot smaller!

This second edition of a classic provides an update on a reference recommended for college-level collections specializing in Chinese literature. Sources of Chinese Tradition has been recognized already as a scholarly staple: in its new form Sources of Chinese Tradition has been extended to include the Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin eras of China and includes invaluable source readings on history and literature of the times, from the 18th-century Qing civilization onward.

I've been looking for this book as my daughter wants to get it for several gifts. I'll pass on to her that I found it. I have read it and seen the reaction of children to this book. It's absolutely delightful. What a shame that the above review from the School Library Journal is so unfavorable...
Get this book for your child or grandchild and it will become as traditional at Christmas Time as reading "Rudolph" or "The Snowman" is...... You'll enjoy it too!

This book is adorable, charming and sweet an absalute must for all you people who like to read.

This is a fabulous book for children interested in animals. It is very detailed and has beautiful photos. Our young child refers to it as "The Great Big Book of Everything," as in the Disney Channel's "Stanley" cartoon. It really does seem to have everything inside.

At first I was hesitant to order this book, with no picture of the cover on Amazon and no review to judge the book I took a chance and I am very glad I did. I bought this book as a bargain book, price-wise and content-wise I couldn't have made a better choice. I am very impressed and for me it has turned out to be a great buy since my kids love learning about animals.
This book is HUGE and heavy ,almost ten pounds! It concentrates on the four major groups: Mammals,birds,reptiles and amphibians. In-depth and comprehensive text with superb photographs and illustrations. Very good research material.

Building upon a series of lectures given in the early seventies, Rohr and Martos expand on the ideas to look at the books of the Old Testament from a more macro view. From this stepped back view, the authors show how the books fit together, and how the parts of books such as Exodus build a contextual history of the times and how people are brought together with God. Rohr rejects fundamentalist or biblical literalist readings of the Old Testament, choosing to look at what the stories of the bible meant to those who originally wrote and shared the stories, and how they interact with our relationship with God today. This is one of the best series to lay out a good basis for studying the Old Testament and to understand what the bible is trying to tell us. A succinct volume that can be read again and again, it continues to bringing us into a greater understanding of faith and the Bible.

This book presents an overview of the great themes which are common in many Old Testament books. The book is easy to read yet inspires the reader to see in these ancient writings deep truths which are still relevant today. Most powerfully the authors site multitudinous examples of God's abounding love for mankind. It is very inspirational.

Joe Sowerby has culled from years of experience in at least two professions and numerous other expert's in the sales field to provide a valuable resource for the novice and the experienced professional. I am in the real estate finance field and agree with everything Joe presents in "It's Your Deal." His breezy style is easy and fast to read and I found it an excellent refresher course in what it takes to be a sucessful salesperson in any line of sales.

Very successful sales people know it can be simple things which trigger riches. This book can be all you need. I especially enjoyed discussions regarding consistent persistence, follow-up and wholeheartedly agree with need to just "ask for the order". This book offers little foo-foo and lots of practical advice.

Very fine, with great pictures and identification tables in the back that help you tell the difference between similar varieties of weeds. In fact, it's the best book I've found for identifying weeds. My only complaints are that it's a bit scientific and dry, and garlic mustard - a very destructive weed - is not included.

Great book for the homeowners and horticulturalists. Great pictures and descriptions. The weed "Bible".

This book is a treasure. I own and use many dozens of "weed" and plant books and this is one of the most comprehensive and useful. The written presentation for each plant includes information on its propagation, seedlings, roots, flowers and fruits and habitat, and more. The photographs are excellent and show the habit, seedling, leaves, flowers/fruits and seeds. Some grasses are also included.

I hope that the authors will eventually expand the geographical coverage and the number of species. I'll be first in line to buy a new edition!

I highly recommend this book to readers who would enjoy a thought provoking hard look into the lifestyles, excesses, and inconsistencies of American culture. The book outlines the adventures and realizations that author Richard Joseph experiences in his travels around the world.

The story itself is a source of inspiration. The reader is taken on a rollercoaster ride through the trials and tribulations of the author's early life in New York City, into an entertaining story of realization. After reading the book I found myself re-examining my own life and the lives of those closest to me. The book has truly inspired me to take a hard look at my personal goals and long term plans for the future.

Transcend is a book that's hard to describe, or rather, hard to categorize. It's part travelogue, part memoir, part philisophical rumination. It's the kind of book I wish my professors had had me read in my freshman philosophy class, because it's real philosophy, written by a real person, someone who truly and earnestly believes in what he is saying, someone who wants to change the world and actually took action and wrote a book. The first section of the book is a bit about Richard Joseph's life, his background and his travels through Asia and how he came to be traveling. This part makes for enjoyable reading. Joseph has an easy writing style that makes you feel like you are sitting having coffee or a beer with him, chatting with him, rather than reading. Towards the end of the first part, a friend commits suicide, and this suicide sends Joseph into himself, sends him thinking. The end product of these ruminations is the second half of the book. Joseph tries to understand why there are so many inconsistencies in current society, inconsistencies rooted somehow in race, gender, wealth and power. I cannot do his philosophy justice in a few sentences here. I will say only read this book. It is thoughtful, it will get you thinking. As I said before, I wish I had read this my freshman year in college because I think it can foster many meaningful discussions and debates, all the while being completely readable, thoroughly engaging. Joseph ponders and explores the underpinnings of our society. Transcend will make you think.

This is a painful book to read. In fact it is a hard read for those who have pap and fluff books pushed on them constantly. Or who are used to being told what wonderful people they really are. But like anything that involves getting healthy it is a book I needed to read.

Why? Because it raises questions and demands answers that in my case I didn't like being asked. To Live A Lie on page 216-227 is in itself worth the time required to read the book. It is just one example of how the author tweaks our comfort zone. In this case the typical suburban, upward mobile career person who from their home to work is sheltered in the car cocoon, and in their office and in their home and artificially shielded from the real world. The real world where ones child asks why poor people don't live in the nice type of house they live in.

I appreciated even though it hurt sometimes, his wisdom about race, economics, the sexes, and our nation. I don't agree with everything he espouses, but he addresses some serious issues in a thought provoking way, that I admit really made me think and look at my role in the scheme of things.

Although I am an avid reader of American military history, I read few first-person accounts of war because I tend to prefer books about geopolitics, grand strategy, and decisive weapons systems. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this book about a marine officer's experience during the Korean War. It was easy reading, its narrative was straightforward, informative, and, I believe, honest, and it provided some valuable insights into the harsh realities of the first of the Cold War's regional conflicts.

The United States' "forgotten war" began on June 25, 1950, when the People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) invaded the Republic of Korea (South Korea). At the time, Author Joseph Owen was a Marine Corps lieutenant stationed in North Carolina, living with his wife and their two young children. According to Owen: "Nobody at Camp Lejeune had expected a shooting war. Nor were we ready for one." A captain who had been an adviser to the South Korean Marine Corps predicted Korea would be "[o]ne lousy place to fight a war. Too hot in summer, too cold in winter, and straight up and down mountain terrains all year round. Except for those stinking rice paddies down in the valleys. Human manure they use. Worst stink in the world." Nevertheless, according to Owen: "The possibility of American Marines in a combat role excited us." Owen writes: "The North Koreans continued to overpower the meager resistance offered by the South Korean soldiers....Seoul, the South Korean capital, fell with hardly a fight, and the Red blitzkrieg rolled southward. In response, President Truman escalated American involvement in the war. He ordered General MacArthur, America's supreme commander in the Far East, to use U.S. Army troops stationed in Japan to stem the invaders." And: "General MacArthur called for a full division of Marines to help him turn back the North Koreans. According to Owen: "The Marine Corps welcomed the call, but we did not have a full division to put in the field;" and "More than seven thousand of us at Camp Lejeune received orders to proceed by rail to Camp Pendleton. There they would form into companies and embark for Korea." Owen's unit, "Baker-One-Seven became one of three rifle companies if the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment....Our ranks were filled by 215 men and 7 officers who had never before served together....Many of [the privates] were beardless teenagers with little training beyond the basics of shouldering a rifle and marching in step." While training, there was much concern about the readiness of the Marines for combat. At one point, after a sergeant remarks that the troops need more training in boot camp, Owen succinctly invokes reality: "They are not going to boot camp. They are going aboard ship. And they are going to fight." On September 1, the company boarded a Navy transport for the three-week voyage to east Asia. According to Owen: "Ready or not, we were on the way to war." And, according to Owen, the 1st Marine Division's orders were "to go for the Yalu River," North Korea's border with China. At one point, a veteran officer provides this paraphrase of William Tecumseh Sherman's famous dictum: "War is hell, but you never know what particular kind of hell it's going to be." The Korean War hell was cold and barren. Owen writes: "We were chilled through and bone tired as we slogged our way back to battalion....The bivouac was lumpy with rocks and boulders;" "The cold weather was as formidable an enemy as the Chinese;" and "Rarely did the [daily action] reports exceed zero degrees, and there were lows of twenty below."

By the time Owen's outfit arrived in Korea, he writes, "we were making bets that the war would be over before we got into it." Owen's Marines could not have been more wrong. While Owen is inspecting his men's weapons, a private asks: "Think we'll get shot at today, Lieutenant?" Owen replies: "We're taking the point for the regiment. If the gooks are there, they'll be shooting at us." A few pages later, after the outfit's first experience in combat, Owen comments: "We were fortunate that the enemy had not chosen a "fight-to-the-death" defense of this hill, as they would when we advanced farther north." But some fighting was hand-to-hand. At one point, Owen writes: "Judging from the noise they were making, and the direction of their grenades, the North Koreans were preparing to attack, not more than thirty yards away." The Captain tells Owen and the other subordinate officers: "The Chinese have committed themselves to this war....The people we will fight are the 124th Division of the Regular Chinese Army....They're tough, well-trained soldiers, ten thousand of them. And all of their officers are combat experienced, their very best....A few hours from now we'll have the Chinese army in our gunsights. We'll be in their gunsights. You damn well better have our people ready for some serious fighting." The combat was, indeed, brutal. According to Owen: "The Chinese attacked in massive numbers, an overwhelming weight, but they also endured terrible casualties." Owen recalls that, while waiting for one Chinese attack, the "men stacked Chinese bodies in front of the holes for greater protection." And the fighting around the frozen Chosin Reservoir may have been the most brutal of the war. Owen ultimately suffered wounds requiring 17 months of treatment, and he never regained full use of one arm.

A few months ago, I reviewed James Brady's wonderful The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea here. This book has different charms. Whereas Brady is a gifted professional writer, there is no elegant prose here. But Owen provides an equally vivid account of this ugly war. Big, sophisticated studies of military history focusing on geopolitical principles and grand strategy rarely offer narrative moments like the ones in this book. Reader are unlikely to forget the Korean War after reading Joseph Owen's Colder than Hell.

When preparing to travel to an Asian country on business, I seek context by reading of the wars the U.S. has fought there. When I look in those Japanese, Chinese and Korean eyes, I see the children of old enemies and old friends. While plowing through Fehrenbach's canonical Korean War history, "This Kind of War", I took a break and lost a weekend of yard work to "Colder Than Hell" which I ordered based on the praise given by my fellow Amazon reviewers. My thanks to the other reviewers, for this is a superb first person account of a Marine company fighting it's way up and then back down the Korean peninsula in 1950. Marines of Baker one-seven fought and froze to the death too often, but their sacrifice has let 47 million Koreans in the South build a democracy and learn the meaning of freedom. The price of freedom was huge for Baker one-seven, but the esprit de corps so crisply described by ex-Second Lt. Owen carried his Marines from hill to hill. This is an excellent book and a must read for fans of first person stories of war and sacrifice.

Colder than Hell: A Marine Rifle Company at Chosin Reservoir. By Joseph R. Owen. Reviewed by Mike Davino

Army Korean War expert Lieutenant Colonel Roy Appleman has called the 1st Marine Division of the Chosin Reservoir campaign "one of the most magnificent fighting organizations that ever served in the United States Armed Forces." The remarkable and inspiring story of the division at the Chosin Reservoir has been the subject of numerous books and several films. During their fighting withdrawal, the Marines decimated several divisions of the Chinese People's Liberation Army while at the same time fighting an exceptionally harsh winter environment.

Joseph Owen's new book on the subject tells the story from the cutting edge perspective of a rifle company. The author served as a mortar section leader and rifle platoon commander in Baker Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines from its activation in August 1950 through the Inchon-Seoul and Chosin fighting where he was severely wounded.

There are many reasons given for the outstanding performance of the Marines in northeast Korea during the winter of 1950. It is clear from this book that a large measure of the credit goes to the Marines and their leaders at the small unit and rifle company level.

Owen's narrative covers the hasty activation and training of the company, its brief participation in the fighting north of Seoul after the amphibious assault at Inchon and the details of its intense fighting at Chosin. He candidly discusses the mistakes made by the leaders and Marines of Baker Company, to include his own. More importantly, Owen covers what they learned from these mistakes and how they used that knowledge to defeat the Chinese in a series of intense actions.

Although focused at the company level, the author frames his story with the overall conduct of the campaign. Refreshingly, unlike many books about the Chosin campaign, it is free of partisan sniping about the contributions made by the various services involved. Owen gives credit to the Army units that fought at Chosin as well as the contributions of naval and air forces and our British allies.

This book is rich in lessons about small unit leadership, training and combat operations. It is an excellent addition to the personal narratives on the Korea War.

This book is amazing though the photos of Neutra's projects are generally not as large as one would hope. It is amazing how much Neutra created during his career. A brilliant book filled with insightful information and general floor plans of building projects. Best of all, there is even a map as to the location of his buildings.

This luxe volume traces the entire career of the great Richard Neutra (1892 - 1970), whose work symbolizes Modernist splendor in all its glory. Highly acclaimed for his designs of California residences, Neutra is one of the most important architects of the century and well deserving of this stunning tribute.

Originally from Vienna, Neutra came to America early in his career, settling on the West Coast. His influence on post-war architecture is undisputed, the sunny climate and rich landscape of California being a particularly suitable setting for his cool, sleek modern style. Neutra had a keen appreciation of the relationship between people and nature and his trademark plate glass walls and ceilings which turn into deep overhangs effectively connect the indoors with the outdoors. His ability to incorporate technology, aesthetics, science, and nature into his designs brought him to the forefront of Modernist architecture.

For the first time, all of Neutra's works (nearly 300 private homes, schools, and public buildings) are gathered together in one volume, illustrated with over 1,000 photographs, including those of Julius Shulman and other prominent photographers. This is the essential reference book for fans of Neutra's work.

The horizontal 11.5" x 16" format shows the buildings to extraordinarily good advantage. This special volume with a blond wood cover is both an architecture lover's and book collector's dream.

Barbara Lamprecht and Julius Shulman have created one the great architecture books about this leading figure of 20th century modernism. As a fan of Lamprecht's excellent writing, the text in this book is, of course, excellent---full of information, opinion and wit. The depth of information provided, including floor plans, is rare in an architectural photo book. Shulman's photos (and some by the new architectural photo star--John Ellis) are superb. The very large format of this book shows off the beautiful buildings to their best advantage. The real wood cover seems a bit odd for a book on Neutra, but it certainly is handsomely impressive. Though [the price] is a a lot for a book, this one's worth it. Buy it now. The second edition might not be so large and impressive, and certainly won't be made of wood!