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"Zen Lessons: The Art of Leadership" conveys this message in spades. In the format of a series of compact passages, it presents excerpts from the cumulative wisdom of thousands of years of experience with continual political society. The insights and lessons contained in this book are as poignant today as they were when they were first put forth; the reader will be astounded, gratified, and ideally energized to pursue a path of virtuous leadership in his or her personal and professional life.
This reviewer highly recommends this book for those in corporate, governmental, public or private positions of leadership, as! well as for the general reader. After all, it is the duty of the citizenry to expect great things from those it follows.
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Ben has the typical abusive military father. Ben draws some sense of false motivation from his father's insults and threats, so he never can truly grow by himself. Ben fears his father, yet at the same time, has some sense of loyalty that holds them together.
Ben as a person is too weak to challenge his father's cruel treatments. He needs to conform to the expectations of his parents, as well as society, even though he is an outcast. Near the end of the book, when Ben assumes the role as family leader, although he has shown some growth, he hasn't avoided conforming to his father's expectations. Mary Anne still flicks tears at the back of his neck in the car, as she did to her father in the beginning.
Conroy has the ability to place characters in seemingly impossible situations, and yet somehow their struggle makes a good story.
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Look elsewhere...
Vale a pena galera!
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That is not to say that Thoreau does not illuminate or at times give remarkable insights especially when it came to some of the people he met who had fascinating ways of life eg the woodcutter. The book varies from downright mundane and tedious to being very insightful and beautiful. Its amazing how someone can do this as he writes, verging from one extreme to the other. But then it was written from journal notes as he lived his life in the woods over two years experience and during that time a person changes as he adapts to his new way of life. At first its very exciting and new, any new experience is always full of a kind of life shock whether it be painful or joyful, the thinking mind, the mind absorbed in everyday "safe" tasks which define the "normal" life are absent in this new environment which requires new creative energies to survive, after a while this way of life becomes the accepted one and starts to be drained of the vitality it possessed at the beginning as one is fully acclimatised to it and it becomes the norm, after this stage comes the usual safety associated with the walls created to keep life ordinary rather than really being alive. This is hard to do when living in the woods by yourself where you need constant awareness to survive unless its a little too close to civilisation which provides the safety net which Thoreau always had available to him. But still during the period where he was very much alive and aware, life is lived without need for too much unnecessary thought, and this is the place from where insights and great creativity burst forth.
If one wants to know what it is like to be really truly alive in the moment and you are afraid to try it yourself and would rather read about it then try the books "Abstract Wild" by Jack Turner or "Grizzly Years" by Peacock. Am I wrong to criticise Thoreau so much ? Yes and no, eg Yes:see the comments by John Ralston Saul on exactly this aspect of Thoreau's writing, No: look at your own life or mine for example, in each case we do not escape this ordinary life we ourselves create. For the purely lived life expressed in poetry look at the poems by Basho, no clearer or more beautiful expression of life has yet been written. I say written not lived, lived can't be written down in full only a brief glimpse or shadow of it is possible even with Basho.
As regards what is said it often betrays Thoreau's astonishingly well read mind, quotes from the Baghvad Gita or other Hindu texts surprise because in Throeau's day very few people would ever have bothered to read the Indian works, the average American thought his own life and European works to be far superior. Thoreau often quotes Latin, often without reference, and the notes at the end of the book are very helpful. Thoreau's experience becomes the one Americans want to live at least without being in too much danger as he would have been in the true wild still available at that time in the lives of say the trappers or mountain men of the Rockies or any native American. As such it is an in between way of living wild.
So Thoreau's work is definitely worth reading even for only the historical value or the literature it represents. It stands by itself.
Thoreau, in his book Walden, proves himself to be it.
Walden is the narrative of the author's two year stay at the aforementioned pond. He has decided to live life simply, and in a collection of loosely connected essays, he describes the people, animals, and the pond that make up his new home. If you haven't spent real time out in nature, you might think this book is ridiculous. But go into the woods, and stay there until boredom and longing for the city stops. Just then you'll realize the awe he felt when examining the ice bubbles and listening to vagabond squirells. Thoreau has rediscovered the patches of Eden that still exist in the world. And if we are open-minded enough to listen to his instructions, we can find our way back to them.
Even if his insights into the idyllic perfection in nature fail to sway you to live more lightly in the world, Thoreau will open your eyes to the benefits of philosophy. He understands the man who marches to the beat of a different drummer, and shows through his clear, crisp text the results that thought and contemplation can hold for anyone.
In this book, Henry David Thoreau takes an extended look beyond human nature and human habit. He brings forth a new and exciting view point on life and teaches how to live in happiness without the confusion of mechanical materials. I had to read this book for a 9th grade Language Arts assignment, and I had never heard of Walden or Thoreau before this project was assigned. When I completed this book, I felt very refreshed. It encouraged me to take a second look at my own life, and simply discard of the things which were causing complications or confusion. This book stretched past the limits and capacity of my mind as a 9th grade student. It forced me to think. Judging by the majority of my peers, I am convinced that anything that would force them to THINK harder, deserves 5 shining stars.
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Compared to Kothari's book this one merely scratches the surface and leaves a lot of important details by the side. If I hadn't read Nikhil Kotari's book first, I would've been completely confused by this piece. Don't get me wrong---the book *does* have valuable information for developing server controls *if you are not a beginner*.
Would I recommend this book? Only if you go through Nikhil Kothari's book first and then want to learn a few more tricks. Don't expect to be taught much from this book.
Overall, 2 stars for inadequate coverage and a ton of typos and errors in the samples and throughout the text. I really wish WROX quit releasing hodge podge books and did a better job at reviewing them prior to publishing.
As with many of the newer Wrox titles, this one is organized more like a collection of articles. This format has been the cause of many bad reviews, and while I don't care for the article approach most of the time, on Pro ASP.NET Server Controls... it works quite well. I bought the book with a specific task in mind, I needed to create a unique custom control that had multiple child controls inside of it, my only previous knowledge of server controls was what I had from the Professional ASP.NET book (which equates to about a chapter of this book) the material found in the Pro ASP.NET book left me with more questions than answers and I needed something to help me really understand what goes on inside and out of a web server control and how to integrate properly with the .NET Framework, with this book I achieved that goal within three hours of reading and experimenting, it truely was a life saver for helping meet one of our milestones.
So why only four stars? Well, as others have pointed out, the book isn't perfect, I did have to use the VS.NET on-line help to lookup how to generate client-side script for postback events, better examples could have been provided, but overall it's very good.
This book gives good coverage to the creating of server controls, with decent coverage of some very advanced aspects of building server controls.
It does suffer however from very simplistic examples that don't have much application in the real world.