I didn't know much about Whalen's poetry until he died this year, but the terrific memorial reading for him here in San Francisco drove me to "Overtime" and man, what a find. The Beats were more learned than the 'first thought, best thought' aesthetic suggests, and Whalen's poems balance religion, philosophy and cranky Zen insight with a casual, conversational Americanese in a way few of his more famous contemporaries could touch. His poems draw from a deep past that embraces everything from ancient Chinese verse to classical music, but insist that it walk down the street in T-shirt and jeans. Whalen spent the last three decades of his life at the San Francisco Zen Center--his particular brand of Buddhism, so generous to human failings (starting always, comically, with his own) and never, ever doctrinaire, has to be one of the most attractive spins on Eastern religion I've read. Whalen was in it and of it, never above it. He gives the moment plenty of wiggle room in his writing, so that cats, friends and silly thoughts can all stray into the poems without being shoo'd out for art. Whatever Beat meant, Whalen shows it in about its best light. Poetry's a little thinner and more straight-laced with him gone.

This isn't some crumbling, dry keeper of the hallowed institution that is sometimes "poetry." It is sad that Whalen's works are so hard to come by these days.

Why aren't you reading this?

Philip Whalen is a national treasure, one of our most important living poets. This collection, masterfully assembled by Michael Rothenberg, is a great place to start if you're not familiar with Whalen's work, and a glorious visiting ground for those of us who have already discovered him. Don't let the word POETRY dissuade you. You will not be bored for a minute.

Make sure you read the previous Tintin Adventure, "The Secret of the Unicorn," otherwise you will really not know all about the background on "Red Rackham's Treasure," despite the fact Hergé offers a bit of a recapitulation in the form of a conversation overhead in a bar. The main thing is that having collected all the clues regarding the titular treasure, Tintin and Captain Haddock are prepared to go forth and find it. However, almost as important as the search for the treasure is our introduction to the final pivotal member of the Tintin family, as Professor Cuthbert Calculus offers the service of his small shark-proof submarine for exploring the ocean floor. Tintin refuses the offer, but it turns out that Professor Calculus always hears somkething other than what somebody is really saying. Adding to the fun are the Thom(p)sons, who come alone with orders to protect Tintin. "Red Rackham's Treasure" is mostly a pure adventure story, with Tintin using the small submarine and a deep sea diving suit to look for the treasure of the Unicorn. But there is still some detective work left to be done to decipher the final cryptic clues left by Sir Francis Haddock concerning the treasure's location. I still like Hergé's two-part adventure that sent Tintin to the Moon, but this two-parter is not far behind. This is the last of the Tintin stories Hergé wrote during World War II, and after this point we will definitely see his stories become much more allegorical in terms of post-War Europe.

Tintin is great. I never tire of re-reading him.
Red Rackham's Treasure sees our erstwhile hero gallivanting off with Snowy, Captain Haddock and the Thompson Twins after the adventures outlined in "Secret of the Unicorn'. In this book we are introduced to the absent-minded Professor Calculus - it's always great to see how the drawing of characters change after a couple of adventures! - and his amazing shark submarine. Suffice it to say, deep-sea diving, bottles of rum, the odd shark, all lead to the golden treasure in a most unexpected place.
Everyone should read Tintin and this adventure is one of the best.

Tintin is a legendary character and this is one of his best adventures ever. It is just breathtaking, funny as usual and full of thrill. This is a must for any comics lover. God Bless you Herge.

This is the first part, the second part is 'Red Rakham's Treasure'. This is also the series when Marlinspike Hall makes its appearance. The second part is also when Prof Cuthbert Calculus enters Tintin cast for the first time. This is a story every Tintin lover will cherish and other readers will also enjoy. Despite being more than half a century old the story has lost nothing of its charm and sense of fun.

The plot concerns miniature models of boats that bear a striking similarity to a boat in a portrait of one of Capt Haddock's ancestors. From there begins a tale of pirates, of a treasure, of theives after the same treasure, of three hundred year old rum, of our adventurers' attempts at getting to it. The story finally culminates in the Marlinspike Hall, with Capt Haddock being restored to what turns out to be his ancesteral home.

This is the first and perhaps the best of the three adventures Herge wrote that ran into two books. The others two book adventures are 'The Seven Crystal Balls' and 'Prisoners of the Sun', and 'Destination Moon' and 'Explorers on the Moon'.

All in all, an excellent comic book to read, anytime, anywhere.

First off, be forewarned that "The Secret of Unicorn" is only the first half of a two-part Tintin adventure, which is concluded in "Red Rackham's Treausre." So do not get all bent of shape when you get to the end of this 1943 adventure and Tintin looks out and you and tells you to find out what happens next in "Red Rackham's Treasure."

As our story opens, the Thompsons are trying to solve a rash of pockets being picked and Tintin decides to buy on impulse a model of an old galliard ship. But suddenly two other gentleman want to buy the model from Tintin, who refuses because he intends the model to be a gift to his friend, Captain Haddock. Then Tintin finds a small piece of parchment that was hidden in one of the masts talking about a treasure and a ship called the Unicorn. The mystery deepens when it turns out that Sir Francis Haddock, an ancestor of Tintin's good friend, was the captain of the Unicorn. After the captain tells the exciting story of Sir Francis and his glorious victory over the dreaded Barbary buccaneers, Tintin races off to track down the final pieces of the puzzle that will tell where the treasure of the Unicorn can be found.

This is only Captain Haddock's third Tintin adventure but he is already as important to the story as Snowy. Nestor and Marlinspike Hall make their first appearance in "The Secret of the Unicorn" with Professor Calculus making his unforgettable first appearance in the second half of the tale. Herge is obviously staying as far away as he can from what is happening in Europe during World War II, but that does not take away from the fact this is a first rate tale of detective work by our intrepid hero and the second half is an equally fun adventure as Tintin and company race for "Red Rackham's Treasure."

How would you feel if you bought a boat and found a treasure note inside? How would you feel then, if the boat got stolen? This is what happens to TinTin and his dog, Snowy, in The Secret of the Unicorn, by Herge. Once they try to find the boat, but are not successful. After looking for the boat, they start looking for the treasure. They search by submarine, by scuba diving,and by swimming in shark infested water. Do they find the treasure? Read The Secret of the Unicorn to find out.

A "Must Have" for any serious Higgins collector. There is an almost overwhelming amount of information presented in a most organized manner. So many wonderful color photographs that I went into sensory overload. Loads of great, historical information and imagery. The only down side of the book is that the price guide is not representative of current market values but if looked at properly will still give you a good idea of how one pattern will relate to another in value. I wish other collectable genres had reference guides of this caliber.

This is truly a masterpiece of editing. The author has truly done an outstanding job. This is a MUST book for any serious Higgins collector as well as anyone who enjoys beautiful glass. The author is certainly to be commended for this one of a kind work.

If you want to collect Higgins glass, this book is an absolute must-have. The prices are outdated; with the recent death of Michael Higgins, I have seen pieces sell for double or triple the book's values. This is much more than a price guide, though. This book details the history of Higgins glass, their techniques, and how to identify what is and is not Higgins glass. There are several beautiful color pictures on almost every page, and I enjoy looking at them almost as much as I enjoy looking at the pieces in my collection.

I gave copies of this book to a 6 year-old and a 12 -year old. Both loved it. It is a really well-researched and cleverly put together book, a great idea done well.

I bought this book largely because of its gorgeous, highly reflective cover. A true whim, particularly as I do not have children. However, as soon as I started to turn this highly engaging volume's pages, I found myself riveted. Hainey is a master at fascinating minutiae. He takes a simple topic--the color blue--and relates it to myriad topics ranging from animals to music to history. Kids will devour it. And this adult loves it.

I notice that you still haven't fully corrected the information about the translator. His name is A. Leslie Willson. Could you please DELETE the reference to Michael Willson, who was not involved in any way with this translation?

Sorry, this is not a review.I am the translator, Leslie Willson. I have no idea how Michael Willson got involved (whoever that is). Could you correct your entry?I would be much obliged.

This is the best book on the desert ever written. The authors describe the ecology and more critically, the human history of the Negev. Their experimental work on runoff and floodwater farming should be seen by everyone interested in a sustainable future. The Nabatean farmers (~2000 years ago) farmed hundreds of thousands of hectares in an area with rainfall as low as 3" per year. They were the water masters! and there is much we can learn from them. Fabulous! Highly recommended.

A random search on 'Tintin' on Amazon.com brought back powerful memories of my happy youth, when my brother and I would save up our pocket money every month to buy used copies from local booksellers in the musty streets of Delhi. The books would be marked with pen and sundry stains, but, to us, they were a reminder of what lay just beyond our reach.

We would be fascinated by Tintin's travels through the most exotic places in the world (and beyond!). What colorful characters Haddock and Calculus are! For some reason, King Ottokar's Sceptre was always my favorite one, but almost all comics in this series are classics.

I would especially urge any one with young children to buy every Tintin comic book in existence, but, really, these comics will please all age groups.

My brother and I are MAGOR Tintin fans, and have both read all the books. These three tales are my alltime faves. I like the part in the Land of Black Gold when Thompson with a P as in "psychology" falls asleep and drives the Jeep into the Arabien city! The moon adventures are just awesome. Great, exciting book.

I loved Tintin books when I was a kid, and I love them now at age 37. I know I'm not alone, because a Tintin store in San Francisco sells Tintin coffee cups and ties and key chains (grown-up's items!) I myself have a Tintin tie and key chain! THE LAND OF BLACK GOLD is my favorite Tintin book. It has all the best characters, humor, and an intriguing plot. (That's why adults can like them, because many of the books have reasonably sophisticated James-Bond type plots.) Tintin forever!

I actually tried this method for several months, keeping an emotional journal. I had little success, nothing like what the book promised, but I didn't have a thorough understanding of the basics of the book's methods.

My emotions are responses to conditions that are important to me, and when they are not, then I decide that there's something wrong with the way my emotions are working. But whether my emotions work or not, I have to discover what they are a response to, and the book "The Emotional Hostage" tells a person how to do that. I didn't really consider that part of it when I starting using the models, I just assumed that I could decide what my emotions were made up of, and then control them. When that didn't work, I gave up on the book.

If you do what I mistakenly did the first time I read through the book and tried out it's methods, you'll find that it's easier to say to yourself "I'm not changing my emotional tempo correctly" than it is to say "I'm not really appreciating what my emotion is signaling" or "I don't know what my emotion is signaling". The book describes a "generative" method of responding to one's own emotions. If there's one thing worth taking away from the book, that method is it.

You need to learn how to respond to your emotions before you consider the details of your emotional elements, because you'll find that emotional elements are conceptually slippery. What the authors mean by them are actually obvious behaviors you notice are a part of your emotions. For me they were conceptual ??? whenever I thought of them, but I still told myself that I felt an emotional element ("I'm feeling an emotional element!") when I didn't even know how to identify them.

So read the book thoroughly, and then decide for yourself what evidence of your emotions are ones you associate with a particular emotional element. Learning to change that element may then have an effect that you need to change your emotions, just like the book promises. Or you can fritter your time away like I did, wondering if what you're feeling is an "emotional element".

Seen in retroperspective I should have dedicated my book "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence" to Leslie-Cameron, given that reading her book helped me to write a reply to Goleman's book. Out of respect for her work, I keep refering people to this book.

The biggest "mistake" of this book is that it appeared 10 years too early, long before Goleman made the term "emotional intelligence" popular. Yet it does a far better job than Goleman when it comes to helping people to increase their EQ.

Leslie Cameron is one of the co-founders of NLP, even if she now has moved on and seems to be "lost" to the NLP community. I keep wondering where the field of emotional intelligence would have stood if Leslie would have kept up her work in this area.

Conclusion: even now this remains one of the best books on the topic of emotional intelligence. I hope that readers of my book will feel that it's complementary.

Patrick E.C. Merlevede, MSc -- co-author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"

The best book I've ever read on emotions. I refer back to it often. Worth studying and incorporating into your own life.

While this is definitly an informative book, it is more of a reference book as opposed to a book which will teach you the language with little or no Russian background. If you're already a student in Russian, this would make a good supplemtent to your studies. It is nice to have for a quick reference in the confusing or more subtle points of Russian grammar. However, if you have no background in Russian, I doubt that this book would be a good starting point.

What no one has mentioned here yet is that there is a grammar workbook by the same author that acts as a companion to this grammar book. This was a recommended work when I was doing a degree in Russian. It is a good and thourough work on the Russian language that you will, undoubtedly, find useful. However, I think that there are some sections that really need more detail. First of all the (painful!) verbs of motion need more clarification and explanation in relation to the variations used by Russian speakers. There have been whole books written on verbs of motion so the little that has been devoted to it here is not enough in my opinion. There have been times in my own interaction with Russians when I have been corrected in my use of a verb of motion even though what I said was grammatically correct. We need to know when and where to use them. Secondly, the section on perfectives and imperfectives and the way affixes are used is just not advanced and thourough enough. If you are going to spend your money on a grammar book you want the full story, don't you? Examples used tend to be from Soviet/Russian press, which is Ok, but also from authors such as Chekhov. I think it would be better to stick to modern sources as much as possible instead of gining readers the idea that what they may be learning might be older style Russian. I think that all the examples will be perfectly OK in modern Russian, but I think you should consider the impression you give readers as well as the actual information. Still, a good book and a good combination if used with the grammar book.

Wade's "Comprehensive Russian Grammar" is no doubt the best work of its type for English-speaking students of Russian. It deals exhaustively with virtually every aspect of the language and gives copious information which should satisfy the curiosity of both intermediate and advanced students of the language. Some American learners might have a bit of difficulty with "Britishisms" such as the use of the first-person future "shall" instead of "will" and a few other such things, but this is no significant barrier. Once in a great while there are a some very peculiar usages in the English translations of Russian utterances (such as "I'll give you argue!" and "I'll give you gallivanting around!" on page 301) which are incomprehensible to Americans (and perhaps also to British people), but such problems are rare. All in all, this work is the answer to the dreams of serious English-speaking learners of Russian.