A very interesting book. Particularly interesting was the description of the difficulties (creative and otherwise) experienced by the architect during the building of the Vietnam Memorial. I was especially drawn to the architect's ambivalence with regard to the seemingly desperate determination (exhibited by politicians especially) that the powerful non-iconographic representational force of the monument be adulterated by the addition of traditional iconography (the three soldiers and the nurses). I think that many who have visited the Memorial will agree that it's power is only reduced by the statues that now bookend it. Still, the architect's vision carries the day--a fitting tribute to her creativity.

This book is a fascinating look into the mind of Maya Lin. It describes her intimate thoughts regarding the design of her most important works, how she develops the designs, and what they mean to her. It is written in a very accessible style and is a joy to read.

Maya Lin's "Boundaries" is much like her three-dimensional creations - austere, at once both subtle and direct, outwardly detached, and ultimately effective in evoking a deep emotional response from within the beholder rather than imposing an exterior sentiment. Lin, of course, first came to prominence two decades ago when, as an undergraduate architecture student, she won the prestigious design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Her concept, popularly known as "The Wall," was fiercely criticized at that time for its radical departure from traditional memorial designs, yet from its unveiling in 1982 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has been accorded widespread recognition for its profound aptness and - there is no better word - genius. Although Lin's work since that remarkable debut has been on a smaller physical scale, it continues to follow a line of imaginative external simplicity in use of shape and space, covertly deceptive in masking emotional complexity beneath. The title of the book is meant to express Lin's view that she and her creations inhabit the boundary between distinctly different qualities - architecture-art, natural-urban, inside-outside, Asian-American - simultaneously being neither and both.

"Boundaries" is not an autobiography. Maya Lin speaks through her architecture and her sculptures, and this book unwaveringly focuses upon that work and the creative process behind it. While the photographs in the volume are effective in presenting a broad impression of design and form, the real pictures are those drawn by Lin's words. For a visual artist, she has a rare appreciation of verbal power and substance. In fact, Maya Lin regards words as a vital basis for her designs, the reflection of her own background: her father was a ceramist and her mother a poet. As a physical object, the book itself has purposely been given a unique character to fittingly express Lin's artistic vision, occupying the boundary between "art book" and "reading book". The text literally begins on the inside front cover and spans the entirety of the volume, ending only on the inside back cover. Even the jacket has been incorporated as a harmonious, integral component of the whole. Like Lin's creations erected in public spaces and those fashioned in her studio, "Boundaries" is an exquisite embodiment of a meeting between restraint and stimulation.

This book was AWESOME! It's perfect for people just getting started or people who just want to change their own home and life. It walks you step by step through your house and each room in it, and then some! It gives lots of basic "cures" in easy to understand language. It also has a great section on color usage and the chakras of the body, and touches the surface regarding healing crystals and aromatherapy. You can tell when some writers just have the gift within themselves to touch millions of lives... this book is like that! I can't wait for Nancy's second book coming this winter.

This book, and Kingston's "Clear Your Clutter" complement each other very well. The two books give a good understanding of the principles of Feng Shui and how your living space relates to your body and mental state.

There are two "schools" of thought in Feng Shui: the compass school is mainly oriented around complicated calculations that may involve things like your birthdate (much like doing a horoscope chart) while the "Black Hat" method is a more holistic approach based on Buddhism. I personally don't find much of interest in the compass school but the reader could check out Lillian Too's many books for examples of this style.

SantoPietro's book develops the "Black Hat" style starting from the fundamentals and progressing to some rather complicated "trancendental" cures. I suspect many readers will have difficulty believing that crystals hung in certain spots in their house may change their lives. However, if you start to explore aspects of Qi (chi, sort of like life force energy) then I bet you change your mind and look into fixing and/or augmenting Qi flow in your living space.

SantoPietro does not get into any of the related Qigong (Chikung) aspects of Feng Shui but there are many books available if you are interested in reading about this ancient healing art. I'd also recommend "Mindfulness in Plain English" or "Zen Training" for clearing the clutter in your head...

I particularly enjoyed reading her case studies and, again, I suspect that if even the "non-believer" starts with some of the simpler parts of Feng Shui he/she will probably see the immediate results and then progress to a deeper understanding of Qi later on.

Enjoy.

I decided I'd look into Feng Shui after attending a designers' review on the subject. I got this book, and now refer to it any time I decide to redecorate a room. We've now moved to another state and our house is a completely different layout, so I'm in the process of using this book to design it with Feng Shui harmony.

I have read many books of Chinese arts and crafts before, none of those were so rich, so authentic yet so original! One will be deeply drawn by the peculiarly beautiful artistic crafts and works created and presented by Mrs Helen Lin, only by turning for a few pages of the rare books. Deeply rooted in the soil of Chinese arts, especially from the Northern China, her artistic talent and works transcended the regular quality of the rich tradition and have opened the new road to the future Chinese artistic crafts. She is truly a master of Chinese arts and crafts. Whatever daily-life material come to her hand, she is able to turn it into an unusual piece work of art. In her eye, almost everything has the aesthetic value and is convertible to a joy of beauty. We marvel at her keen sense of art and her appreciate the beauty in our daily life and her great talent to recreate those numerous artistic crafts for our kids as well as for adults. We thank her for her wonderful gift for all the societies today and the future. I believe her book will travel far and wide.

I saw Helen Lin teaching her paper cutting crafts at the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival in Queens last month, so I got to see her book as well, which was on display. It's filled with lots of colorful crafts and creative artwork that you can do at home, and I bought two of them, one for me and one for my best friend because we both love arts and crafts. Mrs. Lin is a very talented artist. If you are in the New York area, you should definitely see one of her exhibits. Or for now, just buy the book! There is also an English version if you can't read Chinese.

I have never encountered a craft book that comprises as many original and inventive art projects as this one. Who knew that a handful of popcorn and twigs could be turned into a lovely plum blossom branch? And 3-D paper dolls?! The vast array of things that can be created with paper alone is the marvelous secret of this book. Helen Lin's Folk Arts and Crafts awakens the imagination of the reader like a pungent scent and weaves an endless permutation of new ideas. Best of all, this arts and crafts book teaches resourcefulness. Ordinary household items can be transformed into beautiful works of art worthy of giving. I have already found an economical way to make presents for my friends. Have you?

This is an excellent book on qigong. Probably the best qigong book I've ever read. I bought this book when I lived in Boulder, CO. The book's editors Ross and Michael Cohen lived in Colorado at the time, and practiced Yan Xin Qigong with our group in Boulder occasionally.

Yan Xin's lectures are full of wisdom. He's one of a kind. I feel he has a true scientific approach and does not seek to become famous or wealthy. Of all the qigong masters in the public eye, he really has the most well developed sense of scientific detachment.

If you can find this book, buy it. Only problem is, this book is out of print from what I understand. You may have to search a lot before finding a used copy.

If you want to understand the basic and yet amazing levels Traditional Chinese Qigong can reach, this is a good book to start with. Lots of theories and practices are simple but powerful. Dr. Yan Xin's scientific experiments has caught lots of attention of top scientists. This book is a good start of touching the tip of the iceburg.

I found that one can learn a lot about traditional qigong from Dr. Yan Xin's speech. He is very objective and knowledgable about traditional qigong. All the examples mentioned in the book are tracible with scitific proof. Dr. Yan Xin, unlike most popular qigong master, doesn't try to "sell" his own qigong method. He uses "I" or "me" very few times when he explains qigong, except telling his own stories. He encourages people to learn qigong with a scietific approach and attitude, which is very different from the other qigong masters. I am quite impressed about his medical knowledge and traditonal Chinese culture background as well.

If you want to see the power of qigong in a objective and scitific way, I recommand you to read this book.

Lin and Larry's reprint/update is well worth the investment. Yes, the chapters here, like many of their books, started off life as magazine articles and, yes, they were published many years ago, but that is completely beside the point. Their advice is timeless because it deals with real knowledge and experience about techniques and material that will never go out of practical use. Varnish, sailcloth, kerosene lamps, dinghies, three strand rope, planes and chisels, none of these or the hundreds of other topics will ever disappear from sailing, unlike a long dissertation on LORAN or RDF or epoxy, or other topics rapidly becoming obsolete. A hundred years from now there will still be sailors on engineless boats with kerosene lamps and sextants, because simple things work. Period. Always have, always will. If this truth appeals to you, then these are your books.

As usual, Lin and Larry Pardey have captured in their non-preachy, no-nonsense way the essence of cruising and surviving on the high seas...as well as when you drop the hook in a foreign port. This book is fairly old ('82) but they've done a good job of updating and adding info that applies to cruising in the 90s. I'm a fan because I've owned the big boats and now I've down-sized to the more manageable 30-footer range. So I know whereof they speak. Your chances of unhooking from the land are MUCH greater if you are not plowing every cent you make into a 40-45 foot boat. Life becomes sweeter when you manage on your own to make the repairs and adapt some fix-it scheme to your boat so it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I'm working my way through their books and I truly see them as the embodiment of the modern Hiscock.

I read the Pardey's Cost Conscious Cruiser first, then I met them at a seminar, listened to their absolute logic - they never said anyone else was wrong, but they did make it clear that people who write about fixing their boat too often, may have complicated their life beyond what they could handle. Self Sufficent sailor has more good advise, logical ideas and fun reading, not sure if it is better than Cost Conscious Cruiser, more like in addition to. The Pardeys made it clear at their seminar that they kept learning as they cruised. It is no wonder they need to write a new book every three or four years. Glad they take the time to do it.

This cookbook,written by the wife and daughter of Lin Yutang,is simply the very best chinese cookbook ever written. It explaines what a chinese gastronome is looking for in terms of tastes, presentation and style and then gives an example recipe. Any one of the recipies is worth the price of the book. If you're having Chinese people over for dinner this is the book to use.There is a more recent edition titled "The Art of Chinese Cooking" that is currently being remaindered.
I've worked as a cook, I've cooked from many cookbooks and this is my all time favorite.

By far this is the most Chinese of all of the books I have on Chinese cooking. After returning home from living in China for several years, I know that Chinese cooking takes skill and practice and is not just a matter of measuring ingredients. In many ways it is about choices that can only be made with knowledge of Chinese culture. I feel that this book addresses many of the issues that are required for successful Chinese cooking. The author made no compromises, which is refreshing!

Only the facts that a seasoned Chinese cook who lives amongst the Han Chinese for decades will have an insight into these subtle notions of enhancing Chinese foods. Few or none of the other so-called Chinese cookery books in the West have any of these well-known ideas of flavoring - facts known to those in the Far East of course - and few bother to print stories on these facts.

Garbage collection is a very interesting and complicated topic. To understand different garbage collection algorithms, one has to go through various research papers published over last 30 years or read the simplified descriptions presented in Java site and Bill Venners artima.com. This book does an excellent job in putting together all these algorithms in a logical order that gives us a chance to understand the different challenges sceintists and programming language authors faced and how the algorithms evolved over the time. The book starts with basic overview and history of commonly known algorithms: Reference counting, Mark and Sweep, and Copying algorithms. It then elaborates each of these algorithms, enumerates their pros and cons, and presents imporvements done by different researchers. After this, the book moves on to advanced algorithms like Generational algorithm and concurrent mark and sweep algorithm. I recommend this book to anyone interested in garbage collection. I haven't seen any other book on this topic. Even for programmers who mostly don't have to worry about GC as it is "automatically" done, this is a good book to understand and appreciate what goes on behind the scenes. Also, knowledge of the concepts in this book will be invaluable in performance tuning.

I wanted to know about the generational algorithm that Java is now using. The book was pretty clear about how things work. I haven't read the whole book but what I've seen is very encouraging. The first few chapters are a broad overview and then you can dive into the particular algorithm you are interested in.

The book is so well written and easy to understand its worth buying it even you only read the first two chapters.

I purchased three books from amazon.com and this was one of them. It is very well written. The writers are short, concise and to the point. This is a step-by-step guide in helping you write out your business plan. The other two books I purchased were thrown aside, but were of use when I needed to reference something else. Before you spend your money on other books, buy this one first and if you need additional help purchase another.

This book should be within arm's reach the entire time you begin to think about and write your business plan. It is well organized, tightly written, and most importantly, it prompts you to analyze and to answer the critical questions. I've read at least 10 other books on business plans, but this one gets to the heart of the matter better than the others. Many of the questions and topics covered would never have occurred to me if I hadn't read this book. Buy others, but get this one first.

The book provides extraordinary insight into writing a business plan! Every detail is laid out step by step, and includes addresses and phone numbers to organizations that provide crucial research that a person will need for any business research. Every aspect of the business plan is presented concisely and is well organized, leaving nothing for the reader to question. Not one question you may have will go unanswered! Unequivocally, the best book on writing a business proposal! (And I have purchased several books!)

This past year, it was suggested to me my the publisher of our 6th grade social studies textbook to have the students read the Ch'I-Lin purse in conjunction with our chapter on Ancient China. I cannot tell you how much my students loved this book. They are just wonderful. Of particular interest to my 6th grade girls was the story of the carp fish who gives up her immortality for love. I also have to confess, I really enjoyed this book myself and plan that in years to come, should I have a daughter, I will be reading this book to her.

This book was given to my son as a Christmas gift last year and he didn't bother to read it at first. But once he started he couldn't put it down! The stories are very interesting and a Chinese friend told me these are the authentic Chinese stories, unlike some that were Americanized, she herself heard of these stories when she grew up.

Absolutely a good book for young adults.

As the mother of a daughter adopted from China I struggle with keeping her background alive in her day to day life. This is just one of many books I read to her at night to celebrate her homeland. Its very well written and easy to understand. She was adopted at three, so often she corrects my pronunciation, and it warms my heart !! I recomend this book to all families of chinese adoptees.

This cookbook is about TAIWANESE cuisine not CHINESE. I searched high and low for this book, there have been many books written about Chinese food but not Taiwanese food which has more flavors -- not just salty but sweet, spicy, etc. This is what makes Taiwanese food different and incredibly delicious. The book has beautiful mouthwatering recipes and pictures and are simple enough to make if you can find all the ingredients.

If you are Taiwanese or like Taiwanese food, this is the cookbook to get because sadly, you will not find too many out there.

This is a great cookbook...my husband is Norwegian and he likes Chinese food. We dont have many Chinese food here, so I often make food at home. He loves the dishes! He is skepical over some dishes, but he likes most of them. The cookbook makes it easier for both of us since I am a Taiwanese who misses Taiwanese food terribly and my husband who enjoys Asian food. Afterall, this is a nice cookbook and has easy to follow instructions.

This is one of my favorite cookbooks of all time! Like all the Chinese cookbooks published by Wei-chuan, it is a treasury of absolutely authentic, delicious recipes. The recipes are well-written and clear, and they are accompanied by beautiful photographs of not only the finished dish but also the various steps in the preparation or cooking. Most importantly, the recipes let me recreate faithfully the foods of my homeland. I have made about half the dishes presented in this book, and all have been utterly delectable, make-again successes. This book is, moreover, a great addition to any library of Chinese cookbooks, since it presents the distinctive cuisine of the island of Taiwan, with its characteristic emphasis on local seafoods; use of varieties of rice, including rice flours and rice noodles; the influence of Japanese cuisine from 50 years of Japanese colonialism; and the influence of aboriginal foodways. This is, like all the Wei-chuan cookbooks, one of the best Chinese cookbooks available in the English language and a must-have for serious lovers of Chinese cuisine!