This book is extremely left-wing grass roots. It assumes all doctors (with rare exception) are evil entities who are unwilling to listen to their patients and care little for them. Even more insulting, it assumes all pregnant women are sheep who will blindly follow whatever their doctors say, without question. This condescending tone prevails throughout the book.

If you can get past the jargon, there is some excellent information buried in there regarding specific herbal remedies, etc. Just be prepared to sift through a lot of garbarge for very little content.

This book is distilled wisdom, a word tincture. It is just what is needed to assuage the fears of mothers-to-be and those who already gave birth, in Jane English's terms, "through a different doorway" -- that is, by cesarean section surgery.
Whenever I meet a mother who has been previously sectioned, I recommend this book. Indeed, any mother benefits from the healing dose of midwifery lore in this collection.
"Knowledge is Power", so says an inscription in Artemis Speaks. However, this book goes deeper than mere information -- herein are the best ideas for healing birth -- knowledge fallen into the compassionate heart of Nan Koehler.

Having had five children with an entirely different birth each time, including an emergency c-section due to placeta previa with my fourth child and a VBAC with my fifth child who weighed in at 10# even, I found this book to be outstanding. It gives wonderful and helpful information in avoiding a c-section and/or accomplishing a VBAC. Some of the information went a little too far for me, but, regardless of that, 99% of the information and stories in this book helped me achieve my VBAC and come to terms with my necessary c-section.

I am extremely disappointed with this book. I bought it because I thought it would provide more ideas for "Jewelry Making"-it did not. When this book arrived, I had been working with polymer clay for 4 days and I learned nothing from the book that I had not figured out for myself, with the exception of how to make weird naked women from clay-not quite was a looking for.A waste of [money].

If you want to learn to make canes this is your Bible. It is not limited to cane but its step by step guide to all the different types is terrific. I must look at it several times a week. Love it.

This book has been around a while, and for a good reason. It's one of the best books for learning polymer clay techniques like millefiori and bead making.

Even complex techniques are well explained here. The gallery of pictures is inspiring. If you have to get one book, this is definitely one that will start you off right and be worth keeping.

Warning: this is a very FUN craft and can be quite addictive. Fortunately, there are lots of uses for polymer clay, like beads, buttons, hair clips, decorated boxes and much more.

Stewart O'Nan, a young white man, sets for himself a most ambitious task in his 2001 novel Everyday People: a contemporary story set in the inner city, with mostly or entirely black characters, and dialogue in black dialect. As for setting, characters, and language, he succeeds. Where O'Nan came up a bit short was with plot. In large measure, O'Nan follows Chris ("Crest") Tolbert and his family during one week before the opening of a new expressway which will effectively cut the Tolbert's neighborhood from the rest of the city. Before the novel began, Crest was rendered a paraplegic when he fell of the half-completed parkway in an accident which also killed his best friend. How Crest, his family, his girlfriend (and now mother of his son), and others deal with this tragedy is a very promising beginning. O'Nan's failure, I believe, was in attempting to make his story too true to life, with several minor plot lines or stories that get started and remain unresolved - and unaddressed - by the book's final pages. Although this is how life often works, as a reader I found myself at the end asking "what about this?," and "what happened to him?" O'Nan overall seems a very gifted writer, and his characters are outstandingly drawn. Everyday People is certainly well worth reading for these reasons. However, in my judgment, it could have been better.

I can understand why this book may be compelling to those who are not: a)from Pittsburgh, b)looking for a intricately crafted story line, and most importantly c)African American. As the author notes near the end, maybe for a split second he can see what I see, but unfortunately, he fails to communicate the rich texture of the Black experience even in as wholly depressing environment as he attempts to create.

This book turned out to be a group of short stories centered on the daily stresses and encumbrances encountered by the Tolbert family and other community denizens in what he perceives to be life in Black urban America. I commend him on his ability to convey emotional structure but he fails to provide adequate imagery to give the reader a sense of the physical. I have a better mental picture of Tony's ice cream truck than any of the so-called African-American members of this community.

Within the Black community, descriptives that distinguish one person from another by complexion or physical features are commonplace. We only know the ethnicity of his characters by the authors' avowals and his inconsistent attempts to capture the vernacular which, by the way is not enhanced by any inclusions of "Pittsburghese." His patois of the street strikes me like someone without language skills attempting to emulate an upper crust British accent.

I was also disappointed in his failure to address the impact of ethnicity in relation Harold's homosexuality. Acceptance of that lifestyle has implications in the community - across the board and most particularly in the Black church- that Mr. O'Nan avoids entirely.

In essence, Mr. O'Nan writes of a sense of frustration, powerlessness and to an extent, resignation that is not predominant in East Liberty. It appears to be he who is incapable of seeing beyond the walls of the busway.

This is a competent effort, one that merits attention as a study of the human condition, however the emphasis on the African American community is a misguided one for this writer. I would suggest "Drop" by Matt Johnson or "White Boy Shuffle" by Paul Beatty, as two efforts more successfully conveying the subleties of the urban experience.

With his latest novel, ''Everyday People,'' Stewart O' Nan invents and enters the deprived African-American Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) neighborhood of East Liberty in the fall of 1998. At this time the neighborhood is about to be cut off from the rest of the city by the opening of a new expressway for buses. The town has always been victim to poverty and gang violence; during this one week, their patience will be tested more than usual.
At the center of the novel is the Tolbert family. Chris, also known as Crest, a seventeen-year-old boy who is the youngest in the Tolbert family, has just returned from the hospital in a wheelchair, coming out of a tragic accident that occurred on that very expressway which left him paralyzed from the waist down. That accident happened to take the life of his best friend, Bean. His older brother, Eugene, has just returned from jail and found Jesus as a born-again Christian. Harold, the boys' kind and loving father, is in love with a younger man (Andre) but leaves him, rationalizing that his boys need him more. Harold's wife, Jackie, senses that something is not right (though she believes his lover to be a younger woman), and is furious because the man she has always trusted has become the kind of man she had sworn she would never tolerate. Vanessa, the teenage mother of Crest's son, Rashaan, is trying to make more of her life by trying to balance her responsibility as a mother with the stress of waiting tables, and takes an adult education class in African-American literature at night school and realizes that she wants to learn more, which hopefully, will motivate her to obtain a college degree. Miss Fisk, is an elderly woman who looks after Rashaan, the way she used to look after Bean. Besides this one family, there are people dying, children involved with gangs, and many others being robbed all around.
Stewart O' Nan may be doubted because he is a white author who writes about an underprivileged African-American community and may not fully understand the experiences of those who actually live there. He captures the readers' attention with his vivid descriptions and interesting story plot. He incorporates the everyday lives that continue to go on in urban America. Many people are blind to see the reality of our world but this novel helps them listen to the voices of these characters, and let them know that they are everyday people, rather than gangsters, thieves, prostitutes or even drug addicts. Clearly the author wants the reader to realize how one crime can affect a whole community over a period of time. Honestly, I was a little disappointed because I'd rather of spent more time inside the head of Crest. He seemed like a good levelheaded boy who was influenced a lot by his surroundings. I would have loved to know all of his thoughts about what was going on in his community for that week, especially what he went through that will now change his life forever. It seemed like the underlying message of the story was to try and do good in life by staying on track and especially in school with an education because that is the key to a successful future, like Vanessa is trying to achieve.

Would you ever stay on a boat that was sinking? The people on the Titanic had to make some decisions. Some people decided to stay on the Titanic, other people decided to hop into a lifeboat. I thought this book was very interesting. There was lots of action. (Example) the largest boat in the world hit an iceberg and started to sink! Some people even jumped of the large boat into the freezing water. There was a 12-year girl named Ruth that was left behind! The lifeboat that her mother and her two brothers were in was too crowded so she had to go in a lifeboat with a lot of strangers that Ruth didn't know. I would give these book 3 stars. I thought there were a lot of BRAVE characters, like Ruth. From this book I learned that you should always do what other people say.

I recently recieved this book through the mail from Amazon.com and I am giving it to one of my relations at Christmas Time, i looked through it and found that there was a massive amount of information.

For me, FINDING THE TITANIC did not sweep me away to a flood of thoughts.

Parents, if you have a little TITANIC lover in your family, then I recommend this book to them!

The articles were interesting. However, the direction of the articles fell like scattered shot. This was not planned exploration into the interaction of fear and environment for which I had hoped. Perhaps that was not the point of this work, but that was what I wanted as a layman.

The gender and literary perspectives complemented the expected architects well. I did not expect the personal accounts and they added energy and freshness into the work. The photo-essay annoyed me more than enlightened me. In short, there was something for everyone, but not a whole lot for anyone in particular.

None of the articles explicitly built on each other. The full value of the many perspectives was not used. One article was spent defining different types of defensive spaces and then the definitions fell by the wayside.

Besides the loose nature of the work, I felt that sociology and economy were excluded. Numbers have powerful stories to tell (anyone who need convincing, see Edward Tufte) and their voices were not heard in this multi-disciplinary collection.

This is worthwhile reading, but not a must have.

Architecture of Fear provides fascinating insights into the effects of the structures that surround us in our everyday lives. By drawing upon a diverse group of professionals, not all of them architects or urban planners, Nan Ellin has created an important work that will serve as a base for future research into the perplexities of urban life. Nan Ellin's own thoughts are among the most significant contributions to the compendium.

A collection of interviews with several drag queens, varying in readability. The pictures are wonderful, and the interview with Quentin Crisp is especially delightful.

Finally, a book about drag that positively revels in the glamour of being a drag queen. No "who we are and why we are" rationalizing...it just get deep into the fun and beauty of drag. The book includes chapters on the history of drag, interviews with drag superstars (Lypsynka, Holly Woodlawn, Lady Bunny among many others), drag essentials (get yourself to that MAC makeup counter!) a list of the many movies that feature transgender themes and a great listing of drag nightclubs and events around the world...

A book about a place where people go to die will not by definition be a easy book to pick up and glance through. The photographers, Nan Goldin et al, do a remarkable job bring these people to us in a situation none of us would want ot be in. There is compassion and dignity in situations which can all too often lend themselves to the snap and run mentality of today's press coverage. It is worth buying especailly if you have an interest in quality, non-sensational photography.

i'll admit its hard to look at but the way you get right there in it, is amazing, it's just photographed beautifully. Each photographers style was evident. I especially enjoyed Jack Radcliffes section because his more than any other, i felt was about life under harsh circumstances, but still about life more than death itself.

This is a cute little book made up of 101 small parables. The "Tao" in Chinese is translated as "the way" and is meant as the way or flow of the universe. Each lesson imparts a little wisdom that we could use in our daily lives. This book is simply written and is great for children as well as adults.

For anyone planning a meeting, conference, or party, as icebreaker will help to get the event off to an excellent beginning. This book offers not only opening icebreakers but refreshers to use when the group is rnning down and a lot of "just for fun" games which would be adaptable to many age groups and types of gatherings.

The author provides easy to read and understand instructions for the icebreakers. Group size, materials needed (many require no preparation), time needed, and potential goal (if any) are laid out simply and are easy to find.

I would recommend this book highly. Good luck with your event planning.

This is the first book I've ever returned. While a lot of what she does is admirable and does work (the "You" form instead of "Lord/He" works very well), two things make it unusable: constant use of "Beloved" for the word "God" or "Lord" becomes irritating very quickly, and she subjectively pops out the word "enemies" wherever it appears and puts in "fears." I wouldn't dare tell someone with AIDS or a refuge or whomever that their only enemy is their own fears, and even for others such overpersonalization doesn't work. The classic 137th Psalm was unrecognizable -- where did the dolphins come from?

Palms for Praying have become a part of my daily devotions for about three years. It is a book I give to my Christian friends. If your interested in wholeness in the Love of Christ the peace of God just flows from the words of these psalm. Can not count the blessings I have received and continue to receive.

I have been a fan of Nan Merrill's book, Psalms for Praying, since it first came out in hardcover edition. I recommend it in the list of suggested reading in the back of my book, The Pocket Guide to Prayer. I also highly recommend it at the various prayer workshops I faciliate. As I have spent time with her rendition of the psalms, I have repeatedly discovered a timely phrase to help me prayerfully rest in God's abiding peace and experience God's love more fully. Just today, in fact, the phrase from Psalm 38, "Be my strength and uphold me," is one that has provided a resting place for my troubled spirit and served as a healing balm. I am grateful to Nan for interpreting the psalms in such a way that I, and I suspect many others as well, are able to re-connect with the One who desires that we come away for a while and rest peacefully in God's tender embrace.