Our 28 month old loves this book! We initially borrowed a copy from her local ECFE class, and we're making tremendous potty progress now. The only problem was we had to give the book back and she was so upset when it was gone I had to get online right away and order a copy.

This is the first book that I have seen to compile a practical toolkit for managers who are working to improve environmental management and sustainability of their operations. It is presented as 'work in progress', is very comprehensive in its identification and coverage, with a set of 22 linked tools. It is designed for reference rather than to be read as a book, and fills a very important gap in the management literature.
The 22 linked tools are in various stages of development and the authors cover both how available tools should be used and what remains to be developed. For example the chapter on environmental indicators covers both the current state of the art and a frank discussion of current problems.
A notable feature of the book is the quality of the listing of further reading and available Internet sites at the end of each chapter. My only regret is that the authors have not provided a complementary website with at least those references listed.

In "Contre Sainte-Beuve," French novelist Marcel Proust separated art from private life. But Henri TOULOUSE-LAUTREC drew on what interested him in art and life, that is, personality through how the model looked and stood: Edgar Degas- and Edouard Manet-type young girl down in the dumps in "La gueule de bois"; his first large-scale dance scene figures in "Un coin du Moulin de la Galette"; model Suzanne Valadon in 3/4 profile with a Vincent Van Gogh-type turban and in the Camille Pissarro-type "Poudre de riz" front portrait; and Jean Antoine Watteau- and Degas-type popular entertainer Jane Avril, without facial details but immediately recognizable by her shoes with bows, stage stance, and tilting shoulders in an all-blue composition except for the yellow-splashed meeting between knees and skirt. With his Paul Gauguin- and Van Gogh-type expressive color areas, he was hard to beat: "L'anglais au Moulin Rouge" lithographing girlish brightness against black, blue, his favorite olive green, purple, red, and yellow; "Le dernier salut" in flat and narrowly ranged blue, purple and yellow, with a Chat Noir Chinese theater-type hearse driver and hired mourners profiled in black; his Moulin Rouge poster, dark violet from richly mixed black, blue, and red scatter sprayed over each other from a heavily charged brush through a sieve, with the foreground figure slightly sinister and the background dancer in gold, pink, and white; his rare landscapes, light in small-scaled and lively colored freshness, playing early Pissarro- and Alfred Sisley-type light and shade; "Routy" put together Frans Hals-style, with Manet-type expressive blacks and lightly sketchy brushwork; his stained glass window for Tiffany's, sketched and designed from Japanese-style ballet dancers around a water lily-covered lake; and "Un examen a la faculte de medecine de Paris," just over a month before he died, in sombre black and green brightened in the window light by a red academic gown and white writing paper and with Honore Daumier-type accurate draughtsmanship and confident brushwork. He applied his Manet-type dramatic profiles and simplified color areas to subjects from a Degas-type working woman's world: "A la toilette" linking the sitter's auburn hair to a mosaicized background and the pale blues of her dress to what was on her dressing table and her shelf, for a heavily downward brushstroked, overall melancholy; "Au Moulin Rouge," with Gustave Caillebotte-type diagonals for depth and with Degas-type cropped snapshot-style lighting from below to bring out a girl's masklike face; and "Au salon de la rue des Moulins," with one girl seen from the back cut off, Japanese- and snapshot-influenced Impressionist style, by the canvas edge. His post-Impressionist color and style lasted into the twentieth century, among others, in the accent diagonals on Edvard Munch's horizontally-shaped program for Jean Gabriel Borkman's acting a Henrik Ibsen play at Theatre de l'oeuvre; blue period color and form in Pablo Picasso's "Frugal meal," "Green stockings," and portrait of Joaquin Mir; color lithographic advertising, science fiction illustrations, and such strip cartoons as "Asterix"; Expressionism; and Auguste Rodin's watercolors. I like the way that author Bernard Denvir has placed the fifteen artistic years of this people's artist so well within what was and would be happening within the art world. His reader-friendly book of straightforward text and well-chosen illustrations sits nicely on the shelf with Linda Bolton's GAUGUIN, Pascal Bonafoux's VAN GOGH, Robert Gordon's DEGAS, Alan Krell's MANET AND THE PAINTERS OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE, Bruce Laughton's HONORE DAUMIER, Joachim Pissarro's MONET AND THE MEDITERRANEAN, Richard Shone's SISLEY, Richard Thomson's CAMILLE PISSARRO, and Richard Verdi's CEZANNE.

Timothy Jones did an excellent job compiling and editing this Henri Nouwen book. I highly recommend this book to everyone - whether you're going through a time of mourning or helping a friend through a difficult time. This is a book that helps one recognize a deeper relationship with God - making Him known even in the most difficult times when you think He is nowhere near. Nouwen is on point when he says not to bury yourself in busy-ness. You don't learn anything from this time of mourning if you don't experience it. Don't dwell in it - but learn from it. I'm a Stephen Leader at my church and will be recommending it to all of our Stephen Ministers to help them in their caring relationships.

Belgian-born poet/artist Henri Michaux was, depending upon your source, either an enigmatic genius or an enfant terrible. Maurice Blanchot called him "l'ange du bizarre." Whatever the appellation, his oeuvre was the surreal.

An inveterate traveler, Michaux made Paris his home in 1922. At about the same time the writer began drawing, and then wed his graphic works to his poetic endeavors. He wielded ink like a sword, parrying, jabbing, slashing it on paper. This was an exercise that he believed released subconscious expression. Later, he became accomplished in the use of watercolor.

"Untitled Passages By Henri Michaux," so titled due to the artist's large number of untitled drawings and his book "Passages," is not only the first collection of his work but is a masterful blending of texts and images, enabling one to further explore the unique world of Henri Michaux.

I wonder how many art collectors and even scholars have had the pleasure of encountering the work of Vilhelm Hammershoi.......This Danish painter (1864 - 1916) discovered his own form of impressionism and figure painting out of the main stream of world renowned painters. Yes, people who know Scandanavian art surely are familiar with this master, but how can the rest of us be conversant about the likes of Edvard Munch and not have had the introduction to this master painter? This wondrous volume fills a gap for all of us. Hammershoi has been compared to Vermeer for his uncanny sense of light, shadow, and composition. Just browse through the pages of this stately volume and drink in the atmosphere of the dark interiors and architectural renderings of Denmark's buildings and towns and bridges. His figures often face away from us as though the nearby window or other sensitive light source were more significant than their face. His palette is limited to umber/sienna/brown,black/white with only the ocassional use of warmer tones. But how these paintings illumine us! Hammershoi is in that rare class of painter with Antonio Lopez Garcia - two men who reveal our world to us as though we had never seen it. An utterly elegant and quiet monograph. Highly recommended.

This book is what one comes to expect from Henri Nouwen: simple, winsome, deep, and compassionate. I serve as a pastor and find his comments still contemporary, though they are the product of Nouwen's contemplation of twenty years ago.
Nouwen borrows not only the content, but the habit of desert wisdom in providing commentary that is brief and compelling. His invitation to follow in the practice of Abba Arsenius by embracing three movements (to flee, to keep silence, and to pray) is simply organized and powerfully presented.
Nouwen's description of the 'compulsive minister' is accurate in every detail and served to draw me into the lessons as if this book were written for me in particular.
"The Way of the Heart" is directed at those who are engaged in the practice of ministry - but it's lessons are easily applied to life outside the practice of ministry. I heartily recommend it to one and all.

I listened to it over and over. Partly because Nouwen has such a thick Dutch accent but mostly because it has such a beautiful message.

After listening to it I bought a copy for a friend.

You can't help but believe this sincere priest when he tells you that God loves you. And you can't help but love others in the way that Jesus wants us to when you hear who we really are. You are not who your neighbor's, co-workers, relatives or your boss tells you, you are.

The co-author of this extraordinary volume was a Russian orphan who became Henri Matisse's studio assistant in the early 1930's and ultimately, his model. Within a relatively brief time (1935-1947), Matisse produced tens of pictures using Delectorskaya as his principal model. This book is an incredible document of one artist's relationship with his source of inspiration. It is also contains great insight for the historian interested in technical procedures - the book describes Matisse's working methods with an intimacy only Delectorskaya could have known. With so much unpleasant criticism being written about the evils of the "male gaze," it comes as a relief to read a book which depicts the relationship between artist and model as one of mutual give-and-take, resulting in truly collaborative works of art. The reproductions are superb, and the precise chronological order (each image is dated exactly) allows the reader to reconstruct in his or her mind Matisse's daily activities. The physical beauty of the works is not overwhelmed with any explanatory text. That Matisse was able to produce so many extraordinary works of art despite his poor health and the darkening political climate of Europe in the late 1930's is a testament to both his great gifts and the power of art to bring joy and hope. Many of the works in this book have never been published elsewhere, so the book also consititutes a valuable document for historians, particularly since several of the paintings shown vanished during World War II. A beautiful and moving achievement.

Henri Nouwen explains the Lord's Supper in the context of the two disciples' walk with Jesus down the road to Emmaus at the end of Luke's gospel. He sees five interrelating movements in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, each movement corresponding to an event along the disciples' walk. This is a meditation, not a theological treatise, so the soul and the mind share the road. Nouwen's meditations are challenging and joyous, and this is one of the best I've read. Going on any trip with Henri Nouwen brings joy, whether it's into a painting ("Return of the Prodigal Son"), into the desert ("Way of the Heart"), across a calendar ("Bread for the Journey"), or into his own anguish ("Inner Voice of Love"). I was so taken with Nouwen challenge to a "eucharistic life" in this book that I have celebrated the Lord's Supper by myself several times.