I was looking for inspiration on creativity following loss, but this relatively small and very personal collection of poems was not it at all. Very disappointing, especially if you pay for the hardcover!

I read this book for the second time this week and found the poems honest and open about the pain experienced by the authors. Having lost both my parents and a brother, I found myself connecting with their feelings and dealing with my own. It inspired me to write my own thoughts and experiences surrounding death which proved to be a catalyst in my own healing.

The Healing Power Of Creative Mourning is a remarkable and memorable anthology of poems by Jan Yager, Fred Yager, Priscilla Orr, Seth Alan Barkas, and Scott Yager addressing the universal themes of coping with illness, death, grief, loss, and bereavement. .......................

This book certainly merits reading because Mr. Lindsey is the key figure for the economic policy of George W. Bush. Having thought that Mr. Lindsey's remarks as a Fed governor were insightful, I was enthusiastic about this book. I finished the book greatly disappointed in Mr. Lindsey's logic, and concerned that he could be a key figure in future U.S. economic policy.

I found Economic Puppetmasters to be extremely unbalanced in presenting information, frequently lacking in factual basis for Mr. Lindsey's points, and at times even illogical. Even though Alan Greenspan is featured in the book and the power of the Fed is recognized, it is criminal that Mr. Greenspan's predecessor Paul Volcker is not mentioned in the book even once. A monetarist point of view would argue that it was Mr. Volcker's courageous policies that laid the groundwork for today's economic prosperity. Mr Lindsey claims it was Ronald Reagan's change of tax policy and firing air traffic controllers. When discussing the great depression, the Fed's inept monetary policy after the stock market crash of 1929 is completely ignored in favor of how Keynes' insights into the period justify his being an economic deity, even though Lindsey later says, " Keynes was the name associated with the failed policy of the 1970's" (p. 180). I hoped that Mr. Lindsey would address the fact that maybe Keynes' name is associated with the failed policies of the 1970's because Keynesian analysis is not correct. Instead, Democrats are blamed for not implementing policy correctly. It is interesting that similar to the omission of Fed Chairman Volcker from the book, Milton Friedman is mentioned just once, not in the context of economic analysis but in the form of a comic quote that jibes at bureaucrats (p.80).

Economic Puppetmasters is also quite frustrating in that claims are made with little documentation or well-constructed reasoning. While a Shakespeare quote will be carefully footnoted, an assertion that grain prices fell because there were more cars and less horses is plugged into an argument without any data or footnote to back it up. I guess we just have to take Mr. Lindsey's word for it. The prime example of how Mr. Lindsey cannot keep his story straight (even through two paragraphs!) can be found on page 179. Mr. Lindsey begins by saying that in January 1980 consumer prices rose 1.4 per cent, and that this rate exceeded the average annual rate of most years in the 1950s and 1960s. If that pace continued inflation would be 18.2 per cent for the year. He goes on to state how President Carter asked people to stop use of their credit cards, and how GDP collapsed and unemployment was high. The next paragraph begins "With deflationary risks of that magnitude . . ." Yes Mr. Lindsey, falling GDP and rising unemployment are often associated with deflation, but you just argued that monthly inflation then was higher than most annual inflation of prior decades! Was it that Carter's policies were so effective that they took us from inflation to deflation risk in six months? I do not think you mean that, and I hope you do not think that your readers are so stupid that such inconsistencies will pass under the guise of economic insight.

Yes, this book is worth the read because it gives insight into the thought processes of a former Fed governor, and someone who may have a major say in U.S. economic policy. The disturbing thing is: the book reads like a C grade undergraduate paper and one may be left more frightened than enlightened by Mr. Lindsey's words.

Having left Wall Street over a year ago I still have a place in my heart for the financial markets. I find that my focus in reading is increasingly turning towards history, the issue of worldwide standards of living and how economic growth in various parts of the world varies so dramatically.

Economic Puppetmasters by Lawrence Lindsey, the current economics advisor to the President, is an excellent book for those that are interested in (1) economics (2) the history of monetary policies in various economic areas such as Japan, Europe and the United States and finally, (3) the inextricable link between politics and the economy.

I was going to rank this book a solid four star book because it provided some really good analysis. However, after thinking about it for a day or so, I am deducting a full star from the book (a three star ranking) due to the partisanship rhetoric and a complete lack of attention to the national debt.

In my opinion the real value of this book is Lindsey's explanation of why Japan has been in an economic funk for 10 + years. Another element of excellent insight on his part is that he provides readers with an excellent explanation of the pros and cons of the Euro and difficulties that will likely occur in the next ten years from the establishment of such a central bank / currency. The book provides readers with a great history lesson into various monetary regimes.

In my opinion Mr. Lindsey, like many financial authors, is HIGHLY deficient in one key area. He never talks about the U.S. national debt and how it has gone from $960 billion to $5.6 trillion in 20 years. The explosive growth in the national debt has caused growth rates to be overstated because they are unsustainable. At the end of the day you have to pay interest on the debt and you have to repay the debt. What about the fact that America will go from 7 working people per retiree to 2.5 within 20 years? This will cause social benefits to soar with fewer workers to pay for it? But Mr. Lindsey doesn't feel this is important. Instead he takes shots at previous administrations for their "deficient views." You can learn a good amount from reading the book but Mr. Lindsey and the rest of the Politicians / economists disgust me because their desire to get re-elected is going to leave a nation bankrupt or heavily indebted within 20 years. Nothing short of a tragedy.

Most of my reviews are in business / economics and I encourage people to read them, whether here on Amazon or at my personal website. If you are interested in economic history book I would encourage everyone to read The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner since it is more international in scope and deals with the lives and times of the most famous economists in history. If you are interested in economic development I would encourage you to read Hernando DeSoto's Mystery of Capital but note his lack of focus on corruption in certain countries. A great general business book is by the management guru Peter Drucker entitled "The Essential Drucker."

This is a book about four movers and shakers in today's global economy: Alan Greenspan, Eisuke Sakakibara, Helmut Kohl, and George Soros. Lindsey does a very good job of describing what they do--what their jobs are--who they are, and how they think. His capsule descriptions of how they view the world are broad-brush descriptions, lacking details and subtlety, but are amazingly accurate for all that. Alan Greenspan is the contrarian, Eisuke Sakakibara is the mandarin, Helmut Kohl is the historian, and George Soros is the speculator.

But the book is more than just about these four individuals. It is a book about the institutions that they boss and serve: America's Federal Reserve (that Alan Greenspan heads), Japan's Ministry of Finance (where Sakakibara is the senior civil servant), the West German government (that Helmut Kohl stood at the top of for more than two decades), and the world of the speculative hedge funds (of which George Soros with his Quantum Fund is the most visible and public example). And this is where the value-added in the book truly lies. For no single individual, no matter how talented, can function without a staff. And no single individual whose mindset is out of sympathy with that of the staff or the environment can get much of anything done.

Lindsey's summaries of the institutional histories and of the typical patterns of thought of the Federal Reserve, the Japanese Ministry of Finance, and the other institutional locations are--I think--the best part of the book. These are matters that are almost never covered in the press. Journalists would much rather discuss the personalities of Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright than the cultures and orientations of the people who staff the bureaucracies they head--the Treasury believing that it is engaged in a positive-sum game of maximizing international economic integration, while State believes that it is in a zero-sum negotiation of exchanging favor for favor. And these cultures are very important.

Moreover, to the extent that it is not culture but individuals that matter, it is groups of individuals: groups of people who think more-or-less alike and work together. Journalists like to speak of the "Rubin Treasury." But it would be much more accurate to speak of the "Rubin-Summers-Froman-Lipton-Geitner-Wilcox-Truman-Sandberg-and a bunch of others" Treasury. Arcs of policy grow and shrink gradually over time, as the consensus least common denominator of agreement among senior policymakers armed with arguments by their staffs gradually shifts. So tracking the thoughts of the institutions rather than the off-the-cuff thoughts of individuals is very important.

The heads of such organizations are in positions in which action is much easier if taken along than across the grain because of the orientations and beliefs of those who surround them. Neverthless, they are not the puppets of their institutions. And they have powerful opportunities to surround themselves with like-minded people.

Thus my first quarrel with Lindsey's book: throughout it there is a tone of policy pessimism--that even powerful people are very tightly constrained by institutions and history, that strings are being pulled elsewhere by the system, and that the High Politicans spend most of their time frantically trying to pretend that they are leading the parade.

This certainly was not my experience in government. For example, the 1993 deficit reduction program was not dictated by history or institutional patterns but was instead an act of political will, guided by what turned out to be (we hope) correct economic theory--so far, so good. The amount of policy reform and change that can be achieved is limited, and the work is hard, but high officials are not tied down like Gulliver captured by the Lilliputians.

I found myself wondering whether Lindsey might have been generalizing from his own experience in the Bush administration, where there was little room for economic policy. But it was not the fault of the "system" that the strings were held tightly. Bush policy was tied down by its own actions--it was overstrong against itself--crippled by high bureaucrats who did not trust their staffs, rash convention-speech promises, and a lack of interest in economic policy at the very top of the administration. It seems to me that it was the exception not the rule.

I have a second quarrel--more a quibble--with Lindsey's book: his analyses would be more convincing (and, I believe, more correct) if he would be less attached to defending the hard-to-defend economic policy record of the Reagan administration. As it is, his discussion of "supply shocks" muddles the concept by confusing true positive or negative shifts in potential output or the price level with changes in expected inflation. He thus attributes to the Reagan administration things that could only be done (and were done) by the Federal Reserve--as if you were to thank your plumber because the overhead light in the living room now works. The Volcker Fed's decision to press for disinflation even in the face of Reagan's overexpansionary fiscal policy was a gutsy move, and it is not fair to rob them of credit for the successful decline in expected inflation that was its principal positive result. But let that pass. For there is a third, more important, quarrel that I have...

Throughout Lindsey's book there is an undertone of pessimism. Lindsey anxiously looks back to the Great Depression, when policymakers armed with inadequate economic theories and constrained by institutions, ideologies, and politics created the worst macroeconomic disaster ever. He draws gloomy analogies between 1929 and 1999. There is, however, one very important difference between 1929 and 1999 that Lindsey does not note: we in 1999 remember what happened after 1929. And that difference is a key difference: that we remember history means that we cannot be necessarily condemned to repeat it. We can--and do--take steps to head off a 1929-style macroeconomic disaster.

Thus I am much more optimistic about the future than Lindsey is.

But these three points of disagreement that I have with the book do not mean that it is a bad book. It is quite a good book: it offers a form of institutional analysis and description that is hard to get anywhere else, and that is very important to understand if you are to understand how our economy works today.

The book is good when it comes to the history and training of the Rangers, but the language is dry and you get bored after about three pages. The language sounds so matter-of-factly, as if writing this book was a chore for the writers. I never should have bought it. I think even Ann Landers could have done a better job writing about the Rangers.

This book has great stuff in it. It has some of the training and grat pictures. But I wish it could have more detail on weapons .

This is a mere formulaic padding of the prior edition of this book. There are a few new chapters. In some cases, these chapters address dealers who have come into prominence since the 1985 edition. Other dealers given equal attention were added for reasons that shall remain mysterious, as they address players never known or soon to be forgotten. The original chapters related to figures such as Sydney Janis and Leo Castelli have some historical interest. The new chapters tend to be shorter and tend to suffer from a narrow focus on the personal background of the dealer and the editors' apparent effort to prompt the dealers to speak to art world issues that may have been new or compelling in 1985 (e.g., the "new" role of auction houses) but which are certainly capillary today. The upshot is that I learned quite literally nothing about the contemporary art market.

This book sheds real light into how New York based art dealers from the 1940s to the 1980s lived, worked and thought about art. There are many interesting anecdotes, opinions and brief biographies inside this book filled with short essays about some 25 dealers who hepled shape the world of art as it is still known today.

This just goes to show the differences of opinions of people. I listened to the tape in my car and thought it was truly a JOKE for anyone that really studies Feng Shui. It said nothing. It did nothing! I don't know if I could BEAR to listen to the whole thing! Chanting and ahming on tape is not the way to learn Feng Shui. What a waste of my money! No, I guess you got it, I DO NOT RECOMMEND!!!! What a ripoff!

Listening to this cassette allowed me to feel and know my home better than ever before. I was guided with clarity about what to do to each, of the areas of my home. My intellect and my intuitive side where both satisfied as I simply enjoyed this tape. This is a great addition to my knowledge of Feng Shui. I highly recommend this cassette.

The only way a person could have one of the apartments in this book is if they were a character on Friends or a stockbroker on Wall street. The style is a mix of modern and traditional. The photos are beautiful. However, what you can take from this book may be limited and may depend upon your purpose.

Recommendation:
If you are looking for a book on decorating tips and projects to improve your apartment, then skip this book. If you were wondering how the other half live or want to be inspired, then try this book.

I recently read this book for a paper i had to write for a class dealing with the Middle East. Alan R. Taylor goes into great depth about the history of power in the Middle East. The book with the origins of the Arab system and ends with the dilemma of the Arabs fighting over land and natural boundaries. The book is a little outdated but still has a lot of great information about the early shifting of power in the Middle East. I'd would recommend this book to anyone interested in the government and politics aspect of the Middle East.

I finished that Book 2 weeks ago, and it's still on my mind. It's right that what you have to expect of a New York Times correspondant!

I thought that "The Shell Hacker's Guide to X and Motif: Custom Power Tools and Windows Manager" wasn't that bad, but a lot of the stuff you can do for free by just downloading of hotbar or windows sites. Also you really don;t need the diskett because it just adds to the cost of the book, so I think that you would be better off with out that. The content of the book was pretty good though, so if you just want to fool around with a windows computer's graphics, this is the book for you! ; - )

As a lover and avid collector of books, I had high hopes for this book -- at first glance it seemed entrancing, especially the topic. Unfortunately, once I started reading it more carefully, my spirits sank. Some of the pictures are visually interesting, but most are not. Even more disappointing, there is not much substantive information either. If you like the idea of this book and are looking for a more satisfying read, check out At Home With Books : How Booklovers Live With and Care for Their Libraries by Estelle Ellis(Editor), et al. That book is worth every penny, and you'll enjoy it.

This is more of a coffe table book. It's full of interesting photographs of, what else, books. The pictures show books incorporated into interesting architecture, unique shelving and storage for books, home libraries and offices, etc. The text offers advice and commentary on displaying and storing books in practical, unique, and interesting ways. If you're a bookworm and/or collect lots of books, you would enjoy paging through Living With Books.

I have a feeling the previous reviewers were expecting a how-to book of home construction projects. Actually this is more of a tour guide. It's fascinating to discover the many creative, ingenious, and very original ways architects and ordinary booklovers have found to store books, display them, and enjoy being in their presence. Face it -- one never has enough bookshelves. And some of these homes are definitely masquerading as libraries! Here are bookshelves up under the eaves of an older house, or installed over the doorways in the hall, or built into closets and cupboards and under kitchen counters. Others are freestanding on metal shelves and poles and rigged like a ship's masts. There are small libraries built into the landings of staircases and others that cover entire walls of bedrooms. Some are two tiers deep, with the front one moving sideways on rollers. Others share space with lamps, TV sets, telephones, clocks, computers, ancient artifacts, photographs, and knick-knacks. And the one thing all the arrangements depicted in this book have in common is, none of them -- even the most attractively arranged -- are just for show. One look at the worn covers and frayed jackets tells you these books are the constant companions of their owners.