Although this book was written before EST became Landmark Education, someone may recommend this book to you as a prelude to asking you to participate in the Landmark forum. Forewarned is forearmed. Ask yourself the following questions as you read this book, for they are also germane to the Landmark forum--formerly EST founded by Werner Erhard. Many dissatisfied customers assert that there is essentially no difference--except cosmetic--between the two.

Is the author or the company they are advocating practice full and total disclosure about the product or service they are praising?

Are the bibliography sources, (if any), that the author/coach cites, scholarly and officially advocated by the American Psychological Association or similar? If no credible sources are provided does the author/coach instead cite a plethora of anonymous and/or essentially worthless personal anecdotes of themselves and others?

We've all recommended something or someone to people at one time or another in our lives-doctors, lawyers, psychologists, mechanics and interior decorators. Experience has shown that quite often this works to the mutual benefit of us all. Therefore I think we can all agree that sometimes anecdotes do have some value.

However don't ever forget that anecdotes are scientifically worthless. Thus personal anecdotes should NEVER be your sole criterion for participation in anything remotely resembles medicine or psychology--such as is provided by the Landmark Forum.

What do past customers and/or employees have to say about the product book/seminar being offered? What kind of reputation does the company offering the book/product have re? Complaints, criticisms and customer casualties--psychological, monetary or otherwise? Do the founders of such system/book's author, or the system itself, have a criminal history associated with it or any type of notoriety that would tend to make one think that they/it don't "walk their talk" (lack credibility) or aren't being completely honest about their motives and worth, efficacy and safety of their product(s)/truthfulness of their book's assertions?

Are these complaints documented? If such documentation does exist chances are you can find it at the rickross.com website.

Does the company/author acknowledge their responsibity for past criticism/notoriety or do they have a reputation of chronically blaming the victims and bringing on a herd of defense lawyers? Would you ever want to accept a product or service from a company that has a reputation for how it treats its dissatisfied customers?

Yet paradoxically Landmark preaches a new age "we all create our own reality" shtick. But if Landmark types truly feel that they create their own reality, then why all the whining and hostility whenever someone criticizes Landmark?

I mean, really, if Landmark truly believes that we all create our own reality then, like, didn't Landmark just create that critical "reality" of just being criticized too? Yet contrarily Landmark's outward behavior seems to demonstrate that they believe more of a litigious and victimology philosophy than any kind self-proclaimed quasi-mystical/self-deterministic philosophy whatsoever. A wee bit of a dichotomy don't you think.

There are always two sides to every story: Check out "Outrageous Betrayal," by Steven Pressman and "Cults in Our Midst," by Dr. Margaret Singer, PhD, here at amazon.com (preferable the 1995 edition Cults in Our Midst with the section about large group awareness training and Landmark specifically that Landmark sued against and suppressed)--otherwise you can find the 1995 suppressed section of "Cults in Our Midst" at rickross.com under the search term: "Intruding into the Workplace."

When in doubt practice your right to be a skeptical/informed buyer. If said company/author or newly converted friend, relative or coworker resists such efforts, evades your questions, pressures, interrogates, guilt trips, or belittles you for asking such questions then chances are you should run--not--walk away. What kind of a real friend would ever act that way towards you? It's sort of like if someone borrows 200 dollars from you but then you never hear from them. Well then: it was probably worth it.

I read this book 19 years ago and it inspired me to live fully. Through his early turmoil into later clarity and beyond his normal bounds into extraordinary invention, he brought forth a completely new way of life that we all may share. Read this book to disabuse yourself of all the pandering known "facts" about Werner, and experience for yourself the greatness he invites all of us to be. He dares to posit that the natural state for all of us is one of joy. Anything other than that is a opportunity to face head on, acknowledge, and move through. A truly profound man.

Rogers offers a look at the first capital of the Confederacy -albeit the capital for a mere handful of months. Rogers then expands focus on Montgomery for the remaining war years ('61-'65). Although Rogers presents the city of Montgomery as a "microcosm" of other Southern cities, I find Rogers offers little to defend his thesis. Except for its "15 minutes" as the capital, Montgomery, for the most part, largely escapes the ravages of other towns/cities/villages of the Deep South. I really found not much of a story to tell within these pages. Indeed there is only 156 pages of readable text!

This book is a good source for high school reference libraries. It gives a accurate progression of the works produced by William Faulkner.

It's almost unprecedented for me to return a baseball book. It's almost impossible to find a baseball book I won't enjoy. If the book's about the Yankees, the odds of either would be non existent. Well, at least I thought they would be non existent until I began to read this one.

The book contains no new good information & is filled with mistakes. Also, the author's system of rating the players creates a premise that's flawed from the beginning.

If you know enough about baseball to know Snuffy Stirnweiss wasn't an all time Yankee great, then you find this book insulting to your intelligence.

I truly enjoyed this book. Each piece (and there are 50!) takes you back to the particular year! It has all the stats on the individual player in his best season. It has lots of fantastic photos and a terrific section on the 1998 Yankees! At the end of the book, there is a section that allows me to record my own memorable seasons with my favorite team! A must have for every Yankee fan, and those fans of baseball history!

At the incessant pleading of a friend, I attended an EST seminar in Houston about 1977. 300 people. Intense. I was the one single holdout of the seminar who wouldn't puppet the estie-speak that: "I had gotten it." The mysterious "it" was that there was nothing to get. Twisted into this nonsense was the admonition to quit expecting answers to life from anywhere but within your own self. I didn't buy it, and I didn't break to their brainwashing efforts. Admittedly, I felt like an outcast at the conclusion of the seminar, for at that time I did not have the answers I wanted. A few years later I found the answers to life that I was searching for, and it sure didn't have anything to do with EST. Stay far, far away from anything to do with this cult-like junk. Been there, done that, and it was garbage.

W.W. Bartley was one of several of the legitimate scholars, professionals, and therapists who were seduced by Werner Erhard during the 1970s, which goes to show that the slick, devious, under-handed, deceptive tricks used by professional persuaders, con artists, influence and compliance experts, and used-car salesmen work on even otherwise intelligent people. Do a little research on cult recruitment and retention tactics before you sign up or allow anyone you know to "enroll" in the Landmark Forum, (new and incredibly pretentious name for "est"). Cialdini's book "Influence" is a good place to start for general influence tactics. But the cults and "LGATs" are way beyond that. And they love to recruit and exploit anyone who can recruit others, preferably celebrities. If you can find a copy, Peter McWilliams' "Life 102; What To Do When Your Guru Sues You," is one of the best to explain the mechanisms. Unfortunately, the cult he was in has gotten hold of the copyright at his death, so it's not easy to find. I believe the text is posted on the web somewhere. (They have managed even to have this book taken off the various lists of his writings.) But back to W.W. Bartley. In addition to being a professional scholar, he was also paid to write this biography of Werner Erhard. For the other side of this relentlessly flattering PR piece, see Steven Pressman's "Ourageous Betrayal." Or ask someone old enough to remember the most embarassing fads of the '70s. Or the phenomena of the cults.

A good book as far as getting a handle on Werner's inner workings. However when I finished my conclusion was that I'm not buyin' what he's sellin'. Fine, that's my opinion. Don't just listen to someone from here or some other forum or guest book to form yours. For a balanced perspective relative to Werner's read "Outrageous Betrayal" and the 1995 hard-cover edition of "Cults in Our Midst" if you can find one after Landmark Education got through suppressing it. You can still buy it used here. I did. Look up Rick Ross's, Steven[sp?] Hassan's and the Skeptic's Dictionary websites re. EST and Landmark, and PUH Leez make up your own minds. Don't take my word for it.

I am mystified why Peter Drucker would lend his endorsement to this book. I'm only 70 pages into it, but have elected to write my first book review because I DISLIKE this book!

So far, I have read chapter after chapter of ranting about why the golden of age of America began in 1962 and ended in 1963. Television, fast food, yuppies, and above all, rock and roll, have conspired to corrupt America and with it, ostensibly, the world.

What a crock! How about getting on with life!

I agree with Bennis' premise that there is an "Unconscious Conspiracy" which sucks the life and creativity out of would be modern leaders. However, I was extremely disappointed in the chaotic prose and exclusive stabs at politically conservative leaders. For example, he highlighted Ralph Nader as an example of a good modern leader.

Throughout the book, I had trouble figuring out what Bennis was trying to convey. I don't normally hate a book, having loved so many before. But I hate this one. Stick to Dilbert, it's more apropo.

Warren Bennis has a talent for being able to see and articulate the "big picture" problems that are plaguing the majority of organizations today. He uses many, many examples to show cause and effect relationships between poor leadership and organizational health. He is an outspoken fan of creativity, vision, trust and momentum within the work force and exegetic in his treatment of corporations, colleges, the military, Non-Profits, etc.- He is blunt about greed, reactionism and hubris while presenting an exciting picture of our Country and it's potential when leaders (not managers) are allowed to instill hope in the people who do the work.

I am buying a copy for each of my employees!!

Although the preface states that this book "can be used by the student for self instruction without the aid of any teacher", I found that not to be the case. My hat's off to anyone who could pick up more than a smattering of Hittite from this book alone.

I had hoped for a series of lessons, with vocabulary and exercises. After an introduction to the writing system, the authors launch into a catalogue of declensions ("nominal system", "the pronominal system", "the verbal system", etc.) It looks like a throwback to the phonology - morphology - syntax grammars of the last century.

The only thing that makes this work something more than a dry reference grammar for those who already know some Sumerian and Akkadian is a 40-page or so section of readings in the rear of the book. There are 4 reading selections given in cuneiform, with the transliteration and a literal translation into English underneath. Each selection is then followed by a "real" English translation.

For a true learner's grammar of Hittite, I guess we'll just have to wait. In the last couple of years, we've seen excellent learning aids for ancient languages (Huehnergard's Akkadian, Hayes' Sumerian, Allen's Middle Egyptian, to name a few.)

I'd recommend you wait a little longer for something meant for true beginners. Hopefully, it won't take too long.

If you're very lucky you may find the following books by Edgar Sturtevant in a good library: A Hittite Chrestomathy (with George Bechtel) and A Comparative Grammar of the Hittite Language (with E. Adelaide Hahn). The Chrestomathy is an amazing book, intended for beginners, with an excellent treatment of cuneiform. You may also look for his Hittite Glossary. These are all pretty hard to come by these days, but they're better than anything else out there, including the subject of this 2 star rating.

This book was definitely for beginning Hittite. As a linguist, I was disappointed with how it began its introduction to the Hittite language. The authors gave a decent intro. to grammar, but not to the mechanics of the cuneiform. All of the conjugations and declensions were transliterations, leaving the student with no way to deal with actual Hittite texts. Further, many of the linguistic tidbits that the authors offered amounted to "that's just the way it is." Rarely do such excuses give the only available explanation; in spite of potential evidence that would avoid such sidestepping, the authors did not comment on more concrete theories.

To limn: this book is okay as a beginning, as the barest beginning, but you'll have to spend hundreds of dollars on additional texts and do your own linguistic analyses if you're serious about learning the language.

Why a professional historian was needed to write this book is not clear to me. It reads like a genealogical tome and adds nothing to our understanding of southern history. A lot of research for little purpose.

This may be considered a classic of the fur trade era, but I would not waste my time on this book! It is a verbose and overblown "fictitious" theatrical novel which is difficult to follow and comprehend. Although based upon true events during the fur trade era, the author is much too glamorous and gaudy in his writing style.

This man has spent half of his life blasting one of his many critics, Steve Kaplan - late parapsychologist/schoolteacher - for his hobby of researching modern day humans who claim to be vampires, but this phony then promotes a book about werewolfs! You cannot have it both ways, Ed!