It is a great book. I studied with Dr Fried at San Francisco in 1988 and every comment he made was supported by adecuate and precisely background and many published papers. I may say if Dr. Fried did not mentioned in the book it is because it does not exist or nobody has ever writen abouth it. The book is full of facts, references, advises and a great dry sens of humor. It signals medical mistakes, contradictions in findings reported, circular arguments; and clarifies all the points in relation to breathing, phisiological changes and how they transform in psychological proceses and "mental disease". Yes types of migraine can be cured, high blood pressure, and a lot more. I was at a academic panel at the School of Psychology of the State University to review a training in breathing, yoga, and relaxation for the treatment of anxiety, and I look good by all the references I had on the relation between breathing and anxiety. A great book for any profesional on biofeedback, psychoterapy, medical general practitioner, and Psychiatrists.

Excellent book. Easy to read. Helped my husband and me to have a starting point to discuss our intimacy issues. Also, it gave us hope that we can work through the physical and emotional problems surrounding impotence. I highly recommend this book.

Everyone has his or her own what-if scenarios and Mr. Robert A. M. Stern would play a central role in mine. For some people it's cars, or planes, houses, or paintings by the Old Masters. In my case the list is all of the above. So were I ever to make the Fortune 500, a home by one of the Greatest Architects would top the list.

This book covers a relatively short period of this Artist's career, specifically 1987-1992. It also happens to include many projects that were built in New England where I live. I had seen some of his work in person, and other examples in magazines, but it wasn't until I did some research that I found he was responsible for nearly all the projects I had so enjoyed. Many know one project in Massachusetts as Mr. Stern designed the Norman Rockwell Museum in the Berkshire Hills of Stockbridge. He also designed several buildings for Disney in Orlando, as well as numerous Colleges, and residences both urban and rural.

There is a fairly good chance his work is known to many readers because of some of the project's locales and the frequency that so many Americans visit them. While walking in a city with towers looming above it is often impossible to get far enough away to see what is blocking out the sun, this book solves that problem. And chances are Mr. Stern's work is not preventing the sun from reaching you, as his designs seem to belong where they are. His work and the surrounding areas accommodate each other as opposed to many Architects whose goal is to leave their mark. Once you become familiar with his work you will see the statements made by his buildings leave as strong an impression as any. Mr. Stern is a master designer, and his elegant, classically influenced work stands out because of what it is as opposed to how tall, how ostentatious, or how intrusive.

Even if you have never thought of picking up a book featuring the work of an Architect, I suggest if you do, this is a great place to start, and will not disappoint. His work is accessible; it is not the 15 minutes of fame trendy nonsense that is as silly and pretentious as it is transient.

I bought this book after reading Joseph's French Wines. This one is very different - more of an encyclopedia - but it has the same forthright opinions and the same down-to-earth approach. I'd compare it to the Hugh Johnson Pocket Encyclopedia, but it's easier to use and offers more in its introductory sections. I plan to buy several copies as gifts for friends who want to learn more about wine.

The recent publication of Robert Penn Warren: A Biography by Joseph Blotner may very well announce the definitive biography of one of the most famous American men of letters, a work which is both eminently readable and thoroughly enjoyable, imitating to a great degree the work of Mr. Blotner's subject.

The work is readable because the biographer uses the strictly chronological method, introducing the book with a calendar of important events in Warren's personal and professional life and repeating relevant dates at the top of every page. The reader is guided from RPW's birth in Kentucky to a poetry-loving father and a school teaching mother through a lonely childhood when the frail undersized youngster lived in a self-contained world of books. We learn how the 17 year old lost his chance for a naval career at Annapolis, his fondest dream, when his younger brother flung a piece of coal over a hedge and hit RPW in the eye, the left eye which he would later lose to surgery, and how he entered Vanderbilt University and met John Crowe Ransom, his teacher, the first poet he had ever seen, his idol with whom he shared his own poems in private.

Aided by the vehicle of Blotner's lucid prose style, we travel with Warren as he wins assistantships, fellowships, and scholarships from Vanderbilt to the University of California to Yale and finally to Oxford. We watch him settle into married life, become editor of the Southern Review, and earn fame with his novel All the King's Men.

Like the best biographers, Blotner does not avoid the dark side of his subject. He shows Warren's poetic preoccupation with the loving but aloof father figure, a reflection of his own. He tries to explain Warren's attempted suicide in college as the result of an emotional breakdown because he had fallen so far behind in his studies. He describes the often heart-rending details of Warren's relationship with his first wife whose neurasthenic personality forced her to spend most of her time bedridden and the rest of it fighting with her husband. He devotes the latter part of the book to a detailed description of RPW's last years when, his body riddled by cancer, he wished for death, which arrived mercifully in 1989.

Besides being readable, Mr. Blotner's work is highly entertaining, made more so by his vast research and his way of scattering quotations from letters and works of RPW into the biography's running commentary. We see the human being, not the literary giant, in his letters to friends, such as the following written to Katherine Anne Porter when he was struggling with All the King's Men: "At times I feel that I see my way through the tangle; then at moments, I feel like throwing the whole damned thing into the Tiber." We learn where his passion always was when, being awarded a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, thereby gaining long desired financial independence, he writes: "I've stopped writing anything I don't want to write. Poetry is where my heart is."

If there is any fault to Mr. Blotner's presentation, it is that, like many other biographers, he has become enamored of his subject. He sometimes interrupts his story with subjective praises, such as, "America's preeminent man of letters, master of genres, prodigiously creative, heavy with awards and prizes honoring his genius, Robert Penn Warren was also that rare being, a genuinely good man." In this case, Mr. Blotner perhaps should not be blamed. RPW was, after all, the only writer ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for two genres, fiction and poetry, and twice for the latter. How many other writers excelled in so many genres, including essays, poems, novels, historical fiction, biographies? Perhaps Mr. Blotner's passion for RPW can be forgiven when we consider his subject's view of art and life, "What is man but his passion?" (Audubon: A Vision).

Someone should do a movie version of this book. With all the excellent Native American actors and actresses we have today, I'm sure that America would enjoy the Native American version of this saga. Greasy Grass better known as The Battle of Little Big Horn in this version excels in bitter truth and, in triumphant victory for the Native Americans. Everyone would walk away with much food for thought.

This book is truly aimed at Latter-Day Saints in order to assist them with understanding their faith and religion. It is a text that enables the reader to comprehend where, someone who questions their beliefs, stands. Many Latter-Day Saints seem afraid to answer "gospel questions" due to the fact that they do not understand just where the question is coming from... critical or curious. This book enpowers the reader to rise to the occasssion and to surmount the situation. This is not done to discourage any who are seeking infromation but to truly answer their questions so that they feel that they the information they requested.

What I appreciate about these men who wrote the book is the understanding they have of Sukuma culture. The proverbs, parables, and illustrations are priceless. What I like about this book is they share HOW they contextualized the Gospel to the Sukuma. Very practical book with much insights. It was GOLD when I found it. Praise God for these men sharing this helpful info who have served for over 25 years. I plan on using many of the insights as I work in the Mwanza area in the slums and squatter areas.

The main character, D-503, realizes something interesting: he has a soul. And it just so happens that he's the head-honcho behind the development of a spaceship called the Integral. In this "utopia" people live in glass domes--what an Arizonan like me would call a biosphere--and have no privacy, expect for certain special times. So there is definitely a heavy science fiction aspect to this work, quite amazing for 1920-21 Russia. One thing that really stuck out was how believable the main character--D-503--was. As a mathematician, he thinks in numbers and geometrical shape. Instead of saying of a table, "it looked like a wooden animal", he might say something like, "it looked like a rectangle sitting atop four cylinders." A small detail, but one worth noticing. As in Brave New World and 1984, the ending line has the power of a knife being driven into your stomach. I'll disagree that WE is better overall than BNW and 1984, but it a good book in its own little way. The writing style can be a little clunky--as is usually the case with translated works--but not terribly so. Yes, this is a good book, well worth your time, effort, and money.

Evgeni Zamyatin's novel "We" is often compared to Orwell's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World", and rightly so, since it is a strong influence on both (though Huxley of course denied it). "We" is a terrifying vision of a future, in which all aspects of life have been rationally mechanized, according to the best tradition of Taylorism. The residents of OneState have no freedom; instead they have infinite, mathematically proved happiness. "Those two in Paradise were given a choice: freedom without happiness, or happiness without freedom. The fools chose freedom. But we brought them back the chains," says R-13, one of the OneState's chief poets.

This nightmarish vision sheds light on the present, as well. Not necessarily, as is often stated, on the terror of one Stalin. The book was written well before the establishment of the Soviet state, and on an impulse that had long before prompted Zamyatin to write in a similar vein. An earlier novella of his, "Islanders", as well as many of his short stories and plays, all have the same philosophical purpose behind them: to show that the contemporary (at the time) trends in European society, culture and art are leading to a destruction of the individual will and a horrible mechanization of life. A recurrent theme in Zamyatin is the escape from overly-civilized cities, to the freedom of the countryside and of the nature itself. Zamyatin felt, and I would gladly argue that he was absolutely correct, that the modern European civilization gradually limits the scope of the individual's understanding of the world and draws him into a sort of slavery of the spirit.

I recommend "We" to everyone. For the depth of its philosophical stance, for its brilliant structure and wonderful language, this book is clearly superior to either "1984" or "Brave New World", though it is, unfortunately, not nearly as widely recognized.

This is the first sci-fi novel I've ever read & it was required reading for my Russian literature class. I must say I was pleasantly surprised! This book was written in the early 1920's (which means it was around before "Brave New World")and is a satire about the horrors of Stalinism. It is very creative in its concept...individuals no longer have names, but rather numbers. Everybody lives in glass buildings, eliminating privacy. Sexual relationships must be approved by the State beforehand and an unplanned pregnancy resulted in a death sentence for the mother. This book is written in diary-form with very short entries, making it a quick and easy read. I thoroughly enjoyed this book & think anyone interested in sci-fi or in Russian literature would enjoy it also.

My choice for Greatest American Novel of the 20th Century is this Robert Penn Warren classic. Unfortunately for Warren (and us), this novel got off to a rotten start. The New York Times hailed it as 'The definitive novel about American politics,' and doomed it to be shelved with other drab tomes in that otherwise unimpressive genre. The Times, sad to say, widely missed the point on All the King's Men.

Jack Burden is the point. Jack Burden, the politician's hack, makes this book. His is an evolution from disaffection to purpose, from carelessness to thoughtfulness. Willie Stark-the politician-is merely the means to Warren's greater goals. Warren originally set out to show, through Stark, the Dionysian allure of power and the grand effect it has on those who attain it. And he did; Stark himself is a great literary character.

But Warren fooled himself: he created a character much greater than Stark, even though he planned Burden only to be a sort of an omniscient narrator of little value to the novel except as the storyteller of Stark's rise.

In the end, Burden says (paraphrase), "This has been the story of Willie Stark. But it has been my story too." And thankfully, it was. The novel is brilliant, Warren is brilliant, and political books are still boring-but this is not one of them!

Within the confines of a bookstore one is often overwhelmed with the numerous topics and choices available to them. A solution to this problem, if a reader is interested in an engaging, magnificently written piece of literature, then take a few steps and find All The Kings Men by Robert Warren Penn.
The theme is one of uncanny importance and relevancy to this stage in American lives despite the fact it was written in 1946. The story is told in the first person, the narrator is Jack Burden; a right hand man to the leading political figure in the story, the "Boss." Interestingly, the "Boss" is based on the real life story of Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana.
The story encompasses Jack Burdens revival from a involuntary life, as well as the metamorphosis of Willie Stark's, the "Boss", idealistic political views to the lust for power and fame. Robert Warren Penn won a Pulitzer Prize for this book, and within the last few months I can not recall a book that would equal it in quality and purpose. Penn utilizes his characters to develop and provide insight on the issues of forgiveness, power, and corruption, and the consequences of leadership.
Within a bookstore there are many choices, and many possibilities to choose from, but in the busy lives of the average person today why waste the time just pick up a copy of All the Kings Men by Robert Warren Penn today.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren proves he knows more about writing than just the simple mechanics. Strongly defined characters and a setting so real you can taste the air provide the foundation for this literary masterpiece, yet the real genius of the book is in Warren's understanding of the reader and his use of style to convey a personal tone in the reading.

The main characters in All the King's Men are Jack Burden and Willie Stark. Jack, the narrator, was a reporter before joining Stark's bid for political power. Stark began as a small country lawyer who saw something wrong and tried to change it, but he eventually becomes a politician in the truest sense, so much so that the narrator can only think of Stark as "the Boss," an ominous title indeed. Accompanying these two men is an array of equally fascinating minor characters such as Sadie, a saucy married woman influential in developing Stark's position as a politician, and Sugar Boy, an Irishman so named for his affinity for sugar. Every character has depth and realism and can stand alone as a fully-developed individual.

While the characters are clearly an enjoyable part of the story, the setting is even more compelling. Warren's word choice is superb; he chooses to include and omit just the right combination of words to paint a realistic picture in the reader's mind without becoming too cumbersome. It is a balance few authors are able to achieve with such proficiency and yet another way in which Warren demonstrates his almost supernatural understanding of the reader. The best part is, it only gets better.

If characters and setting can be described as masterfully crafted, then Warren's grasp of tone is inexplicable. Simply put, the story truly speaks to the reader and could never have been as effective were it written any other way. Sentence structure, word selection, and dialect coalesce into a tangible atmosphere that projects a strong sense of familiarity onto the reader. The book is hard to put down because of this sense of familiarity.

Overall, All the King's Men is a book enjoyable in many more ways than one, with intriguing characters, realistic setting, and a true understanding of the needs of the reader. Even after fifty years, this book remains a classic appealing to all generations.