As a Christian, I did not find the 12 spiritual lessons helpful, because they were not Biblically based.

This is book is a quick read with many wonderful thoughts
that make you reflect on your life (and even on your garden).

The author's sharp truths really struck home for me. So often we
just rush through our days trying to force our lives down a
certain path. Ms. Glyck's lessons help us to step back and see
the bigger picture of what's going on in our lives and what
action we can take to help our current circumstances.

You don't have to know anything about gardening to enjoy and
benefit greatly from this beautiful little book.

12 Lessons on Life I Learned from My Garden : Spiritual Guidance from the Vegetable Patch by Vivian Elisabeth Glyck is one of those books that might bring a joyful tear in your eye. Brilliantly written. She uses real-life metaphores from her beautiful garden. Most of them are about problems I still face in my life. Most likely this woman is wiser than she might realize herself. This is no vague spiritual stuff - this is a real-life reality check, quite tough and tender.

If my friends would read this, we could change our daily lives. Not only because we change our perception of events and therefore we may project other things and events in our lives, but mainly because we actually will change our behaviour.

I started to like the book in 1997, and it is getting stronger and stronger because it is still very practical and applicable. It is as if she's talking to me. It's absolutely lovely.

Guys give it as a present to your wives or girl-friends.

Girls go and get it and read it to your man while lying together in bed.

Go out buy it, read it and it will never ever go away from your life.

Vivian you did something beautiful to the world. What's your next project?

Like most of today's "complementarians," John Piper has a lot of good things to say. Men should be devoted to the welfare of their wives. They should be spiritual leaders in the home. Women should honor their husband's attempts to provide for them.

That said, Piper misses the mark. He teaches that God designed creation so that Man was the ultimate authority, and that woman's created duty is merely to obey. As much as Piper tries to nuance this view with talk of husbands being "loving," the end result is that the husband still has the final say and the right to break his wife's will if they reach loggerheads.

The correct Biblical view is this: women are in an inferior position to men because our Fall from the Garden has cursed the world. The initial harmony between men and women has been ruined. Genesis teaches that there was no formal "hierarchy" between men and women before the Fall - all of the "complementarians" ingenius attempts to smuggle a master/servent dynamic into the pre-Fall relationship have fallen flat because their assumptions simply aren't apparent in the text. Therefore, man's rule over woman is part of a broken, cursed existence, just like the fact that there are masters and slaves. A Christian man is not to embrace and rejoice in his role as "leader." His job is to raise his wife up to a level of equal worth and personhood to himself, despite his culture's insistence that women are just jiggly sex toys. The complementarian model is flawed because it teaches men to relish their role as "head," and sees the main problem with gender relationships being women getting out of line.

John Piper delivers a carefully studied Biblical portrait of what it means to be a man or a woman. The principles are based on sound Biblical exegesis, but without a lot of technicality and detail. The chapters dealing with "The Meaning of Masculinity" and "The Meaning of Femininity" are dealt with by the use of carefully constructed definitions that are unfolded word-by-word. Extensive space is given to describing the masculine role of leadership. Piper's approach is Scriptural, and therefore relevant; and he labors hard to bridge any apparant gaps between the Biblical model and its contemporary relevance. He avoids hard and fast rules for specific circumstances, and sticks to sold principles which should govern male-female relationships of differing levels. This would be an excellent book for pastoral premarital counselling.

Piper manages to minimally flesh out the roles described in the Bible for man and woman, while remaining sensitive to the common "modern feminist" views without tiptoeing around the faults in that line of thought. Overall, a great summary of insightful redaction of scripture. Now I want to get the more complete book that Piper edited on this same subject.

A promising idea, severely hampered by the writer's self-absorption. The writer suggests that she will write about the nature of the town in which Hitler was raised (which is the town where she was raised as well) in an attempt to shed light on the nature of the support of Nazism amongst the populace, and how such support has become denied or hidden in recent years. She attempts to use her own personal history, including attempts to reveal the nature of the above through essay, in order to elucidate these themes.

This effort is severely undercut by a remarkably self-serving account of the writer's own striving towards recognition and award; indeed, the major theme of the book appears to be the insufficent recognition of the author. Although one might reasonably examine such themes as indicative of the resistance of the town to historical truths, the emphasis is instead placed upon the person of the author, with little analysis of the interaction of her person with the nature of the area, and how it served as a basis for support of Nazism, and later denial of such a role.

The story is told with the same sort of chilling and ironic distancing evident in the eloquent title. It winds its way, nevertheless, through the hearts of all of us. It is impossible to remain distanced from the narrative of betrayal and complicity, small evasions building to a whole fabric of dissimulation.
A special word should be added about the translation, which is bone-dry honest and, at the same time, poetic. Imogen von Tannenberg is some kind of genius.

I was disappointed in this one...I found Cherishment to be a disconcerting and frustrating mix of technical jargon and rambling stream of consciousness. I'm big into self-discovery and learning about how psychothereapy works these days, and certainly understanding the role that cherishment (or lack thereof) plays in the individual and in society at large sounds valuable and interesting, but the authors make you work too hard for too little. The only interesting parts were the segments on the author's patients where they got into some real concrete discussions and examples about the effect of lack of cherishment on these individuals.

As one who considers myself part of the prevailing cultural criticism of Freud I did not expect a pleasant read from a book in which his speculations play such a large role. But Young-Bruehl and Bethelard use Freud's solid ground of insights into the human mind to set sail on a voyage both east and west, ancient and modern. They generously take the reader along on their journey, gratuities included in the ticket price. Cherishment is more than a pleasant read. The book is an adventure for the reader/explorer interested in the ways in which we think about love, intimacy, dependency and primary needs. Voyagers meet an assortment of other pilgrims like Michael Balint, Akhilleus and a little known Japanese psychoanalyst named Takeo Doi. We learn to consider language and the ways its usage forms our understanding of our world. We eavesdrop on some patient sessions and are allowed in to some of the authors very personal dreams. Most interesting is the dialogue between the authors who challenge and compliment each other to advance an idea about our primary need to cherish and be cherished.

Schenker's special theories were still largely undeveloped when he wrote this. Begin with INTRODUCTION TO SCHENKERIAN ANALYSIS by Allen Forte. Or if you just want to learn basic music theory use Robert Ottman's ELEMENTARY HARMONY and ADVANCED HARMONY or an early edition (unmangled by Mark Devoto) of Walter Piston's HARMONY. Readers interested in music theory will probably also want to look at PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.

For the studied musician or composer, this book offers a new approach to the way we veiw both music theory and composition. Schenker begins with a detailed description of how we perceive music based on the natural laws of overtones. He then demonstrates how the "old systems", i.e. the church modes no longer, or ever really could be consisdered as independant systems of tonality. The only valid systems are the major and the minor. The first half encompasses his broad yet clarifying theories and the second half demonstrates these theories in practical applications. The concepts of "compositional unfolding" and many others have increased my understanding and comprehension of theory as it should be.....the way Bach, Beethoven, and many of the greats perceived it before Ramaeu. This is definetly worth the time!

This book contains almost nothing about working in Japan. Half of the website links they provide don't even work anymore. The living in Japan part is quite helpful though.

I lived in Japan for one year as an exchange student, and plan to go back after graduating college. That's why I picked up this book.

This book is loaded with information, and references to other places to find information as well. The book has tons of weblinks, and email addresses of organizations to help you out once you get abroad.

The book is very real, and is NOT a tourist book. It covers topics such as taxes, how to rent apartments, how to get your car overseas, why NOT to bring your car overseas, marriage issues, employement issues, and everything.

This is a good book for the person who intends to spend an extended amount of time in Japan.

The pictures were beautiful, but I was looking for a book with more information on the history of the breed. The book read more like a childrens book, very little text and a lot of pictures. I was very dissapointed and returned it as a result.

What a pleasure to see this book available in English! Anyone loving ponies, palominos, or of course, Haflingers, will just melt at the quality of these photos - you'll want each one as a poster! Dream on.... (I am a lucky owner of a beautiful Haflinger, so am rather biased in my opinion!)

The fact that Elizabeth Croll is a Westerner who studies Chinese culture - in the discipline of anthropology no less - makes me skeptical as to how much she really understands of a Chinese woman's experience. There is much to be said for experiencing being a Chinese woman first hand. I am Chinese by ancestry and quite unsettled by this. Her scholarship falls under the general category of cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology itself is a questionable field because it comes from a tradition of examining 'the other', like how you might examine animal or insect behavior. Those methods of anthropology don't sit well with me. I would rather that someone take a gander at 'European Anthropology' and try to understand what those colonizers where thinking when they ravaged much of the non-European world. If the history of anthropology was inherently racist, what should anthropology be now?

I found this book not only interesting but extremely useful. I thought it was well organized and worth reading for research or for leisure!

Elisabeth Croll is a prolific author in the area of Chinese women's studies, and proves even more so in this book. In it, she gives personal and more intimate details of women in China today, as well briefly reviewing with the reader some important points and occurences in the not so distant past. This book touches on topics that directly affect women's lives today. Namely, where are they going in the future? Women in China have gone through (literally) revolutionary changes within the past 50+ years. The most important change is in that of rhetoric itself -- Croll tells us of a common theme in women's lives -- a lot of egalitarian rhetoric with unsufficient action to implement this rhetoric through policy, etc.

A great book for anyone interested in Chinese women, and the best part is, it leaves you gasping for more.

Advice is common sense, too cutesy and lacks substance. If this is an owner's manual, consider an exchange!

Lots of information that the average person can understand, without the confusion of medical terminology. Easy to read the entire book or just pick out areas of interest.

I use this book constantly in my work in public health. Alphabetical listings of every body part and how to take care of it from the cosmetic ("How to Give Yourself a Pedicure" in the section for Feet) to the crucial (i.e. what is involved in a basic gyn appt.) As long as you have a body you intend to take good care of, you have a need for this book.

This book consists of a series of conversations between the journalist Elisabeth Schemla and the Algerian feminist Khalida Messaoudi. The conversations are organized into chapters according to topic. It is most interesting for the general reader when Messaoudi is describing her childhood and education. Later chapters focusing on her political struggles require the reader to have extensive background knowledge of modern Algerian politics in order to make sense of them. The repeated use of abbreviations in the book tends to be rather annoying for readers who aren't familiar with Algerian politics. They are explained in a glossary at the end. If you want an insider's view of Algerian politics of 1980s and 1990s, you must read this book. If you are simply looking for tales of an ordinary woman's life (or even an extraordinary woman's life) in Algeria, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Born in 1958, a red-headed, highly-educated and fiercely secular Berber, Messaoudi has established herself as one of Algeria's bravest and most articulate speakers of truth. In a series of interviewers with a French journalist, capably translated into English, she presents a pungent, invaluable first-hand exposé of the Islamist challenge in her country. Its every-day texture imbues her account with a feel for living in an Islamist tyranny-such as the incident of a primary school teacher who requests students to bring in corks for a practical experiment. When the children oblige, it turns out there is no experiment-only a trap; the teacher asked for the corks to find out whose families drink wine, then he launched into a violent diatribe against their miscreant parents for not living by Islamic law. A freethinker from an early age (as a teenager, she decided against prostrating herself during prayers, instead adopting a yoga-style position), Messaoudi does not mince words. She despairs about the descent of Algeria into what she calls "fundamentalist barbarism" and aruges that the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), Algeria's main Islamist organization, has "absolutely all the classic ingredients of totalitarian populist movements." Contrary to most Western analysts of Islam, she discerns an "Islamist International" along the lines of the Communist International. In a particularly powerful analogy, she states "The veil is our yellow star" (even if she does stretch the analogy too far in arguing that the FIS obsession with women is "exactly like" Hitler's obsession with Jews). Were the Islamists to take power, she fears they would "clear the country of all the people who really bother them," which she assumes will be a very large group indeed. Like many Algerians, Messaoudi blames the Islamist rise in large part on the purposeful scheming of the dictatorship that ruled the country from independence in 1962 until the crisis in 1992. She argues that many of its steps, from introducing the Arabic language in schools to not cracking down on FIS, eased the Islamists' path. Messaoudi has her foibles, to be sure, sympathizing with Saddam Husayn and asserting that Washington was "completely responsible" for Scuds falling on Tel Aviv. But she emerges from these pages as a highly attractive intellectual, a heroine made necessary by the horrors of her country's recent history.

Middle East Quarterly, June 1999

Written as a dialogue between journalist Elisabeth Schemla and feminist leader Khalida Messaoudi, this book details the heartbreak and the triumphs of being female in a country that has bowed down to the pressures of Islamic Fundamentalism. Messaoudi discusses her life in an intelligent, honest, and passionate manner as she details what it was like to grow up Algerian and female. She also explains the many players and political groups who have tried to control the direction of Algeria over the last thirty years. Most importantly, she brings to life the terrible reality of life in Algeria, where women have been betrayed and stripped of their rights as people by the government under the Family Code and then enslaved, terrorized, and murdered by the misogynistic enemies of that same government. Messaoudi also discusses the ongoing tension between the Berber culture and the Arab culture of Algeria and its effect on the problems there. This is the first book I have read, in English, that gives such a clear accounting of the political climate of Algeria and of the lives of women there.