As marine aquariasts and avid snorkelers, this book led us to the greatest snorkeling spots and some beautiful secluded beaches. Our favorite was Yawzi Point and Little Lameshur Bay. We arrived at 10:30 and were among 4 people on the beach. The waters were turquiose and the beach beautfully sandy like Trunk Bay but without the crowd. We enjoyed the right side of Yawzi Point accessible from Little Lameshur as the waters were calmer than the left hand side with similar reef to explore. Leinster Bay/Waterlemon Cay was another great find. The thing the book didn't mention was to hang your bag as Mongooses can unzip and will eat your lunch! The best, most useful book out of the three we bought. The maps are terrific as well.

Mr. Singer does a terrific job of detailing St. John's numerous hiking trails. He even gives concise, clear directions on how to get to each one. Thanks to him, we found our way to the America Hill trail with ease, and I must say the view from that vantage point was certainly worth the arduous hike up that mountain! He even gives advice on the best snorkeling spots as well as snippets of St. John history. After perusing this book, you feel as if you've been to St. John even if you never have! An absolute must for properly and thoroughly exploring the island. The only drawback is the lack of color photographs of the vegetation he describes. Also, the maps are very helpful.

I thought I had seen it all. Then I found St John Off the Beaten Track. Gerald Singer has chosen to share the hidden treasures of St John. St John is full of history, plantation ruins, nature walks. They will make your trip special.

I'm a massage therapist and found this book to be a helpful resource in a number of areas (detailed below), but was disappointed that it didn't include any pregnancy massage techniques. (Instead, the author simply suggests using the same massage strokes used for other clients.) The author is a midwife, and the book is written from this perspective, rather than that of a massage therapist. That said, I found this book to be a good reference on the anatomy of pregnancy, the mother-to-be's experience through each trimester, safety precautions for massage, and some comfort tips to address symptoms such as headaches & nausea (for the mother to use at home.) This book is an excellent pregnancy education resource, rather than a pregnancy massage instruction manual.

An excellent book about prenatal massage. It is good for massage therapists and anyone else interested in relieving some of the discomforts if pregnancy. There is even a mail-in test so that you can become certified in prenatal massage. I've taken classes in this subject and found the book to have comparable information plus you can use it as a resource.

Michelle Wright, CMT

I am a Massage Therapist and I loved this book! It has a lot of information but is still a very easy book to read. I would recommend it for Massage Therapists, as well as expectant moms and anyone working with them (Doulas, midwives, etc.)

I got this book as a gift and am I glad I didn't buy it! I usualy read bestsellers like Danielle Steele and Sidney Sheldon and any romance I can get my hands on. I just love reading I can go through two books a day, Harlequins mostly. But this is nothing like that. Who is this guy, anyway, I've never heard of him? It was to hard too get into. Some of the words were words I didn't know. Luddite? What's a Luddite? And how about a recombinant? I don't like science fiction anyway, all that jargon and stuff, so I gave up after just a few pages and got into a romance. Whew! much better!

It was great! You won't find some stereotype romance here!

This novel is almost 400 pages of scene. Intense doesn't even begin to cover it. No filler. No page after page of narrative summary. No symbolism. No artsy fartsy description dragging on for pages to let the writer prove how literary he is.

Every word takes you right there. This is it, take it or leave it. Okay, so there's some jargon in it about the net and DNA, so what? It's a story about some very real people, that's all, even if they do live in the future.

It's about what it means to be human, what it means to be a man. Raymond Chandler might have written it if he had lived to see 2000. He didn't, so it's up to this guy, St.John, (whoever the hell he is) to do it.

It ain't Danielle Steele. I haven't slept in two days reading the damned thing and I still can't get it out of my head.

Read it.

If this translation were accurate but awkward it could still be useful. But even without knowing Spanish one can see that it is not faithful to the way of speaking. It does not show the parallel constructions when it could even without sacrificing the choice to rhyme. It adds images that are not there. It does not give the feeling.

Nims' translation is nothing short of miraculous. I've read the poems in at least three different translations and Nim's were the only ones which made me cry like when I read the Spanish for the first time. There is something plaintive and erotic about John of the Cross that other tranlators edit out for propriety's sake, but Nims left it in as one should. John was a lover of the Song of Songs and his pursuit of God was the pursuit of one painfully in love and desirous of consummation. Nims brings that aspect to the fore. Gorgeous. But remember, the poems are not enough. One must still read John's commentaries.

John of the Cross is often associated only with the spiritual condition he called the dark night of the soul, experienced as a cold, dry, confusing place. But when you read his poem "On a Dark Night", you realize what wonderful intimacies are hidden for lovers under cover of darkness. For me, this poem, both in its original Spanish and its rich English translation, is itself worth the price of this attractive hardback book.

This is a book that celebrates the soul's love for her Divine Lover in images and language that transcend the limitations of physical gender. When the mystics subliminated, they truly made the energy of loving sublime!

While this book is informative, conclusions that "natural" is "better" after reading this book may cause harm to some people. I am a licensed psychologist trained in the treatment of depression and concomttant problems. My reservation with this book is that there has been insufficient study of the use of this drug (yes - St. John's Wart is a drug), so books about this "natural" drug may cause more harm than good to the public.

st, johnswort has been around for a very long time. but is has been used in europe more frequesntly than in th us .however it should be used with caution and the prescribed use should be by a homepathic doctor. other than that it's the safe alternative to prozac with much less if not no side effects.

St Johns wart is an effective natural replacement for prozac and other anti depressive drugs having few side effects due to one's using the whole plant and not just the possibly dangerous raw chemicals contained in western medicine.
This book is an excellent resource regarding all facets of this marvelous plant.

I work in a bookstore, and I had the pleasure of picking this book up and flipping through it, and I have to say that it will make you laugh harder than most books that actually try to do so. Unintentional comedy on a grand scale.

...The contents of the book are what's really amusing. This is, as the title suggests, a collection of prayers for tough situations. What's amusing is how specific the authors seem to think we need to be with out prayers. There are prayers intended for every type of politician, including separate prayers for the president, cabinet members, senators, representatives, and local officials, and at least four for different officers of the military. I imagine God getting a little impatient: "Lady, just say bless the Army and I would've gotten the idea, alright?"

The rest of the book offers up a host of gems; this would make a perfect irony-laden gift for your local super-Christian. "Oh God, It's a Heart Attack", "Save Our Homosexual Child", "Bless the Couples Living Out Of Wedlock", and the absolute side-splitting king of prayers, "Lord, My Children Have Been Wrongly Taken By The Authorities," will not soon be forgotten. I am absolutely not kidding about that last title.

Some people may actually think this book is useful, but as far as I can tell, it's a manual for people with no creative ability to form complete sentences or express their wishes in spoken or written form. So, it's a perfect gift for your favorite subliterate fundamentalist.

I love this book. It is so inspirational and easy to read without getting lost in the "holiness" of it all. A lot of times I am turned off by religion because most of the time it just doesn't deal with the practicality of everyday living. If you are looking for a nice approach to religion this book is for you as well as for newly married couples, teenagers, singles, and anyone who might be in need of inspiration and hope.

Prayer books that are in tune with Scripture and address life's troubled times are a rare entity. This one is a gem. They are written from a solidly evangelical/fundamental perspective in common English.

The length of each prayer varies from one-half to one whole page.
They are not filled with fluff or flowery language, but state the need and express trust in God to help with the need.

The nearly 200 prayers are divided into 3 sections: Praying for Myself, Praying for Others, and Praying Together. Subjects for prayer are diverse, including, A New Parent's Prayer, Prayer for Fear of Flying, Help Me Find A Job, When A Wife Dies, Prayer for A Foster Parent, Prayer As An Ambulance Passes, Prayer for An Unsaved Friend, Help With A Difficult Roommate, A Prayer for Headache Sufferers, A Prayer for People Dragged into Court, and about 180 others.

Biblical, doctrinally solid, sensitive but not highly emotional--
-this is a tremendous prayer book. Although Jeannie St. John Taylor edited the work, over 25 individuals contributed prayers.

Top notch. Go for it!

It may not be Edgar Rice Burroughs at his best but, The Land that Time Forgot is great adventure. This book contains the three Caspak novels; The Land that Time Forgot, the People that Time Forgot, and Out of Times Abyss. Three stories that chronicle the adventures of three different men on the Antarctic sub continent of Caspak; a volcanic depression that supports a diverse and dangerous prehistoric eco-system. Bowen Tyler, the hero of the first story, leads a disabled German U-boat and English survivors into the isle of Caspak where they need to fight for survival and try to find a way to back home. In the second story would-be rescuer Tom Billings crash lands in Caspak and meets the prehistoric woman Ajor. Together they fight their way back the Ajor's home territory. The final Story, and perhaps the best is about English lieutenant Bradley and his capture by the highly evolved Weiroo men. His story shows the best of Burrough's rolling adventure style complete with unbelievable coincidences and narrow escapes only to be caught again to prolong the story. So suspend your disbelief and plunge into the world of 1914, fighting the Kiaser's men, Dinosaurs, and strange cavemen. The back drop and story line more than make up for the dated romantic ideas. Not as tight and focused as Tarzan, but where else does one get submaries and dinosuars?

It is hard to know exactly how to review this trilogy by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I remember being given the first book, The Land That Time Forgot, by my father and devouring it, followed quickly by the next two volumes. My tastes were not sophisticated but my eagerness was in the extreme and these three books took me away to a place of dinosaurs, evil Germans, stalwart heroes, beguiling animal-skinned beauties and a mystery that defied evolution (or, more precisely, any known logic or science). I was truly in the land before time: childhood. Imagine my joy on discovering all three very short books wrapped in a modern new package that I could feel confident reading on a commute to work without undue embarassment. These books are still fast paced and have a truly pulpy, nostalgic feel to them. They can grow repetitious read all at once and perhaps the border between pulpy and musty is a fine one. They are more adventure and action stories than tales of the imagination (although the third installment does conjure quite a number of interesting images). The writing is simple and the dialogue is ludicrous. But the whole experience is still a delight as I was transported back and for that I am thankful for this wonderful new edition.

While Burroughs was denigrated as being a "pulp" novelist for most of his literary career, he was clearly a better writer than the vast majority of genre writers who publish today, and he was also a better story teller than most. The complaint of a reviewer that Burroughs was an obsessive racist would be hilarious if it weren't so ignorantly misguided. Similarly the complaint that Burroughs had no ear for dialogue is drenched in ignorance. The dialogue of early 20th century America is not the dialogue of late 20th century England, a fact that should not need explaining, but unfortunately explication is needed for those who who lack the most rudimentary of analytical faculties. I find Hemingway to have a tin ear for dialogue because the people I grew up with didn't speak like Hemingway characters at all, but I don't criticize Hemingway for that and suspect that he accurately recorded the cadence of his fellows. Burroughs had a good feel for the common man of the early 20th century, which is one reason his books still sell.

The Land That Time Forgot is a great adventure by a very good fantasy writer. Check it out while it's still in print.

John Bury published his life of St. Patrick in 1905, and the Dover edition is an unabridged republication of that work. It includes an introduction written by Liam de Paor in 1998. It is regarded as a classic in the study of St. Patrick and provided the generally accepted interpretation of his life up until the publication in 1942 of a lecture by T.F. O'Rahilly entitled "The Two Patricks." There have been significant and substantial changes in the academic understanding of St. Patrick since the publication of John Bury's work. As Liam de Paor notes, "The perspective provided by the research of the present century mainly is based on a more rigorous criticism of the Irish sources. We can no longer, for example, take Irish fifth-century annals as contemporary, or even near contemporary, with the events they record. They are reconstructions, embodying much guesswork, made by scholars and disputants of the seventh and eighth centuries, who sought to cast their interpretation of earlier times in annalistic form. Nor can we take at face value the work of seventh-century hagiographers such as Muirchu and Tirechan, both of whom produced accounts of Patrick in the service of the claims of Armagh. Bury, of course, by his training and background, well understood the importance of the criticism of sources. However, he did not have available the results of the work on early Irish texts that has been done by numerous scholars over the past ninety years, and he was led into undue reliance on secondary and tertiary sources for want of better ones. Our picture of fifth-century Ireland is very different now from what it was at the start of the twentieth century." (pp. xix - xx)

The book is 404 pages long excluding the introduction and preface and consists of four main sections. The first section is 224 pages long: Bury's account and discussion of St. Patrick's life, its significance and context. The print is large and considered by itself this section could serve as a quick introduction to the basic narrative of St. Patrick's life and times. However, as de Paor notes, the scholarship on this subject has progressed significantly since 1905 and there were several instances where I had wished that the author had explored his subject further. For example, it appears that St. Patrick had designated funds for the manumission of Christian slaves in Ireland and had established rules for the use thereof. Pope Gregory apparently OK'd this procedure for use in Britain as well. Was this standard procedure for proselytizing missions in the 5th Century AD or was it confined to the far reaches of the occident? Were there any Papal rulings on the institution of slavery or was this just a tactic used in the far West, perhaps one that originated with St. Patrick given that much of his youth was spent as a captive sold into slavery? In any case, at least for me, there were several instances where I supposed the author presumed his audience was familiar with more of the context of those times than I think most general readers could be reasonably expected to know.

Pages 295 to 391 are Appendices A - C: notes on the sources, notes on the text, and extended discussions on particularly vexing questions, respectively. The print for these is quite small, and there are a number of difficulties for the general reader. To begin with, readers without Latin will find it difficult to tease out useful information from these as much of the critical evidence is presented in Latin which is not translated. (The main narrative also contains Latin, but I think the context makes it comprehensible.) There is also some -- though not much -- ancient Greek. Also, the text itself infrequently indicates when you should refer to the endnotes and sometimes refers you to endnotes that do not exist. The maps included do not highlight those places in Ireland that St. Patrick visited, there is no map for Britain or Gaul (which are important elements of the story), no line indicating the suggested paths St. Patrick took and no chronology. Moreover, since much of the endnotes are concerned with scholarly disputes that were current in 1905, which may or may not have much relevance to the current discussion, I imagine that they are of much more moment to those interested in the historiography of the study of St. Patrick in the early 20th century than they are to generalists like myself.

To sum up, I think that the general reader will profit from Bury's basic account of St. Patrick's life, but should be aware that much of the scholarship is outdated and that much of the supporting notes will be dated and unintelligible to him if he does not know Latin. Paor, in the introduction, mentions two studies "which should be consulted by the serious inquirer into these matters" (p. xix), R.P.C. Hanson's "St. Patrick--His Origins and Career" and E.A. Thompson's "Who Was St. Patrick?", but I cannot vouch for their accessibility to the general reader because I have not read them. Bury's index is good and comprehensive.

As he does with most of his work, Bury deserves more accolades for this critical study into St. Patrick and the varied evidence that exists to explain his life and times. Shrouded in mystery and legend, much of this "evidence" can only be trusted to a certain degree or must be considered within the broader context of the evidence's own origins, and it is this realization that Bury uses to craft the first modern and critical assessment of Patrick. Each unique source is discussed as to what its individual reliability and relevance is, then all of the specifics on this study are masterfully organized in a thorough appendix of which Bury could have been proud.
With this critical evaluation method forming the basis for Bury's study, the end result is a very readable and engaging overview into the life of St. Patrich and the christianization of Ireland, a process that has been largely simplified and therefore obscured by a wealth of legends and myths. As interesting and valuable as these myths are for their own purposes, they cannot meet the needs of the true objective historian, and for this person Bury presents the original alternative from obscurity to scholarship.
Though more recent literature on the subject exists, the general study by Bury still stands as a valuable and respectable Patrick source and I feel comfortable advising anyone with an interest in Irish or also Christianity's early history to give it a look.
Like always, Bury's book is a winner indeed.

Out of the millions of people who lived and died in the fifth century A.D., the names of only two are widely recognized throughout the English-speaking world today: Attila the Hun and St. Patrick. And Attila isn't commemorated by an annual day of remembrance that is observed from Temple Bar to the Golden Gate. This book, authored nearly a century ago by a distinguished British historian of Late Antiquity, seeks to recover the real Patrick from the legends and haze (perhaps induced from drinking too much green beer?) that have come to surround him.

Bury's expertise in the late Roman Empire (he is better known today for a series of the lectures, "The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians" and a two-volume history of the later Roman Empire from 395-565 A.D.) serves him well in this exploration of the world of St. Patrick. Patrick was born in western Britain in the late 4th century, probably around 388-390 A.D. At this time, Britain was still a distant province of the Roman Empire, but it was being rapidly being stripped of its defensive troops in order to meet the more central threat to the Empire presented by barbarian invaders like Alaric and the Visigoths. These grand historical currents impacted Patrick's life very directly at the time of his sixteenth birthday, around the years 404-05 A.D. Niall, High King of Ireland, took advantage of Britain's weakened defenses to launch a piratical raid up the Severn estuary. Patrick was captured and carried off into slavery as a prize of war.

For some six or seven years, Patrick was assigned to watch over the livestock of his new master in the wilds of sparsely populated western Connaught -- very likely, Bury thinks, on the prominent mountain and pilgrimage site that to this day is known as Croagh Patrick. His servitude lasted for six or seven years, during which time he developed the passionate Christian faith that determined the course of the rest of his life. Then he managed to escape and made his way to one of the ports along the country's southeastern coast, where he was taken aboard a ship bound for Gaul.

Curiously, after reaching Gaul, Patrick made no immediate effort to return home. He became a monk for a number of years at the monastery of Lerins, on an island off the southern coast of France. Later, he continued his religious training and was ordained as a deacon at Auxerre, also in Gaul. By the time he finally returned home for a visit, his parents were dead, and he seems to have found nothing in west England to hold him there. He returned to Auxerre, where he was selected for the mission that made his name immortal in 432 A.D.

Bury establishes that the traditional idea that Patrick brought Christianity to a land that previously knew nothing but idol-worship and the sorcery of Druid priests is very much wide of the mark. There already seem to have been extensive Christian communities in Ireland at the time, particularly in the southeastern part of the country. Christianity had enormous prestige throughout the European world at the time because of its adoption as the ruling faith of the Roman Empire; Patrick's contemporaries of course could not foresee that its western portions would be carved up among various Germanic invaders within a few decades. Patrick was not even the first emissary dispatched by the Roman church to Ireland; a predecessor had gone out a year or two earlier, but died quickly of disease. Bury concludes that Patrick's mission was as much concerned with seeing to the organization of the existing Irish churches as it was with pursuing conversion efforts in the northern and western reaches of the island.

Patrick, however, was haunted by thoughts of the children of the north whose lack of baptism condemned them to eternal damnation under well-established Christian doctrine (notably promulgated and defended by St. Augustine only a few years earlier). He embarked for the region of Dalriada on Ireland's northeast coast, in an area (Down) now part of Ulster. He began his missionary efforts there and carried them forward over the years that followed in a broad band stretching across the country from the valley of the Boyne in the east to Clew Bay in the west. In later years, there were also some efforts in Munster and Leinster.

Bury notes that Patrick faced opposition from the Druid priests and sometimes was in physical danger, but you are left with a sense that his missionary efforts were significantly less perilous than those of the first clerics who undertook the conversion of the Slavs and Balts east of the Elbe half a millenium later. One major king, although personally disinclined to the new religion, readily granted Patrick land upon which to build houses of worship. The lack of self-confidence that afflicted adherents of the traditional religion was most clearly delineated by the fate of Patrick's former master, a chieftain named Miliucc. Hearing that his former slave was coming in an effort to convert him to the new religion, and "seized by a strange alarm lest his former slave should by some irresistible spell constrain him to embrace the new religion against his will," he gathered all his possessions together in a funeral pyre and immolated himself. The sight of the resulting conflagration -- a horrifying result of his own good intentions -- greeted Patrick as he approached from the south, and must have seared his soul forever.

Patrick lived long enough to see his new converts murdered and kidnapped by Christian raiding parties from across the Irish Sea, and Bury suggests that his final years may have been troubled by disllusionment. This book is scholarly, thorough (there are 165 pages of appendices discussing sources and various controversies), and ultimately quite moving. My only objection is that Bury is too sober a historian to tell you where the legend about driving the snakes out of Ireland came from!

Don't take the star rating wrong - this is as good as any of the other books in this series, but this edition (Quiet Vision Publishing - paperback, printed in 2000) is the cheapest printing of a book I've ever seen. Only about 20 pages into it, pages started falling out of the back. The type is huge and goes all the way to the edge of the page so your thumbs are constantly in the way while you're trying to read, and there are typographical errors like using two hyphens instead of em dashes. I know they make an electronic version of this book. As part of my job I convert a lot of print-intended content to digital publishing formats, and that's what usually happens to em dashes during that process, so I almost wonder if they just printed out their digital version and bound it. It looks like it was printed on a laser printer (especially the terrible cover illustration which looks like it was drawn by a 12-year old), and the fonts look like they're just PC-standard 'Times'. There are also several footnotes, which in the original edition that I read years ago were placed at the bottom of the page they were referenced from. In this edition they're in the back of the book.

"Thuvia, Maid of Mars" is the 4th of 11 John Carter novels from the pen of Edgar Rice Burroughs. It first appeared in April 1916, as a three-part serial in the magazine "All Story Weekly." This is the first Carter novel that does not feature John Carter himself as the central character; he only makes a brief cameo appearance early on. Instead, the action mantle is taken up by Carthoris, Carter's son, but fortunately, Carter Junior turns out to be just as good a swashbuckler as the old man. In this installment, Princess Thuvia of Ptarth has been kidnapped by the spineless Prince Astok of Dusar, which abduction almost causes a world war on Barsoom (Mars). Young Carthoris, in his quest to free his beloved princess, runs across deserted cities, a forgotten kingdom, banths (10-legged Barsoomian lions), ethereal warriors, mucho swordplay, giant white apes, and on and on. As is usual for these books, the amount of action that Burroughs packs into a small compass is quite surprising. Whereas previous Carter books seem to read more like fantasy/fairy tales than science fiction, this installment veers even more to the fantastic, mainly in the use of those phantom warriors just mentioned. These bowmen are called up from the minds of the remaining members of the lost city of Lothar, and have no "real" concrete existence. However, their arrows can still kill. In this book we also get, for the first time, a nice, detailed look at life in Helium; what the people do, how they live and the like. We also receive a biological explanation of how Carthoris, who was 10 years old but a seeming adult in the previous books, got to be that way. The worldwide peace that apparently prevails at the end of book 3, "The Warlord of Mars," is shown in this volume to be not as widespread as was inferred, which makes for some nice tense situations. So this is a good, fast-moving, detailed entry in the series.
There are some minor problems of inconsistency and fuzzy writing, however, although not as prevalent as in previous entries. For example, in one scene, Carthoris is said to be fighting a force of a dozen Dusarians; three of these are killed, and so three are left. Huh? Carthoris seems to know exactly where to find water in the dead city of Aaanthor, despite the fact that he has never been there before. Wha? Vas Kor, one of Carthoris' chief enemies, fails to recognize him merely because Carthoris is dirty, tired and covered with blood; this is just a bit hard to swallow. Perhaps worst of all, the book ends extremely abruptly, just as all of Barsoom is about to be plunged into that world war. We never learn the fate of several of the main villains, nor do we see the end of hostilities as the realization of the true facts becomes known. This is a short book, and would not have suffered by the addition of such scenes to make it more satisfying. Still, this is a fun entry in the John Carter series, one that all lovers of fast-moving fantasy should enjoy.

More similar in its simplicity to a Princess of Mars than Gods/Warlord. John Carter's son engages in search for abducted Thuvia, while he remains the prime suspect in her abduction. Usual strange meetings and stranger neighborhoods, but this story is a little less frenentic than Gods/Warlord, and both Carthoris and Thuvia are solid characters.

With the high press this flower has received, another aspect to consider with St. John's Wort is the type of processing and extracting it has undergone. This is barely touched on in this book. For many this product has done the job in knocking down their depression, yet the consumer musy not order from just any herbal site. A supplier must be able to document that his/her product is one that really will be absorbed by the body and be carried to the brain. One on-line site where I personally have had both good service and accurate informaton and product representation is iHerb. They offer only the best products that have undergone sufficient testing. Check them out and good luck if St. John's Wort is what you're choosing.

Plenty of practical and useful information here and well documented with summaries of past research. I learned quite a bit about dosage, brands, and the most recent theories about how St. John's Wort works. This herb appears to work on three neurochemicals: dopamine, norephedrine, and serotonin. Prozac and other antidepressents don't work on dopamine. Many people with attention deficit disorder are low in dopamine as well as serotonin, so I found this interesting and have added some info to my website on that topic. There's also a website for free updates. I just checked it and there's a reprint of the LA Times article in which some manufacturer's of the herb were found skimping on the product, including Sundown. I liked the technical information; as a scientist I appreciate the opportunity to look at the data myself.

I wanted to know the correct dosages to try and what was safe when taking other medications. This book answered those questions for me. Highly reccomend for anyone suffering from clinical depression.