This is another great addition to your entheogen bookshelf, tracing the source for the underground eucharistic fountain that watered so many "mystic" schools.

On the matter of Alchemy, the authors make the statement that no one has ever made transmutation to gold. Perhaps they should review Jacques Sadoul's Alchemists and Gold for good references.

The reason they doubt this is because of their procrustean mindset, just as the Jungians insist on viewing all alchemical writings as being psychological only; these authors fall into the common mistake, imho, of seeing in alchemy a veil for initiatic cults. I have Clark Heinrich's good book, Stange Fruit, and it is very spotty on alchemy. The one excellent illustration he shows from Splendor Solis, of the rebis (hermaphrodite) holding what seems clearly to be Amanita, must be counterpoised against all the other illustrations in the same work, of such classical themes as the Peacock. All of these other pictures show stages of the alchemical process ina glass flask. It is amazing how little he has found considering the thousands of alchemical works,

Take a universally admired alchemical writer such as Eireneus Philalethes. His works have page after page of detailed instructions for a physical laboratory process, and virtually nothing that can be directly construed to relate to entheogens. It is so easy for the entheogen crowd to gloss over the vast majority of alchemical works, which don't support their position at all, unless they contort the books into obscure mystical wanderings. And it makes no sense for the alchemists to heap so much misleading dung on top of a grain of "secret teaching" about entheogens. Why would some authors write book after book, virtually untouching the subject of plant teachers? A mere sentence here or there does not reveal that alchemy is solely about an underground eucharistic stream carried forward.

What is generally missed is that an important shift took place 2500 years ago, with the precession of the Age; the rational mind of the race began to develop, with analytical mind suppressing the subconscious group mind that the race had lived in tribally before. This eventually led to the rise of technology. Prior to this we don't find any typical alchemical writings. The old shamans had no skills with distillation apparatus, since they didn't exist. Their herbal simples were decoctions, compounds, ointments.

The unique thing that happened is that individuals,who were still initiates into the Axis Mundi world view of Nature (whether thru natural talent,or through entheogens), were able to analyse what they saw in their visions, and now apply technology. They realized they were one with Nature, but they also saw its principles and how the essential radiance (polar opposites) could be separated out and developed, by pitting them against each other within the confines of a glass egg. Thus the Philosophers' Stone is the ultimate entheogen perhaps, for man is Nature knowing Itself, and the alchemical work is therefore Nature developing Itself thru Art into a higher manifestation. Only the vision was possible before in the archaic world.

As we cross the threshold into the twenty-first century, we always hope that every new theory be considered on its own merits and not met by a wall of prejudices constructed from previous comparisons. This is the spirit we will need to show when reading this work of investigation whose contents must leave the reader anything but indifferent. With The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist, Carl A.P. Ruck, Blaise Daniel Staples and Clark Heinrich have investigated the great myth of human civilization; using the tools of comparative analysis, much as a team of archaeologists would excavate the remains of a buried site, they have exposed a hidden truth, mending step by step, argument by argument the scaffolding of what is probably one of the most ancient archetypes of humanity: the knowledge, use and worship of the sacred mushroom: Amanita muscaria, searching its presence in the genesis and development of diverse myths, both Greek and Judeochristian, and establishing a chain of relationships between them.

Whoever approaches these pages must accept the challenge of drinking new wine from an old wineskin, and then he will not only discover a novel viewpoint on archaic themes, but also a whole new method of interpretation, fruitful in its essence and fruitful in its form. It may be that the reader will not be able to divest himself of the inevitable prejudices in which we have all been indoctrinated and will succumb to the temptation to reject the proposals and evidence presented here before even examining it, but this would be an inexcusable error: the authors have worked in accordance with the strictest standards of scholarship and offer in support of their re-examination of their subject an impressive array of data from every source available and innumerable textual citations from the primary material. This documentation, presented as footnotes on the page in conjunction with their case, allows the reader to refer to the original expression of particular points while simultaneously considering the new interpretations being given. Thus, the reader himself is given the capability of judging as he progresses through the argument the true meaning of the materia prima, according to his own particular world view.

The Apples of Apollo also confirms that the character of early Christianity as a mystery religion cannot be understood as being merely marginal to the other mystery religions of the ancient world. Without any question of a doubt, the most controversial chapter of The Apples of Apollo is Chapter Five, Jesus, the Drug Man, in essence the pivotal point of the entire work. In this chapter the reader will be confronted with a Christ linked to the use of entheogens, a Christ who is the dispenser of "enlightenment" through the mushroom; this may sound amazing, but the institution of the eucharist now consists literally in the ingestion of a substance that alters consciousness, albeit a weak one -- wine. But more disturbing than the inefficacy of the wine as a key to divine revelation, is that the Church finds the idea of eating God preferible to eating the plant of God, which is, by definition, also that very same God, like the bush which burned in the Sinai with an incombustible fire before Moses. The secret of those flames is but one of many revealed within these pages.

So let's escape from prejudice. Let's abandon the fear of reconsidering our dogmas from a new perspective. Let us feel once again the fascination of the unknown, recover the distinctly human aspiration for the quest, even at the risk of the pain it might cause us. Let us dare . . . Let's open the pages of The Apples of Apollo, journey through them, discover their proposals and who knows: it could be that, after all, the truth lies therein.

José Alfredo González Celdrán

I used this book to write a discussion of Organisational management - I felt the authors were very clear in their objectives and that it was a great book for understanding exactly what went on - an interesting and detailed account.

This was a great read, and a wonderful insight into Asia's greed. A gritty account.

Steve Coates, Hong Kong.

When I read the cover of this book and I saw that it might be a work of Fiction, I was a little skeptical because I bought this book in order to further my view of the battle of Stalingrad. After reading the whole thing, even though some of things stated were true some were not. I get that view after reading three other books on Stanlingrad, specially Anthony Beevor's book. Therefore, I think this book has to be categorized as Fiction, as more of a novel than an actual written account.

The book, as a novel, is not bad. It gives you a view into the lives of some officers of the encircled German Army after Operation Uranus by the Russians. The officers, although enporvished by the conditions, still seem to live a better life than the average German Soldier. They find food, sleep well and live in confortable bunkers. Of course things turn for the worst and everyone is sent into concentration camps in the end. It is a very interesting view, although some may be fiction, into the officer Coprs of the Army.

This book gives great examples that not every one was with the Nazis. It gives you compassion for some of the soldiers. There are a couple of instances where the writer actually makes you want to say to just leave them alone and let them go home! It is pretty well written and I think it should be made into a movie. It does not glorify the German thinking of that time but gives you a side in which tells you: Not all these German guys were evil!

The most remarkable aspect of this excellent story is not so much the ferocious combat or unspeakable human suffering, although there is plenty of both, but how subtle the transition 6th Army makes from conquering army to condemned mob. The failure of Germany's allies to hold the flanks of the 6th Army is glaringly illustrated. One cannot help but feel sympathy for the surrounded German soldiers, not so much for the beating they take from the Red Army but for the criminal manner in which they are so uselessly sacrificed by Hitler. To sacrifice a company, battalion, or even a division to advance a nation's strategic plan is one thing, but to throw away an entire army of 250,000 of your best men is quite another. We Americans like to believe D-Day was the turning point of the war, but, the truth is, without the German defeat at Stalingrad, there might never have been a D-Day. 'Forsaken Army' is hands down the best book ever written about the Battle of Stalingrad.

This is not Heinrich Boll's best book, but it is certainly well worth reading. The story centers around a court case, in which a man and his father are being tried for burning an army jeep. The case is kept very low-profile, and the accuseds are not concerned at all by the charges, which seem suspiciously minor. Boll's finely drawn characters and dialogue make the story eminently palatable, as he asks the reader subtle questions about art and its place in the state.

An extremely funny book, it has a quiet, wry sense of humor. But, like all good satires, there is an underlying seriousness. In this book, the underlying themes deal with the relationship between the state and the individual.

As always, Boll's characters are powerfully human and fully realized, and the events are told with a touch that remains light without trivializing.

I am a Japanese staying in the United States. I sought some information about Japan to introduce it to Americans. I found this book in the public library in my town. It was just one in the kids' corner that I could chose because rests of them are outdated or extremely curious for me. I think this has good photos. You can enjoy it not only kids but also adults.

But keep it mind that it is very difficult to explain one nation even if you know her very well. Can you explain the United States in one book? The author is a veteran writer. She wrote well in this book. But I think she doesn't know well in Japan and no native person check the contents of the book. If the writer would write something about one nation, readers tended to accept it. The writer wanted to inform special features in the nation, but it might truly be too special to the nation.

In this book I am sorry to say that I found many unsuitable expressions. I hope this book will be revised in the near future. I show two mistakes. One is a photo of the Ninja. The photo shows a fine armor. The Ninja was a kind of spy who did underground work, never wore armor. Some Ninja moves by Sho Kosugi are interesting for you, but he made the features of Ninja by his way. His Ninja was not correct historically. The second was an Emperor Hirohito's photo at the end of the book. It was a photo of Ryutaro Hashimoto, a prime minister in Japan at that time. I can laugh it only a mistake but it was quite a big mistake for conservative Japanese. I found more than 10 unsuitable expressions only I read half. But I will still recommend this book because it is better than the others now.

I just recently became intrested in Japan, and this was the first book I found. This was incredibly informative, covering the geography to current culture. A very good start, or as a reference.

Boell's ability to describe very different character's points of view is excellent. This is a very good book for anyone who is interested in German anti-war literature.

Like Graves, Sassoon and Owen in the First World War, Heinrich Böll brought a mix of apathy and disgust to his writings about World War II as well as a literary sensibility that condemned him to this genre. Böll, along with Günter Grass, author of The Tin Drum, and Arno Schmidt, is considered one of the most influential German writers of the postwar period.

The Mad Dog represents the third extraction from material left by Böll at his death in 1985 and contains nine previously unpublished stories and a novel fragment, all written between 1936 and 1950. I think they represent the best introduction to Böll available. They also anticipate his best work, the novels, Billiards at Half-Past Nine and The Clown. The Mad Dog will probably have the most appeal to readers who are already familiar with these great novels and who want to listen to the source of Böll's recurring themes.

Youth on Fire represents the earliest work contained in this book and is a poignantly clumsy parable of Heinrich, a sixteen year old boy of Wetherian turn of mind. When Heinrich meets a woman, however, his life takes a very different course. In a demi-parable uttered by one of the characters there is a flash of the mature Böll's bitter humor.

The Fugitive and Trapped in Paris, composed ten years later, are the antithesis of Youth on Fire. These two stories are of a desperate and solitary soldier, in the former, an escaped POW or a deserter and in the latter a German soldier cut off from his unit during secret battles. In these stories, the iconic and discursive idealism of Youth on Fire is replaced by the naturalistic German Expressionism that became Böll's signature in the years immediately following the war and which reached its peak in one of his most famous stories, Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We.

The Fugitive is very close to the model of Böll's postwar work and consists of a dramatic narrative of claustrophobia and fear that concludes abruptly and violently.

The Rendezvous contains one of Böll's recurring themes: the difficulty of love. Böll was a writer whose sense of the absurdity of Eros was as highly developed as was his sense of the absurdity of Thanatos. Although many of his stories, such as the beautiful My Pal With the Long Hair, celebrate the triumph of love, most of them seem to center on love's impossibilities instead. Centering on a turbulent and mysterious affair, The Rendezvous contains an implicit riddle, much like Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants.

The Tribe of Esau is an unusual early experiment in the use of a female character's perspective and The Dead No Longer Obey, according to the translator's notes, reworks a passage from the draft of a play entitled As the Law Demanded. This story is yet another soldier parable with a characteristic poetic and rhetorical twist.

The Tale of Berkovo Bridge and the novel fragment, Paradise Lost stand out as the work of the mature Böll and neither is really heretofore unpublished material. The former contains the reflections of a German military engineer who rebuilds a Russian bridge to facilitate the retreat of 1943 and offers a piece of absurdity as an effective metaphor for the regimented chaos of war. The Tale of Berkovo Bridge anticipates Böll's greatest novel, Billiards at Half-Past Nine and also contains a manipulation of emblem that some of Böll's readers have found objectionably schematic.

The text of Paradise Lost was, in part, incorporated into Der Engel schwieg and Böll also published two extractions of it as Night of Love and The Gutter. As it is published in this collection, Paradise Lost is a returning-soldier story that dwells on yet another of Böll's recurring themes: the seemingly random and poignant stasis of solitary objects amid decay. Returning to the home of his lover after seven years' absence in the war, the narrator notices a section of a rain gutter hanging down just had it had prior to his leaving.

The most palpable current in all of Böll's writing, however, is sorrow. It is abundantly present in this collection and it seems to stand as an apposite elegy for the twentieth century. This collection is a wonderful introduction to the writings of one of this century's most talented German writers.

This book addresses the topic of innovation and transcends into the philosophical with some profound input from business leaders, artists, and other thinkers. "Passion for Ideas" reaches beyond innovation by considering what new is, how innovation can be created and how innovation will affect our future. In one chapter for example, "Increase and Arrival," Professor Gerhard Schultz from the University of Bamberg argues that the era of innovation is coming to an end.

Other chapters refer to business innovation, with thoughts on how companies can sustain creativity. Some of these ideas, although business related, and sometimes German-centric (the book was translated from German) reveal great insight into what new is and what can be done to develop new ideas. For example, an organization has the potential for more creativity by allowing more disorder in the chapter "The Virtues of Corporate Disorder."

Some of the chapters in this book I want to read again and others I found uninteresting or too abstract. Overall, I thought the authors have pulled together a compelling collection of ideas.

Collaboratively edited by Heinrich V. Pierer (President and CEO of Kraftwerk Union AG) and Bolko V. Oetinger (Senior Vice President, The Boston Consulting Group), A Passion For Ideas: How Innovators Create The New And Shape Our World is an impressive and superbly presented anthology of interviews and commentaries focusing on the concept of how new ideas are actually generated. A wide range of twenty-seven notable thinkers informatively present their carefully articulated thoughts on the creative process and what it really means. Highly recommended reading for students and non-specialist general readers with an interest in technological innovation and the creative process, A Passion For Ideas is a fascinating, seminal volume, offering a insightful glimpse into the struggling recesses of the psyche.

Wolfflin contrasts the styles of the High Renaissance and the Baroque by setting up them up as a system of oppositions. He compares the two time periods according to five sets of categories. He claims that this is what art history should do. In other words, style and not meaning is the criteria according to which art history should be written. A lot is to be learned from this book. However, there are a lot of limitations to Wolfflin's approach. Consequently, it should be read critically or "against the grain" in order to expose some of Wolfflin's biases. Its also a very difficult read. But, its worth it if you get through it.

There is really no way to rate this book. It would be like rating Freud or Marx. Wolfflin is one of the cornerstones of art history. This is essential reading for any student of the subject. Although one might see limitations in his theory today, his ideas were revolutionary when first proposed. His theory goes beyond the famous 5 categories to include views on cycles in history and insights on the artist's control of his practice. Related readings are Reigl and Panofsky.

Of all the books I've read on Tibet (about 6), this stands out as the most personal account. Thubten Jigme Norbu, eldest brother of the Dalai Lama tells in tender detail about his childhood as the son of Tibetan peasants, his discovery as an incarnate lama, and his life in the Buddhist monasteries. It's interesting to read about this earlier perspective of the Dalai Lama's family members. Thubten Jigme Norbu learned of his brother's discovery as the Dalai Lama, and of his flight from Tibet to India from a distance. He mentions that because of the great differences in age, and the distance between their home and the monasteries where they were installed, the first time he and all his brothers ever sat down to dinner together was after the Chinese occupation. I really enjoyed reading about the little details of his early life, and the great amount of emotion in his story.

What came across in this story of Tibetan life before and after the Chinese occupation, is the sweet, gentle, and loving nature of the two authors. This is the story of a tragedy, but is not depressing. I've been recommending this book to friends because it is very uplifting and encouraging, besides being very readable. The Tibetans really had something in their culture that was of value, a pervading spirituality that was cheerful and peaceful. And yet, they didn't feel any need to convert others or force their religion on anyone. The authors of "Tibet is My Country" don't address the corruption in the Tibetan government or other problems, but those issues are realistically addressed by the Dalai Lama himself in "Freedom in Exile." This is a light charming nostalgic look at a lost way of life.

I checked this book out for a young reader in my life - she tried it (about 30 pages), said "ugh," and handed it to me. We're both fans of mermaids and fairy tales and selkies and so on... so I gave it a shot. (I'm 28).

This book was in the young adult section at the library... and the whole time I was reading it I felt like Mary Pope Osbourne was dying to write a mermaid bodice ripper, but didn't want to upset her magic treehouse fans. The book had the elements of a fairy tale with the feel of a harlequin romance thrown in. (She only alludes to sex, but it feels forced or restrained - just not right).

I didn't give a poop what happened to the lord and his lady by the end... it was boring and silly, and I am astonished it has received so many good reviews here on amazon. I'd love to read the original story it's based on (and plan to). I have a feeling there might have been a lot more to work with that Osborne didn't bother to bring to the page.

Go read Hans Christian Anderson or a book on sea-lore instead.

The horrible paperback cover says enough in itself. The hardback (which I read, was much spookier looking).

It's a spooky story that captures the essence of a German Fairy Tale. The book is based on a mystery that surrounds a beautiful maiden named Undine. It's told from the perspective of the main hero, Lord Huldbrand.Over-all, the story is fast-pased. I was rather sad that it wasn't any longer. If you love sea stories and fairy tale-based fantisy, this is the book for you! Great read for young and old adults!

Isn't it great when a book really grabs you and knocks you off your feet? I was so sorry to come to the end. A hauntingly beautiful fairy tale for older readers. The love of Lord Huldbrand (spelling!) for Undine is powerful to begin with and it is fascinating to watch this love turn to suspicion to fear and even to loathing. The mysterious, mystical elements of the book are particularly well written. It's spooky without being scary. I am a Storyteller who loves folklore, mythology, and fairy tales. I am now searching Amazon.com for similar books. (Anyone out there have any suggestions?) This is just a very powerful work that is extremely well written. I'm not doing as good a job as I'd hoped in praising it (these reviews are tough to write, which makes me appreciate a well-written book even more!) so buy a copy for yourself and enjoy, I know you will.