Walt Kallestad uses this book to present a revolutionary blueprint for a different type of church: a church for others. The author points out a problem of which most churchgoers are not even aware. While Jesus commanded his disiples (and us) to "Go into all the world" modern Christians are more interested in church programs for ourselves. Kallestad details the transformation of Community Church of Joy from a church for the members to a church for others. But he doesn't merely give us the history of the church. Each chapter is filled with practical teaching and action steps that can be followed to transform your church into a vibrant community that considers the needs of those outside the building.

I think every pastor would be encouraged and challenged by this wonderful book. One final point: Kallestad's church had 200 attending on a normal Sunday when Walt took over. Now it has 12,000!

The Taschen Posterbooks are of excellent quality. The six Van Gogh's given us here, for a very low price, are a nicely representative group. Primarily the most impressive factor is the accuracy with which the colors are reproduced. Having seen many in person, I am very critical of prints with poor to pathetic truth in color. We like them to the point of hanging all 6 in our home. The images are of the cafe at Arles-night, lane with cypresses, one of the sunflowers, one self-portrait, the bridge at Langlois and of course, the bedroom at Arles.

Regardless the amount of money you have to spend, definitely buy this little jewel as an adjunct. Or if you are tightly budgeted, what a buy!

I think that the book is a real treasure. With lots of nice action shoots.If you are in to the history of the Waffen SS this book should be in you bookshelf.

Thank you Dr. Kallestad!!!!!! I have listened to your tape many times over for waking up my own dreams. After listening to it for the fifth (or more times) I've decided to form a "Dream Team Support Group" in my area. I'm sure there are many more like me--who can (and will) find the time to not only dare to dream, but dare to GET GOING.

Dr. Kallestad, with your permission (if you happend to read my review) I would like to use excerpts from your tape to create an outline for our support group. Thx a million.

God Bless You & Yours.

The annual Walthers catalog is a must have book for those interested in HO scale model railroading because it showcases many products from over 100 manufacturers. Many items are illustrated with full color photos and the catalog is adorned with photos of model railroad layouts. For those who are new to the hobby, it demonstrates what's available and what's possible. For those who have been in the hobby for some time, it shows off what's new.

Richard Currey has a unique writing style that reads like poetry, while keeping the element of story telling intact. His stories of West Virginia living are realistic, ugly, and beautiful.

Wanting to be as well informed as possible when it came to raising my kids, I read just about every child-care book out there. I found this book to be the most comprehensive, easy to understand and reasonable. She gives the most extensive information concerning common(and not so common)childhood illnesses AND how to deal with them, and her views on child psychology are right on the mark. As with any author on this subject, you may not agree with EVERYTHING she says, but at least she provides explanations with possible solutions for most problems you'll encounter with children. I find myself referring to this book almost everytime I need information concerning my kids.

Her sense of humor is a real boon, and this is the book I give to anyone I know having a child. I saw she was criticized for the "illustrations" and lack of color, but if you need to be entertained and/or dazzled while reading a book of this nature maybe the welfare of your kids isn't your top priority!

This book has been our bible to child care. It helps you to raise empathetic, bright, wonderful children, while also telling you everything you need to know about colic, mumps, head lice and ear infections. I highly recommend this book for fathers, as I know it has made my husband a more patient, empathetic and enthusiastic parent. It covers every single thing you need to know from head to toe, heart to soul. It covers every stage of infancy to kindergarten, letting you know what to expect, physically and intellectually at each stage. When you are initially sent home with your infant, there are so many changes in the first weeks, it's nice to have a guidebook to know what is normal, what should be cause for concern, and how to navigate through all of it.

I found the book to be very well-written, and humorous whenever possible. Anyone with young children can appreciate the need to keep a sense of humour about the trials you will endure as a parent. I can't say enough about this book. I have bought it for every expectant parent I've known. I would love to thank the author for all the help her book has been to us.

Buy this book for yourself and then buy it for every baby shower you ever attend. I LOVE "The Portable Pediatrician". Dr. Nathansan does a "portrait of an age" at the beginning of each chapter where she profiles a fictional, typical child of that age. It's usually pretty funny and very enlightening. Then she goes on to describe what is going on developmentally for that age and psychologically, why these kids do what they do. It really helps a lot! I feel like knowing why your child is doing something is the first step in dealing with it.

Not only that, she describes every childhood illness or complaint in detail...it's like having your own private pediatrician on call 24/7.

This is perhaps the best novella ever written; everyone should read it. Dostoyevsky's writing is evocative and powerful, both in that it evokes feelings and in that these feelings are feelings that you will always find yourself sharing. You will shudder at the degree to which you resemble the petty, unhappy narrator of this little book--at the degree to which you are tortured by the everpresent gaze of popular culture and of yourself, and the degree to which to find that spite and irrationality pervade your everyday modes of thought.

What makes Dostoyevsky unique among 19th-century authors is his connection to philosophical debates; his critique of the Enlightenment is perhaps one of the most powerful expressions of what contemporary thinkers refer to as "the crisis of modernity."

But unlike the vast body of existentialist, marxist, and post-structuralist writing that has proliferated during this century, Notes from Underground's critique wields intense emotional power. Against the background of humanistic faith in progress and reason, the narrator finds himself mired in his own spite and squalidity, and in his own self-hatred he comes to view all humanity cynically.

Dostoyevsky's critique of the Enlightenment is devastating. The narrator stares at the statement "2+2=4" and then rejects it, questioning whether it really matters anyway. For Dostoyevsky, like Foucault, power is a productive relation--power always produces resistance. As such, all utopian schemas of rationalization are bound to carry the seeds of their own defeat. Humans, Dostoyevsky tells us, will always find new ways to express their stupidity and irrationality.

Central to this book is Dostoyevsky's explosion of the public/private dichotomy. The progress of Enlightenment humanism (represented by a reference to Kant's notion of 'the lofty and the beautiful') situates the individual as a cog in a rational social machinery, but this rationalization totally fails to extend into the private sphere--the Underground. The utter squalidity of the narrator's private life is horrifying because the reader always feels that she can relate to the narrator's tortured feelings. Here lies the disturbing power of Dostoyevsky's work.

On the other hand, from a philosophical point of view, Dostoyevsky's focus on the private sphere becomes a source of optimism. Dostoyevsky's politicization of the private opens up new spaces for political agonivity: the narrator uses the Underground as a space of spiteful critique, but the Underground can also enable personal emancipation from the contingent roles coerced by the technical imperatives of rationalized society.

When I read this book for the first time I read it in high school the first section was gibberish to me and in the second part I learned that dostoevsky's characters are mean to prostitutes.

The second, more carefull and guided tour through this book that I had through a philosophy class was much more enlightening - understanding the first section gives the reader a lot more insight to the underground man's motivations and actions in the second section.
To summarize the godforsakenly long paper that I had to write on this book, The underground man sees any limitations or rules as direct affronts to his freedom. He sees determinism, or the idea that all of our actions have prior causes, as depressing and that actions that are predetermined are necessarily unfree. Even Reason is a straightjacket, for a man who acts in all situations according to the dictates of Reason is a slave to the limitations of Reason nonetheless. The only way the Underground Man sees freedom as possible is by acting agaist one's own best wishes, or doing stupid things that are harmfull to oneself, just because one can and to express one's freedom. Either that, or acting in a purely spontaneous fashion. Of course, the Underground Man's days in the dusty cellar have addled his existential brain, because acting against one's own best wishes in the name of freedom is still acting for a cause, only one puts freedom this time as the highest of priorities. That and acting spontaneously for no reason whatsoever can't really be considered acting freely, because one has no personal control over said actions.
Well, that's still rather muddled, but hopefully slightly more palatable than our russian literary leftist's words.

Quick read? I finished Crime and Punishment and thought I'd zip through Notes like a snack before going on to the Brothers Karamozov, afterall, it's barely over 100 pages. Quick read? Think again.

Imagine being locked in a very small room with a verbose, insane, brilliant, jaded, before-his-times, clerk-come-philosopher....with a wicked sense of humor, and a toothache that's lasted a month. Pleasant company....are you searching for the door yet?

For the first hour, he's going to rant about his philosophy of revenge, the pointlessness of his life, his superiority, his failure, oh yeah, and his tooth. FOr the second half of the book, he's going to tell you a tale, with the title "Apropos of the Wet Snow". Because of course, there's wet snow outside on the ground.

I will leave you with this encouragement. If you can get through this book, you will appreciate Doestoevsky more, understand Crime and Punishment better, and probably enjoy a good laugh more than once.

Notes from the Underground is not light reading, but it is well worth the effort. And the translation by Pevear, including the translators notes at the back, is excellent.

I really wanted to love this book. I enjoyed reading Goethe's Italian Journey and I've read so many flattering things about Young Werther that I've looked forward for some time to the experience of finally reading it. Unfortunately, it just didn't grab me.

The positives include Goethe's poetic descriptions of nature and the powerful imagery they evoke and the frequently beautiful language with which Werther depicted his obsession with Lotte.

The primary problems I had with the work were the repetitiveness of Werther's self-pitying missives and a certain incredulity I could not shake relative to the foundations of his compulsion. In the final analysis, a persistent feeling that Werther was silly and unjustified in his fixation and self-indulgent in wallowing in his misery dulled the impact of his fate on my senses substantially.

I am hoping for better things from Faust...

There is no doubt about the literary poignancy of this book, or for that matter the masterful mind of its author. But it must be said that the undeniably strong sorrows of young Werther came from an all-consuming love of himself-not from love of another. Or rather he seemed in love with the idea of having someone to consume his idle days and, what he imagined, his large and thoughtful mind. His precipice, from which he condescended to view his every move, thought and encounter, was lofty indeed.

The pastoral atmosphere of the book is what captivated this reader. It's a pity Werther couldn't heed Albert and Lotte's sound advice about retuning his strong emotions...or at least spend more time under Linden trees with his Homer (this would have been my suggestion to him). Perhaps it was the poetry of the equally love-torn Ossian, which came to replace his classic text, that helped spur on his emotional demise. Whatever the case, it was painful to read of his self-indulgent romance with his ideas of love and devotion. He was kidding himself in the grandest and noblest fashion imaginable.

Please don't think me a heartless soul, or someone who couldn't possible understand such an intense love; I just didn't see it that way. However much frustration I felt at Werther's extreme pathos, I remained in awe of the beauty of Goethe's emotive and descriptive writing. Am I contradicting myself here...with talk of emotion? You be the judge.

OK, young fool falls in love with married girl. Becomes friend of the couple. Husband starts to get annoyed. Hero declares his love and then commits suicide. You can read that in the paper once in a while. So, why is this a great novel and a landmark of Romantic literature? Because it has a lot to make us think. A famous fact related to this book is that, short after it was published, a series of suicides took place in Europe, mostly by young guys in the same situation as Werther. That should set clear the influence and strenght of the novel. It is extremely well written; the scenery is gorgeous -rural, upper class Germany in the Eighteenth century. The book is written as a secret diary addressed to a trusted friend, and to any readers, young or old, it will strike a chord in their hearts. Tell me, who is there that never experienced dreams of punishing that insensible beloved from school by committing suicide and then have her cry and repent at the funeral? But most of us are still here, with her or, most likely, with someone else or alone. We survived love's infatuation; Werther did not, and he is now a prototype of unlimited love (or lack of maturity, depending on your point of view). I prefer to see it as a great story written, at an early stage, by one of the greatest geniuses of all time. "Werther"

Liza Dalby is not only an anthropologist but a sensitive writer who was able to reconstruct the life of 11th c. Japan with refined precision and delicious details. Add that to the sensitive profile of the writer of the world's first novel, a woman nonetheless, and you have the makings of a terrific story. This piece of historical fiction is filled with informative data about Japanese culture in the Heian period, about Japanese traditions in poetry, about Chinese influences in Japanese culture and daily customs, tasks and foods of the era. All done with a sensitive precision of language and an engaging story line.

Ms. Dalby kept herself as close as possible to the facts known about the author of The Tale of Genji. In doing so, she may have compromised the development of her plot and characters surrounding Lady Murasaki. For this, only, I have removed one star, otherwise, this is a very fine novel, which I can recommend without hesitation to many friends.

Dalby's "Tale of Murasaki" is a masterfully written book about Murasaki, a young Japanese woman who is credited with writing perhaps the greatest Japanese epic of all time.

Dalby's Murasaki is a wonderful, sensitive woman who is more than meets the eye. She is an intelligent character who is believable and acutely historical.

I discovered Dalby while traveling in England and Scotland. The depth and detail of this book couldn't have been written by a more apt author. Dalby is a known athropologist who is the only Westerner became a part of the the Japanese geisha society. Her extensive historical and cultural research in Japan lends itself to creating a fluid and comprehensive novel with realistic characters and events.

Her style may be occasionally technical or academic and her plot sometimes lags, but the detail, imagery, and style of the story more than compensate for these momentary lapses in her writing.

I highly recommend this novel. If you are looking for a non-fiction book on Japanese culture and society, I recommend "Geisha" by Ms. Dalby, which I consider her best book to date.

"The Tale of Murasaki" is an amazing book, it is intriguing, spell-binding and contains an athmosphere of 11th Century Japan so believable that you will find yourself completely absorbed by it. Liza Crihfield Dalby has managed to weave in Murasaki's poetry with the story in the most beautiful way, and make it all make sense. Murasaki comes to life in this diary style book, and by the time you reach the end of it, it feels as if you know her [Murasaki] personally. The book contains so much "cultural knowledge", that it gives you an insight to 11th Century Japanese religious beliefs and ceremonies, social structure, imperial court life, clothing, rural as well as urban life, social life... If you liked Geisha, by the same author, or The Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, this is the book for you. But I also recommend this book to anyone with an interest for Japanese culture, history and/or poetry. This book is pure beauty.