This book is extraordinary. It outlines in simple, easy-to-follow, compelling language a program for conquering chronic migraines. After years of being told I had stress headaches or being treated inappropriately for migraines with a variety of medications, I was introduced to a treatment regimen that really works. It requires discipline, but that's easy once you understand the mechanism of migraine. The simple dietary modifications outlined in this book and the systematic process for implementing them have literally changed my life. I've gone from being controlled by headaches to having control of them. I've whole-heartedly recommended this book to a number of people -- I'm surprised how many people suffer from migraines. I only hope they'll read it and follow Dr. Buchholz's advice.

I spent a solid year of sheer hell. This included five hospitalizations, including two complete heart blocks, and insertion of a permanent pacemaker, months of recovery and a six-month disability period off of work. All of it was directly due to migraines or the (mis)treatment I received for them.

Heal Your Headache provided me with the first believable explanation of my condition and how all of the symptoms related, and most importantly what I could do about it. By following the three step process in the book I've started getting my headaches under control, and minimizing all of the other symptoms: balance problems, confusion, tremors, nausea, light and sound sensitivity...

Dr. Buchholz provides enough examples to make any headache sufferer recognize himself or herself. And he lays out a complete plan of action that should help anyone. It's not particularly easy, especially for me to cut out ALL of the food triggers, but I've reduced my need for painkillers, and am seeing longer and longer periods headache free.

I recommend this book for anyone who suffers from frequent headaches, regardless of whether they consider them to be migraines.

Ten years ago, I had the opportunity to be Dr. Buchholz's patient while living in the NE. We worked together until finding that Verapamil was the best solution for avoiding migraine. I was able to discontinue the Verapamil for the past five years until moving to Calgary, Alberta Canada (the migraine capital of the world!)for a two year job assignment. Dr. Buchholz graciously spoke with me "long distance" and said "I have finished the book and it is available...please read it and we can talk again." The triggers have multiplied since moving here (Chinook winds-falling barometric pressure) and it is great to have the book as a resource for reclaiming a headache free environment. I am amazed at the many people who suffer from these headaches and are so excited to have the recommendation of Dr. Buchholz's book. My GP photocopied the front of the book and is pleased to have the resource for his patients, as well. The rebound medications (quick-fixes) were such a temptation but the clear, easy-reading solutions in the book allow me to take control. It's great to talk to Dr. Buchholz, but even better to have Heal Your Headache.

Stephen Hawking is one of if not the most prominent physicist on the planet today, and works like A Brief History of Time make it easy to see why. Hawking knows just about everything about modern physics, hence the lofty title. From time travel to black holes to general relativity, quantum mechanics and even string theory, he never fails to captivate and galvanize.

The strongest sections in the book are probably those on black holes and time travel, so if you are interested in either of those areas, you would be doing yourself a favor by buying it. The whole book is highly stimulating, though, so even just a casual interest in science would be well-fed by any chapter. In fact, for those of you who are only mildly involved with or intrigued by modern scientific theories, A Brief History of Time just might push you over the edge and make a fanatic out of you.

With the addition of literally dozens of illustrations per chapter, Hawking has made his book extremely readable and colorful, both comprehensive and comprehendable. Yet there are some topics covered inside that are simply too complicated for many people to understand. How black holes can emit radiation even though nothing can escape their surfaces is discussed, for example. (The answer: a particle and its antimatter counterpart can, according to quantum physics, spontaneously emerge out of nothingness very near to the black hole's event horizon--anywhere else they would collide and erupt into pure energy, but near the event horizon one is sucked into the black hole and the other escapes. In this sense black holes are like "matter factories", causing new matter to enter the universe out of nowhere. Pretty weird and confusing stuff.)

The only other quibble I have with this book is that it is too short! That just attests to the quality of the book, though. It was a very worthwhile read for me; it will be for you, too.

Stephen Hawking's, who is considered by many to be the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Albert Eistein, presents the material from his bestselling work "A Brief History of Time" in a format that non-brilliant people can easily comprehend. Hawking's says that just flipping through the book and looking at the pictures will help anyone to grasp many of the fundamental concepts of physics. This is a testament to the wonderful illustrations and diagrams throughout the book that truly help the reader understand the principles outlined. But I would strongly recommend that everyone read this book in its entirety, as it is an important work that will most likely influence one's thinking about the universe. The beginning of the book is spent outlining the ideas and people that have brought the science theories to where they are today. Material includes information on the theories of gravity, mechanics, relativity. Next, Hawking spends time discussing black holes and the big bang theory. I found both of these chapters fascinating and very easy to understand. The chapter about the big bang, entitled "The Origin and Fate of the Universe," really supported my belief that God created the universe, i.e. "In the beginning..." From the start, Hawking explains that all of science is merely theory and cannot be proven. This has as of late been my problem with science; how do we actually know anything that happened in the past when we can't and never will be able to observe it? Towards the end of the book I found Hawking's "theories" farfetched and unbelievable, although they were interesting. The information on wormholes and time travel seemed absurd to me -- how can time travel be possible when it is impossible to travel at speeds faster than light? Wormholes are not a reasonable explanation. Hawking's suggestion of a ten-dimensional world also went a little beyond science. In any event, these chapters did not take away from the book.
An interesting added feature of the book outlines the personal lives of three great scientists -- Einstein, Galileo, and Newton. I found this short section very insightful.
Throughout, Hawking weaves the concept of the quest for the "unification of physics," or combining the theory of relativity with the theory of quantum mechanics. Hawking's closing words in my opinion imply how futile our attempts to fully understand the world we live in are. "If we find the answer to [the unification of physics,] it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we would know the mind of God." Perhaps this is the strongest message Hawking delivers, and ironically it has nothing to do with science, rather the vast greatness of God.

Stephen Hawking is an established scientific genius, but this book establishes him as a brilliant writer - an extremely rare, yet valuable combination. A point he brings to attention is that it had been possible for the philosophers of ancient times to master practically all the knowledge of academia. Today, however, only a handful of extremely specialized scientists understand the latest ideas in their fields. While men of ancient times could easily understand the latest scientific ideas, people today are lost. Enter "A Brief History of Time." This book helps fill in that gap between an average person's understanding and the highly specialized scientists' knowledge.

This book covers ideas that are profound and affect everyone. It explains theories that concern the creation of the universe, time travel, light-speed travel, and many more topics. Imagine actually having some grasp of Einstein's general relativity. Ever heard of string theory? How might time travel actually be possible? What are these black holes of which I've heard? This book packs an incredible amount of information into its 248 pages, yet somehow is still easily read - this is the true marvel of this book.

The illustrated version is worth the extra money. It contains many updates and additions throughout the book by Hawking (including the time travel chapter!). Every (and I mean every) concept throughout the book is accompanied by at least one illustration - think about it: 240 color illustrations with only 248 pages!

Towards the middle of the book, some of the concepts get more complex (when he really gets into the details of sub-atomic particles). However, as a recent high school graduate, I can say with some level of certainty that the average person can understand 90% of this book - and those parts are the most interesting! It will change the way you look at the universe.

In the Green Mile Serial Thriller I love how Stephen King takes so many little stories about love and friendships and adds a twist of evilness and darkness with in each of the characters. From how he builds up the plot not just for the main characters but for everyone of the characters in the novel from the talented Mr. Jingles to the most focused character John Coffey. King kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time while he was building up to the final part, is Coffey gonna live or die and I really loved that but didn't like the outcome. But because of the time period it was set in I can understand reasons for the ending King gave The Green Mile. The book was really great and to any Stephen King fan if I were you I would read it.

I wonder if there are more books like the Green Mile by Stephen King. First book I have ever listened to that was written by him. I thought he wrote about strange events. I was spellbound. I was transported into the story and couldn't wait until the next tape. What a great writer. Any suggestions on which one I should read next?

I must say " the green mile " series was a nice change from Stephen Kings other books. It made me laugh and it made me cry, none of his other books have ever affected me like that!!! I'm really glad I bought the whole series at one time, if I would've bought them one at a time I would've been crazy by the time the last one got here!! I couldn't put them down, I read one after another!!!!My heart will always be with his HORROR stories though.....because I like the "things that go bump in the night". Thank you Stephen King for giving me a chance to see another side of your writing ability.I'll be waiting and looking forward to getting my next book in the mail.

This book, long out of print, introduces Pratchett's best heroes, Sam Vimes and Carrot, and sets up the adventures to come. To my surprise, the plot in here holds its own against those in later Vimes novels, and the large space given to the supporting cast is a delight to those who know Colon and Knobby, Vimes' deputies, from later books where they share the guardhouse with a much larger cast. I read the Guards book out of order, and now feel like I should re-read them in order. The whole subseries, even the anticlimactic "Fifth Elephant," stand out from the rest of the Discworld books. Discworld is almost always good. Vimes is even better.

G!G! is the brilliant introduction to Sam Vimes and the Night Watch (eventually the City Watch) of Ankh-Morpork. Fencing (sort of), fighting (rather one-sided), torture (only a little bit), revenge (maybe some), giants (my, but Carrot certainly is tall), monsters (dragons and trolls count, right?), chases (when the Night Watch runs away), escapes (see previous), true love (sort of), miracles (one in a million chance)...
Sam Vimes and Carrot Ironfoundersson are my two favorite characters on the whole Disc, after Death. I just have to love this book, mostly because it gave us the characters. It sets the stage for the later books, and the City Watch subseries is the most dedicated to internal consistency and continuity among all the Discworld books. This is an essential book to see the beginning of the rise of the Night Watch and Sam Vimes, and it really sets the character of Carrot. The literal-mindedness of Carrot in this gives one an even deeper appreciation of some of the later jokes surrounding him.

The reason, I think, that Pratchett has managed to keep Discworld viable after over two dozen novels while other series seem to fade after four or five is that Pratchett continually introduces new characters and new tracts in his Discworld books -- Rincewind, Granny Weatherwax or Death, for instance.

"Guards! Guards!" is the first book to follow the adventures of Captain Vimes, and is easily as good as any other Pratchett has written. Our stalwart quartet of well-meaning bufoons provides an incredibly entertaining satire of medieval sword 'n sorcery epics -- you know, the kind where the boy finds a magic sword or slays a dragon and is therefore crowned king, regardless of any actual qualifications he may have.

I am attempting to work through the Discworld novels chronologically, so I don't know if Vimes, Carrot, Nobby and Colon show up again in this series. But I certainly hope so. Pratchett has rapidly ascended my all-time favorite authors list.

I have always been thankful that English is my first language, for I would hate to read a translated version of a Shakespeare play. Neruda (and perhaps Gabriel Garcia Marquez) is one writer that makes me wish I could read Spanish, for as amazing as his poems are in the translated English (and the are amazing), they must be pure and unabashed magic in their original language. Neruda is able to write on emotions that we occassionaly feel, and often long about, but can seldom work into spoken (yet alone written) words. By far, my favorite in this book of poems is Number 20, which has come to be known as "Tonight I Can Write..." Only after losing the love that I thought would last forever did the words "Love is so short, forgetting so long" sincerely ring true. Neruda's poems in general are amazing, and his ability to capture human emotions is remarkable.

Other Neruda fans and poetry critics claim that his later works are his best, but I disagree. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair was Neruda's first published book, done so when he was in his twenties. I think that's what makes this such a great book -- when you couple Neruda's incredible talent with the passion of youth, you get an incredible piece of literature. This is great romantic poetry, full of erotic passion and longing. Neruda knew how to use words to their maximum effect, and his wonderful, innovative use of imagery does what I feel poetry should do: it makes the reader think.

...one of the most beautiful sets of poems in the history of poetry. Exquisite is the only word to describe Neruda's images and language. I have read the poems both in English and Spanish and even though the Spanish version is, of course, far superior, the poems don't really lose much in these translations. Neruda is the ultimate, TRUE romantic and not the schlocky caricature that we've come to accept as the essence of romance. Neruda understood the human condition with regards to love and its consequences like few other poets and it shows in the magical beauty of his work.

"German Boy, a Child in War"
Wolfgang W. E. Samuel
ISBN 0-7679-0824-4
2000

This autobiography of childhood by Wolfgang Samuel is the story of a German boy growing up during World War II. When the momentum of the war turned against Germany, the Russians attacked from the east and routed the German army and civilian population as well. The book recounts how Samuel and his family abandoned their home and possessions and fled for their lives. In the following years, they survived under circumstances that most of us can hardly imagine. This is a very touching story, largely about the writer‘s mother, who did whatever was necessary and paid any price for the survival of her children, the author and his younger sister. Although it is a story of deprivation and terror, it is also about acts of incredible courage and noble behavior under terrible circumstances by ordinary people.

This book is admirable in its originality and all the more powerful in having been written by the person who lived it. Above all, it is a remarkable story of courage and tenacity of the human spirit.

I bought this book because I was going on vacation and wanted something to read. Once I started it I could not put it down. Mr. Samuel's story is fascinating. I had no idea that for the German people the fallout from the war continued for many years. This book explains the horrors visited on people who were the victims of despots and murderers posing as "leaders". This story tells of his mother's struggle for the survival of the family. All of her actions were not perfect or moral choices but given his families desperate situation Mr. Samuels mother did what she thought had to be done to survive. I would think this caused pain to the author and was traumatic for a young boy.After many years Mr. Samuels has chosen to respect, forgive and understand his mother's actions in the context of the extreme circumstances with which they had to contend in post war Germany. I appreciated his heartfelt expression of gratitude for friends and strangers who helped the family. I was moved by the depth of his feeling for his grandparents. I was heartened by his continued optimism and his strong belief that America would offer him a better life. This book is a must read!

Review: German Boy is a beautifully written and moving story about life in Germany during the period 1945-1949. From the very beginning, I felt like I waa part of the ten year old German boy's world. His photographic memory retained the details of events and conversations which he relates in a pleasing and exciting manner. There is a universal message to be learned from the way the author saw the war, dictatorship and the goodness and badness in people. We are reminded that all human beings have the same hopes and fears. The reader will be surprised to discover how the author was influenced in 1948 by the United States humanitarian effort, - "The Berlin Airlift". I highly recommend this book, and predict that it will one of the top ten this year. A must Read Book

"There is little to be satisfied in reading this book"?? I couldn't disagree more. Bleak House left a profound impression on me, and was so utterly satisfying a reading experience that I wanted it never to end. I've read it twice over the years and look forward to reading it again. Definitely my favorite novel.

I don't know what the previous reviewer's demands are when reading a novel, but mine are these: the story must create its world - whatever and wherever that world might be - and make me BELIEVE it. If the novelist cannot create that world in my mind, and convince me of its truths, they've wasted my time (style doesn't matter - it can be clean and spare like Orwell or verbose like Dickens, because any style can work in the hands of someone who knows how to use it). Many novels fail this test, but Bleak House is not one of them.

Bleak House succeeds in creating a wonderfully dark and complex spider web of a world. On the surface it's unfamiliar: Victorian London and the court of Chancery - obviously no one alive today knows that world first hand. And yet as you read it you know it to be real: the deviousness, the longing, the secrets, the bureaucracy, the overblown egos, the unfairness of it all. Wait a minute... could that be because all those things still exist today?

But it's not all doom and gloom. It also has Dickens's many shades of humor: silliness, word play, comic dialogue, preposterous characters with mocking names, and of course a constant satirical edge. It also has anger and passion and tenderness.

I will grant one thing: if you don't love reading enough to get into the flow of Dickens's sentences, you'll probably feel like the previous reviewer that "...it goes on and on, in interminable detail and description...". It's a different dance rhythm folks, but well worth getting used to. If you have to, work your way up to it. Don't start with a biggie like Bleak House, start with one of his wonderful short pieces such as A Christmas Carol.

Dickens was a gifted storyteller and Bleak House is his masterpiece. If you love to dive into a book, read and enjoy this gem!

This is the second book by Dickens I have read so far, but it will not be the last. "Bleak House" is long, tightly plotted, wonderfully descriptive, and full of memorable characters. Dickens has written a vast story centered on the Jarndyce inheritance, and masterly manages the switches between third person omniscient narrator and first person limited narrator. His main character Esther never quite convinces me of her all-around goodness, but the novel is so well-written that I just took Esther as she was described and ran along with the story. In this book a poor boy (Jo) will be literally chased from places of refuge and thus provide Dickens with one of his most powerful ways to indict a system that was particularly cruel to children. Mr. Skimpole, pretending not to be interested in money; Mr. Jarndyce, generous and good; Richard, stupid and blind; the memorable Dedlocks, and My Lady Dedlock's secret being uncovered by the sinister Mr. Tulkinghorn; Mrs. Jellyby and her telescopic philanthropy; the Ironmaster described in Chapter 28, presenting quite a different view of industralization than that shown by Dickens in his next work, "Hard Times." Here is a veritable cosmos of people, neighbors, friends, enemies, lovers, rivals, sinners, and saints, and Dickens proves himself a true master at describing their lives and the environment they dwell in. There are landmark chapters: Chapter One must be the best description of a dismal city under attack by dismal weather and tightly tied by perfectly dismal laws, where the Lord Chancellor sits eternally in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Chapter 32 has one of the eeriest scenes ever written, with suspicious smoke, greasy and reeking, as a prelude to a grisly discovery. Chapter 47 is when Jo cannot "move along" anymore. This Norton Critical is perhaps the best edition of "Bleak House" so far: the footnotes help a lot, and the two Introductions are key to understanding the Law system at the time the action takes place, plus Dickens' interest in this particular topic. To round everything off, read also the criticism of our contemporaries, as well as that of Dickens' time. "Bleak House" is a long, complex novel that opens a window for us to another world. It is never boring and, appearances to the contrary, is not bleak. Enjoy.

After years without picking up a novel by Dickens (memories of starchy classes at school), I decided to plunge into "Bleak House", a novel that had been sitting on my bookshelf for about ten years, waiting to be read. Although I found it heavy going at first, mainly because the style is so unfamiliar to modern readers, after about ten pages I was swept up and carried off, unable to put the hefty tome down until I had finished it. This book is a definite classic. The sheer scope of the tale, the wit of the satire (which could still be applied to many legal proceedings today) and the believable characters gripped me up until the magnificent conclusion. One particularly striking thing is the "cinematic" aspect of certain chapters as they switch between different angles, building up to a pitch that leaves the reader breathless. I can't recommend "Bleak House" too highly. And I won't wait so long before reading more Dickens novels.

Giovanni Boccaccio THE DECAMERON. Second Edition. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by G. H. McWilliam. cli + 909 pages. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin Books, 1995. ISBN 0-14-044629-X (Pbk).

Second-hand opinions can do a lot of harm. Most of us have been given the impression that The Decameron is a lightweight collection of bawdy tales which, though it may appeal to the salacious, sober readers would do well to avoid. The more literate will probably be aware that the book is made up of one hundred stories told on ten consecutive days in 1348 by ten charming young Florentines who have fled to an amply stocked country villa to take refuge from the plague which is ravaging Florence.

Idle tales of love and adventure, then, told merely to pass the time by a group of pampered aristocrats, and written by an author who was quite without the technical equipment of a modern story-teller such as Flannery O'Connor. But how, one wonders, could it have survived for over six hundred years if that's all there were to it? And why has it so often been censored? Why have there always been those who don't want us to read it?

A puritan has been described as someone who has an awful feeling that somebody somewhere may be enjoying themselves, and since The Decameron offers the reader many pleasures it becomes automatically suspect to such minds. In the first place it is a comic masterpiece, a collection of entertaining tales many of which are as genuinely funny as Chaucer's, and it offers us the pleasure of savoring the witty, ironic, and highly refined sensibility of a writer who was also a bit of a rogue. It also provides us with an engaging portrait of the Middle Ages, and one in which we are pleasantly surprised to find that the people of those days were every bit as human as we are, and in some ways considerably more delicate.

We are also given an ongoing hilarious and devastating portrayal of the corruption and hypocrisy of the medieval Church. Another target of Boccaccio's satire is human gullibility in matters religious, since, then as now, most folks could be trusted to believe whatever they were told by authority figures. And for those who have always found Dante to be a crushing bore, the sheer good fun of The Decameron, as Human Comedy, becomes, by implication (since Boccaccio was a personal friend of Dante), a powerful and compassionate counterblast to the solemn and cruel anti-life nonsense of The Divine Comedy.

There is a pagan exuberance to Boccaccio, a frank and wholesome celebration of the flesh; in contrast to medieval Christianity's loathing of woman we find in him what David Denby beautifully describes as "a tribute to the deep-down lovableness of women" (Denby, p.249). And today, when so many women are being taught by anti-sex radical feminists to deny their own bodies and feelings, Boccaccio's celebration of the sexual avidity of the natural woman should come as a very welcome antidote. For Denby, who has written a superb essay on The Decameron that can be strongly recommended, Boccaccio's is a scandalous book, a book that liberates, a book that returns us to "the paradise from which, long ago, we had been expelled" (Denby, p.248).

The present Penguin Classics edition, besides containing Boccaccio's complete text, also includes a 122-page Introduction, a Select Bibliography, 67 pages of Notes, four excellent Maps and two Indexes. McWilliam, who is a Boccaccio scholar, writes in a supple, refined, elegant and truly impressive English which successfully captures the highly sophisticated sensibility of Boccaccio himself. His translation reads not so much as a translation as an original work, though his Introduction (which seems to cover everything except what is most important) should definitely be supplemented by Denby's wonderfully insightful and stimulating essay, details of which follow:

Chapter 17 - 'Boccaccio,' in 'GREAT BOOKS - My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World'
by David Denby. pp.241-249. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0-684-83533-9 (Pbk).

Ten young Florentine noblemen and women escaping the Black Death in Florence in 1348 entertain themselves by each relating a story per day for ten days - 100 entertaining stories in all, mostly set in and around medieval Florence. Although famously naughty, none of these stories strikes a modern reader as more than mildly erotic. Rather, they consistently astonish by their thoroughly modern message that women are as good as men, nobility doesn't come from birth, sanctity doesn't come from the church, and - above all - true love must never be denied. Amazingly, Boccaccio often delivers this message while pretending to say the exact opposite; sometimes he presents very sympathetic characters who get away with things thought scandalous in his time, offering a mere token condemnation at the end, while other times he depicts someone actually following the accepted code and committing some horrible act of cruelty in the process. Either way - and despite his claims to be upholding convention - we always know what he really means, and apparently he didn't fool too many people in his own day either.

But one doesn't need to focus on the revolutionary aspects of the Decameron to enjoy the book; each of the stories delights the reader with a different tasty morsel, and, you can read as much or as little at a time as you please. Once you get past the introduction, (and that's probably the most serious part of the book, so be sure not to give up before you get to the first story) the stories will make you laugh, make you cringe, and make you sit on the edge of your seat. Inspiring authors from Chaucer to Shakespeare and entertaining audiences for over 700 years, the Decameron continues to delight.

For a book to be even considered to a classic; then it, i.e., the book has to stand the test of time (and by so been read, pondered on and enjoy by several generations). The Decameron (Oxford World's Classics) by Giovanni Boccaccio, et al is one of these few books, e.g., The Odyssey, Thus Spoke Zarathustra et al. The story follows a plethora of storytellers whom all have gone to the countryside to escape the plague. The stories are filled with bravura, vigor, fortitude, a bit of sex and many other subjects (that are all written with an uncanny ability). If one considered oneself to be a scholar or a learned man then this book, i.e., The Decameron (Oxford World's Classics) by Giovanni Boccaccio, et al, is a must have; since not owning or having read it, then one as a person/scholar/learnedman must be considered less then civilized.

heard the taped version of stephen covey's the 7 habits of highly effective families . . . this was good, though not quite in the league of covery's most famous book, the 7 habits of highly effective people (put this latter one in your MUST READ category) . . . in highly effective families, covey relates the following habits to everyday family situations: 1. Be Proactive 2. Begin with the End in Mind 3. Put First Things First 4. Think "Win-Win" 5. Seek First to Understand . . . Then to be Understood 6. Synergize 7. Sharpen the Saw

i liked the countless examples that were used, along wtih the author's commonsense approach . . . one section, in particular, caught my attention . . . covey notes: The Emotional Bank Accountrepresents the quality of the relationship ou have with others. It's like a finanical bank account in that you can make "deposits," by proactively doing things that build trust in the relationship, or you can make "withdrawals," by reactively doing things that decrease the level of trust. And at any given time the balance of trust in the account determines how well you can communicate and solve porblems with another person.

he then proceeds to list some specific ideas--some "deposits" you can make in your own family--that may be helpful; e.g.: Being Kind, Apologizing, Being Loyal to Those Not Present, Making and Keeping Promises, and Forgiving.

In introducing "7 Habits for Highly Effective families," Covey writes that societal forces have changed, and that we can no longer rely on a family-friendly society to help us with our families. That approach, which he termed the "outside-in" approach was useful in the middle of the 20th century. But at the turn of the century, when societal forces are combining to undermine the family, Covey argues that we need an "inside-out" approach, where we take greater care as parents to create a family culture that encourages goodness, morality and love.

With that premise in mind, Covey applies the 7 Habits to family life. I'm not familiar with the 7 Habits as they are applied to individuals, but as I've tried to apply them in my family I've been impressed by the results. As a husband and father, I feel as if I now have a set of tools to build and strengthen my family, and an understanding of how to use them.

The use of the word "effective" in the title is a somewhat misleading. When you think of what you want from a family, you probably don't think of "effective", you probably think of "warm", "supportive" or some similar term.

But don't be thrown off. This book is an accurate guide to all of the positive things that we all want for our family. It cuts through the noise and points directly at the things that will lead to success in family life.

For those that have read "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" (another excellent book), this follows the same principles but is more than just a re-packaging of the material. The discussions on how to apply the principles to family life is well worth going over it again.

The final book in the Thomas Covenant trilogy does not dissapoint! This book is full of so much action, emotion, and intrigue to keep any reader hooked. The book starts when the Unbeliever is again summoned to the land, this time by a rather unlikely source. Covenant's mission this time in the Land is simple, destroy Lord Foul.

But, how will he accomplish such a thing? Lord Foul has rebuilt his army, and it is even bigger than before. And the army has only one purpose, to destroy everything on the Land. Covenant and some old friends (and enemies) must fight to stop Foul before it is too late. Emotions run high in this final book of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.

I'll keep my review short & sweet. I really liked this trilogy a lot and felt this book summed things up well. I enjoyed the fact that a number of characters from the past reappeared (Saltheart Foamfollower, Elena, etc) to tie things up. This book/series is different than other fantasy novels I've read because it has a lot of human emotion in it (despair) and also ties in the present day world with the fantasy world. In fact, even at the end of the series you are not quite sure whether the events actually occured to Thomas Covenent. My only complaint about the series is that, although the themes of despair and fear are important to the story the author spends too much time on them. I also got a little sick about hearing all the time how TC was a leper and why didn't everyone else understand that. This seemed to pop up every 10 pages or so. In any case, I recommend this book & the entire 1st Thomas Covenent trilogy wholeheartedly.

Once again, Thomas Covenant returns to the Land. Once again, he struggles with his unbelief, with his conviction that he cannot both believe and survive. He is a leper.

When ur-Lord Covenant returns to the Land, he finds that it is palled under the shroud of decay and ill health. Has it come to this, has his unbelief doomed the land he both loves so deeply and at the same instant denies? Can his sheer hate for Lord Foul awaken the latent power of his white-gold ring? These trials surface within "The Power that Preserves".

I cannot stress it enough, this trilogy of novels, "The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever", is one of the pinnacles of fantasy writing. Donaldson has both a mastery of style and voice matched by few authors. His vivid characters grip you and draw you into the Land. They almost force you to feel deep emotion about them. Whether that emotion is love, hate, or in the case of the Unbeliever, sheer frustrated anger tainted with unrelenting sympathy for those in his path, you cannot help but be moved. This series will remain a benchmark against which I judge other novels, and other realities. You owe it to yourself to read this trilogy.