With the unique perspective of a young doctor on his first assignment to one of the then newest & most unescapable penal colonies in the US, Dr. Beacher's memoir tells the history of Pelican Island from its discovery in the late 1770s to its use for military defense one hundred years later, to its last incarnation as a bleak jail. He also recounts the stories of the many inmates he cared for, where ruthlessness was the norm, both in the colorless, hopeless daily grind & in the unfettered behavior of the guards

I can't say that ALCATRAZ ISLAND is a good read. It is too full of dire, irreparable damage, offering not an iota of redemption. It is a suffocating read, so much so, that I had to do it in small doses, although once I was immersed in its narration, I was enthralled.

If history of prison life interests you, if how the doctors of that time treated their captive patients fascinates you, then ALCATRAZ ISLAND will be a good read for you. It is a thought-provoking book that will linger long in your mind.

Set in the time of imprisoned gangsters such as Al Capone, Alcatraz Island: Memoirs Of A Rock Doc is the personal story of Milton Daniel Beacher, a physician who cared for the prison population of Alcatraz Island for one year. Deftly edited by Dianne Beacher Perfit, Alcatraz Island is a candid and revealing journal of brutal living conditions, a prisoner's strike, a successful escape, suicides, and much more. A vivid, gripping book, written in gut-wrenching descriptive language that brings the forbidding rock to life, Alcatraz Island is highly recommended reading for students of American penology as well as a riveting autobiography of life behind bars from the unique perspective of a prison doctor.

I have had this in book form, not CD and gave them as new baby gifts, but can't find them anymore. Any suggestions as to where I can get them?

Wow! What a wonderful book for kids . . . and adults! For the first time, I'm finally beginning to connect the Bible and world history in a meaningful way. I never knew that popcorn was around when Noah was on the ark, that Jesus ate cookies and ice cream as a child, or that Daniel was a contemporary of Aesop and his fables. This book helps me and my children put the Bible in its world context and, therefore, to understand many of the customs and habits of people in the Bible. An enlightening experience! Great for homeschoolers, Sunday school teachers, private school teachers, and kids of all ages. Get it!

Very interesting elementary book. A little bit too simple for indepth school report requirements but overall well writen. Easily understood and great illustrations. Better then the average Nature Company books on other subjects.

An imformative children's book with the basic history of Ancient Rome. Filled with colorful and hisorically correct pictures. A perfect book for the future historians.

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

It is a good book about nonparametric statistics although there are some errors in it. Comparing books of the similar content, it is a high quality one.

Applied Nonparametric Statistics, second edition, by Wayne W. Daniel, published by Duxbury Press is now available in paperback.

The one thing I liked so much about this tape was the step by step approach employed by Daniel Goleman. I was able to do new meditational techniques, such as walking meditation, etc., that I had never done before. The only reason I didn't give five stars to this flawless tape was the lack of clarity and resonance of Daniel Goleman's voice, perhaps putting the volume higher can help. Daniel really gets down to business here and really teaches you effectively how to meditate and say good-bye to stress, anxiety, insomnia, aches, pains, headaches,many illnesses, etc. Hey this guy could be a pharmaceutical company's nightmare, since you run the risk of helping yourself get well, without the use of medicines.

I've listened to many meditation tapes and this one is the best so far. Goleman provides you with good insight about the benifits of meditation then gives you four great exercises. It's very relaxing. Everyone I've recommended it to has also liked it. After awhile, you no longer need the tapes to meditate.

Daniel Rodgers' thesis in Atlantic Crossings is simple and direct: "the reconstruction of American social politics was of a part with movements of politics and ideas throughout the North Atlantic world that trade and capitalism had tied together." (3) He concludes that from the 1870s through World War II, America was not an internalist or an imperialist nation, but instead these years saw an "opening" for social reformers in the U.S. to import foreign models and ideals from other North Atlantic countries. Furthermore, these imported policies and reforms (mostly from Britain and Germany) were not adopted in America (if at all) unchanged upon reaching the Atlantic's western shores, but instead were adapted to the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of American society and political structure. Finally, Rodgers argues, the seeds of the New Deal can be found in the activities and positions of the social reform activists of the last two decades of the 19th century and the first thirty years of the 20th century.
Rodgers convincingly supports his thesis by describing "a largely forgotten world of transnational borrowings and imitation, adaptation and transformation" (7) from the 1870s through the 1940s, a time during which Americans had an abundance of solutions to the myriad social problems of their day. This "borrowing" was a process that changed significantly over time. Initially, Americans were primarily recipients of reform ideas from abroad. Later, during the prosperity of the 1920s, a more even exchange of social solutions took place among North Atlantic countries, which eventually led to "a great gathering...of proposals and ideas" in the New Deal. Finally, by the end of World War II, the differing experiences of the nations of the North Atlantic world and the varying effects suffered by each from the conflict largely ended the former transnational exchange, and saw the Cold War rise of American exceptionalism.
Rodgers provides numerous convincing examples of the cross-national exchange process of ideas and reforms to illustrate his arguments. Workmen's compensation insurance in America, for example, was based upon a pre-World War I British model, a "ready made solution with a history of success behind it" (248) that made similar acts in the U.S. possible. Additionally, housing, health and streetcars were a major concern of American social reformers in large cities, who often borrowed ideas about municipally-guided urban and industrial projects from experiments and visions in Berlin and London. As Rodgers notes regarding the new "self-owned" city, "municipalization was the first important Atlantic-wide progressive project...[that] borrowed experience and transnational example." (159) European precedents gave American progressives "a set of working, practical examples." (144) "He describes, however, in chapters 5 and 6, the impossibility of wholesale American import of strong European municipality due to the unique and equally strong traditions in the U.S. in favor of property rights, a tradition buttressed and maintained by legal tradition and the courts. One need only look at excess condemnation, widely practiced in Paris and London, to see an example of reforms disallowed by the courts, which held that public interests of taste and beauty did not surmount the rights of property owners. Housing in America "was a private matter," (196) unlike the European examples progressives saw.
Although some reviewers have taken exception with Rodgers' claim that within the progressive movement's ideology one can see the footers of the New Deal, his argument is convincing. What New Dealers "did best," he asserts, "was to throw in to the breach, with verve and imagination, schemes set in motion years or decades before." (415) A large number of New Deal projects came out of the old Atlantic progressive connection, and in "gathering in so much of the progressive agenda, the New Deal gathered in large chunks of European experience as well." (416)
Perhaps the weakness in Atlantic Crossings is that which is left out, not in the arguments Rodgers articulately presents. First, it is surprising that Rodgers presents no detailed discussion regarding education reform, particularly when this issue was so important to the Germans at the time. Second, one would never know that there was an American South during this time period, a region where progressives were active even despite a lack of urban areas there. Nevertheless, Rodgers has done a masterful job of comparative history by emphasizing trans-national borrowing and cooperation.

This is the policy-side answer to Kloppenberg's UNCERTAIN VICTORY. While that book focussed on intellectual links between European (esp. German or French) thought and early American pragmatism, Rodgers seeks more practical applications, well into the 20th century. He is so well versed in the literature that scant references are made to secondary sources. It is rich in the literature of the time, particularly journals, magazines, and newspapers from several different countries. Interestingly, unlike Kloppenberg this book examines England and Scotland which provide springboards for American reforms. Rodgers' thesis is that the Europeans tried numerous policies which Americans learned about and then implemented, almost always later than their counterparts across the Atlantic--and sometimes with very limited success. The book is also noteworthy for some of the most practical applications of MODERNISM yet seen in contemporary scholarship. This is a hot topic, largely seen in discussions of art or literature. Here Rodgers takes all that knowledge, absorbs it, and then demonstrates it in action across the POLITICAL spectrum. Despite the enormous research behind it, Rodgers has written an enjoyable, readable work that is of considerable importance. After all, this is the author of the famous article, "An Obituary for the Progressive Movement," (1970) which claimed that there NEVER WAS such a movement. Here Rodgers answers his own claim, saying that the American reform impulse built upon a European foundation and produced policies which survive to the present. My only complaint is that this book is slanted TOWARDS Europe, with maybe 60% of the discussion dwelling across the Atlantic ... the format gets a little tedious, with most chapters beginning in Europe, then the Americans pick up on the policy (welfare, municipal gas/water etc) and then they try it themselves. This is nitpicking, though, for such a substantive, well-researched, lucid work that defines this generation's scholarship on the Progressive Era.

As a technical reviewer of this book I found it to have a good mix of technical content and explaination which is ideal for helping developers to get started with ASP.NET.

The book explores various areas of key functionality within ASP.NET and supports it with a sample application. I'd recommend this book to anyone who hasn't had any experience with ASP.NET before and who want to get some understanding before undertaking a project.

Being new to .Net and redirecting my career into software development, I've found Daniel's book to be one of most well written and insightful books on C# and Visual Studio.net. He moves quickly into the nuts and bolts of the .Net classes and provides innovative code that go beyond the obvious. You are given multiple methods of handling logic in the same code-behind. The authors cleared much confusion I had about server controls, data binding and ADO.Net. Readers will appreciate the applications development approach in the book which goes beyond theory and shows you how to apply your skills in solving real-world problems. I recommend you write the code yourself line by line and read the book cover to cover. He leads you step by step. You will discover the finer points of VS.net, not to mention the many properties of the .Net classes with Intellisense. I also like the SQL data interaction because this is so important with our customers. I highly recommend it!

I expected this book to be interesting, but I didn't expect to be captivated. I picked it up late last night with the intention of thumbing through the pages, and I became engrossed. I ended up reading it from cover to cover. The text guides us through a brief overview of the history and oddly familiar geography of coffee (Kaffa, Al Mokha, Java). But the photographs of the people who grow, pick, and process coffee around the world are what make this book distinctive. "Their faces will always be reflected on the dark surface of every cup of coffee we drink." Indeed.

We are coffee lovers and sample different flavors from around the world. This book has filled a gap in the history of coffee. The text was inspired and the photos are truly amazing. The sepia tones reflect the coffee flavor of the book. One can imagine the fragrance of the coffee beans just from the photos. Bravo!

raw and sentimental. very well written and thought through. this is the best of Jim's books that i have read thus far. It is filled with contorvercy and intrigue. I couldnt put it down. I suggest this book to almost any literate person with a creative and poetic eye.

In his newest collection of poems, Jim Daniels takes the reader in a completely different direction than his earlier work. Daniels' early work -- realistic, gritty, and sometimes violent -- was praised for its tough spare style and its unsentimental portrayal of working people's lives. Daniels' fourth collection of poems Blessing the House and his collection of short stories No Pets polished his lean realistic style, though they lack the tight-lipped anger that gave the early books an uncompromising edge. It would have been easy for Daniels to continue writing realistic autobiographical poems and stories -- he handles the genre well, and he has developed a small but dedicated following. Instead with Blue Jesus, he has departed in a radical and, some might say, risky direction. Daniels' new collection is divided into three coherent sections. The book begins with a sequence of nine poems that metaphorically describe varieties of religious experience. 'Red Jesus' has an angry tone. 'Green Jesus' describes the exuberant messiness of nature. 'Blue Jesus,' the title poem, implores us to trust mirages and shadows. Each color is linked to a mood, creating a surrealistic montage of religious feeling. The second section consists of sketches of characters in spiritual crises. A man turns himself in to the police, though his crimes have been committed only against God and his own soul. Another man, perhaps the poet himself, watches his small children while thinking of angels and his own lack of faith. In 'Children of the Damned,' the poet remembers the Ryan theater where he and his friends screamed in the dark while watching horror movies. This long poem argues that watching the movies is an intensely spiritual experience, one that shapes our consciousness far more than praying in church. The third section of the book is a sequence of poems written in response to the paintings of Francis Bacon. Here Daniels lets loose with frightening imagery and odd voices. The book closes with 'Jet of Water,' a lyric so beautifully simple that it seems that the whole spiritual struggle of the book has been leading up to this one song. Daniels' new book risks disappointing fans who love his edgy portrayals of working class life, and these new poems my be offensive to the conventionally religious. But Daniels is to be commended for stretching his limits, taking long strides in a direction few writers dare to go.