Mystic Warriors of the Yellowstone is one of the most fascinating books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. The characters just can't be made up! No one has that great an imagination without some basis in fact. This alone makes Mystic a truly great read. Another thing? After almost 2 years, the characters and story are still with me. I wonder about the fate of the characters (good and evil) and what has happened with their lives, plots, romances, and psychic warfare since the last book. I hear there's going to be a second book, and I CANNOT WAIT! I'd read anything written by Elizabeth Laden! One of those can't-put-it-down-and-I-know-it's-3:00-a.m. books! Get it and read it. Even if you can't get away on a vacation, Mystic will transport you to a different place on many levels.

The themes and scenes found in this book are an uncanny mixture of Anne Rice and Hunter Thompson. All of the characters seem blindingly real, even those that simply could not be real, and the story line is strong, compelling, and makes one wish for a sequel when you turn that last page and reach the end! I always enjoy reading books with a local connection when I travel to a region, and I would at the very least recommend this book for anyone who plans to vacation in Yellowstone National Park or nearby areas! Not to suggest that this novel is in any way a travel guide.... but the setting of the Rocky Mountains, the grizzly bear habitat, and so on, are as key to this work as are the philosophical questions about religion, cultism, videography and sex!

This novel won first place in the 1997 Idaho Press Women's Communications Contest. Here are the judges' comments; Only an author with multiple areas of expertise could have written this book. This mystery novel gives the reader a great deal of education in Indian and Mexican beliefs, an how Satanic cults can recruit and terrorize, and information on Yellowstone Park, animals, fishign, and camping. The author is a master at wae weaving many different stories and backgrounds into onenovel. This book would make a great movie. I was afraid at the beginning it was going to be the typical sex and vulgar language romance novel, but the author soon set the stage for an intricate mystery novel.

This book is loaded with top quality National Geographic photographs of the National Parks, and the written commentary and the important park information included is excellent. A must book to have for anyone visiting any of the USA parks. In fact, you can stay at home and page through this book, and it is just like a mini-tour of the parks. It is printed on glossy, heavy weight paper that resists tears and spills of over active children, and it allows one to toss it into a backpack or car glove box with minimal damage. Another quality National Geographic publication that deserves 5 stars.

Like all National Geographic titles this book is packed full of great photographs and details about the parks. Having visited many parks already - I am amazed by how up to date all the comments are, together with very good suggestions for times to visit and accomodation available. The layout of the book is superb - its like a travel directory - taking you from one park to another without stepping outside your front door. I feel this guide is essential for anyone visiting America's National Parks - its also just the right size to take with you !. My aim is to visit all the parks - this book has made it easier ! Please get in touch if you have any questions.

This book is a must have for every National Park or nature fan. We bought this book 3 week before visiting Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier National Park. every thing the book said was correct. To test it, we tried some trails that the book had not reommended, and realized that the authors were correct.

This book is not intended to be an all inclusive giuide to any specific park. It covers most parks in about 4-6 pages. People spending 1-3 days per park are the target audience. the book provides day iteniaries which we found very helpful while planning our trip.

We use this book as our National Park passport. We stamp the book at each National Park and hope t have all 55 park descriptions stamped soon.

Highly recommend this book.

These Cognoscenti things have done to maps what cooking did to food. They are highly palatable (readable) and edible (don't make me dizzy). I used to get into auto accidents using giant maps that would cover the whole windshield while I tried to drive, so you can imagine how skeptical I was when my friend told me about Cognoscenti "Map" Guides. Turns out these things are so clear ANYONE can use them. With my Cognoscenti Map Guide in hand I felt like I could help people around New York! It truly made New York accesible to people like me. Thanks Cognoscenti Map Guides.

I always found using a map in one hane and a guide book in the other to be too cumbersome! I've finally found a neat clear fusion of the two in the COgnoscenti guides. I toured London with their London guide and had the time of my life! SO when it came time to see New york Cognoscenti was the only "guide" I bought. Clearly marked icons let me read info on the guide's flip side without losing my place on the map, the way I always did every time I'd refer to a book-type guide while trying to read a map at the same time. I highly recommend these guides.

Who are the people of Cognoscenti and how have they suddenly come to be making such wonderful map guides? It is as if they have plummed the depths of every wayfarer's knowledge of the great city and are out to tell all. I am an old man, wary of travel, easily confused, hesitant of adventure. But this guide has taken care of everything - well-labeled maps, distinctive descriptions of sites, a concise history of the area, suggestions for a memorable evening. Well worth it.

The "Global Citizen" is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to travel or work abroad. Most importantly for me, this book has a wealth of information on careers abroad that I had not thought of before. Most career guides are so narrow in scope that I rarely find much use in them because they are so "8-5" in nature.
The other cool thing about this book is that it's full of websites with info. on every aspect of living, working, or volunteering abroad.
I love the personal stories in the section "A Global Citizen's Perspective" because, as a traveler, you can really connect to the experience of the author and other people who have done what you want to do.
If you are looking for a a life changing adventure, then travel abroad. If you want to stay abroad, then get this book!!

What a fantastic book! I don't know what I was expecting, but not such a rich compendium of resources and ideas for aspiring travellers. It has an attractive mix of formal and informal (personal) information from the author's experience. And it's good read too! I've been dipping in at various points and forming a picture that way. It works. I can see the busy reader who doesn't want a novel, and only wants to find the best way to the metaphorical departure lounge. The reader will be informed, encouraged, enabled by this book, as I was!

I'm putting this on my Christmas list for all teenage people I know, who could use an exotic, creative experience.

You can't help but get excited about the possibilities of an international lifestyle abroad with The Global Citizen as your guide. From engaging stories (from people who have actual done what you're dreaming of doing!), essential to-do's, and practical how-to's to heaps of international programs and resources, the voice of experience truly speaks throughout the pages. Now you just have to read through, take action (with help from Elizabeth!), and create your new way of life! A must for anyone who wants to live and work overseas.

OK, I admit that I'm one of the co-authors. But I don't lend my name as editor of Student Leader magazine to just any project.

Inspiration is simply the best book ever for its audience: campus leaders of all types nationwide.

Similar in style to the Chicken Soup series, this book features dozens of inspirational, uplifting, and heart-warming stories written by campus leaders themselves nationwide.

The book would be perfect for leadership training classes, workshops, or seminiars. I could see schools ordering in bulk to give as gifts to participants in their off-campus leadership and planning retreats.

I'm proud to be a small part of this book and humbly suggest that it's well worth your investment.

While there are certainly MANY books on leadership and developing student leaders there are few that offer stories of inspiration and hope that allow the reader to draw his/her own conclusions. This book presents examples of all types of leadership and leaders from the celebrated to the unknown. Each story highlights the every day opportunities to achieve and learn. There is potential for trainers to use the stories as reflection for group exercises or to motivate campus organizations. There are stories to reflect on each students personal responsibility within an organization and the many rewards of participation in campus life. It's a great book for the new leader and a reminder to the seasoned veteran of the importance of each action and choice we make-and how profoundly we can positively change the campus community and each other.

As soon as a student becomes involved with leadership positions and experiences on campus, his or her "roller coaster ride" begins. These student leaders are constantly juggling meetings, deadlines and activities with their academic responsibilities. Most student leaders need some motivation and inspiration in order to alleviate the overwhelming stress. Inspiration for Student Leaders offers the encouragement and support student leaders are seeking so desperately to find. This paperback is a collection of stories about leadership that will undoubtedly bring new insights to all readers in search of a little inspiration. The stories are diverse in their approach, reflecting the broad range of interests and talents of the people who wrote them. Some stories are humorous while others take a more serious tone, but each is compelling in its own right. Most importantly, this is a book by college students for college students.

The book also serves as useful resource for student affair professionals as they engage in efforts to guide and mentor promising undergraduates. The stories in this collection can be used during meetings, retreats and group activities. This is just another valuable tool for student affair professionals and students' "leadership tool bag!"

Above all, these stories clearly demonstrate that "leadership is about having a passion, not a position." I hope you enjoy the book as much as I have enjoyed being part of this exceptional co-author team!

Institutions of religion and learning take note: Elizabeth Lesser's "Seeker's Guide" is proof positive that personal experience is equal to tradition and scholarship as a pathway to truth. Elizabeth's life of seeking, organizing, promoting and teaching spirituality is disclosed beautifully in this multifaceted work. She shows by her own story, by her inspiring writing, and by her practical guidelines for meditation how ordinary mortals can create the sacred space for spiritual fulfillment in their own lives. Readers will find scripts for specific spiritual objectives, pearls of wisdom for the refrigerator, models for parenting, friendship, and marriage, holistic prescriptions for mental and physical health, deep prayers, profound wisdom, and the best bumper-sticker slogans in the universe. Her use of resources is erudite without pedantry or scholasticism. The book is at once a spiritual autobiography, a systematic theology of spiritual formation, and a useful handbook for spiritual practice. Personalities of some of our greatest spiritual leaders come to life as real people in the mix. If Elizabeth had only shared with us what she has learned from her years at Omega Institute, that would have been plenty, but she has also added her own powerful voice to the rising chorus of teachers and leaders of the New American Spirituality. Seekers who pick up her book will turn every page to the end and say, give us more, Elizabeth!

Eliabeth Lesser's book, The New American Spirituality, is a highly readable, thoroughly informative, and deeply felt dispatch from the frontier of America's ever-evolving spiritual journey. As a cofounder of Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, Lesser has been in the thick of it for almost 30 years, organizing workshops and conferences nationwide, meeting and nurturing extended relationships with the leaders in the field--from Maya Angelou to Ram Dass--and helping put together the nation's largest and most successful learning center that seeks to explore and weave together many of the emerging threads of a country in the throes of perhaps the most extraordinary spiritual rebirth since the nineteenth-century Great Awakening. So much more than an academic treatment of the subject, this book is also part memoir and part guidebook. It is perhaps no accident that Omega Institute began in a small, white clapboard settlement that had belonged to the Shakers, who even in their heyday were considered a fringe movement. But much of what was once marginal about Omega is now moving into the mainstream. After defining spirituality and its context in American life, a good part of the book is then devoted to grounding the often ethereal world of spirituality in four different "landscapes"--the landscape of the mind, the landscape of the heart, the landscape of the body, and the landscape of the soul--which provide a kind of map to guide us through this exciting, rich, though often strange new world. Although she's a member of the cast and applauds a world she helped create, she does not suffer fools or pander to the excesses that this so-called "new age" movement throws up and expects us to admire. She makes us laugh, and laughs with us. This is a big book and, if you like, can be read in sections that happen to appeal to you at a particular time. But you'll want to read the whole thing and come back to it like you would a spiritual practice. The repeated visits are sure to nourish you.

Cross cultural awareness, an appreciation of the common truths underpinning various religious traditions practiced in America today, and an integrative grasp of the relationship between human psychology and spirituality -- all are present in Lesser's inspirational work. She combines practical spiritual advise, with wisdom, gained while meeting the challenges of her own personal spiritual journey. Her insights, into the withering effects of a predominately patriarchal work environment on the souls of working women, are particularly enlightening and validating. "The New American Spirituality" is definitely a keeper -- a "must read" for the modern American spiritual seeker.

I LOVE THIS BOOK! I've read nearly every Barbara Michaels book-and this is by far my favorite. I once spent two hours describing this book to my friend in minute detail-and she loved it! Dashing Andrea, dreamy Stefano, vivacious Miss Perkins, ever-changing Francesca are the key players in one of my favorite stories. Bravo, Ms. Michaels, for writing this story!

I have collected and read many of Barbara Michaels' Books and this one is My favorite. Set during the Italian Revolution, it gives you a different perspective of Italian History, through English eyes. It was very well written, so much so, that you feel as if the excitement in the book, is very real!! The main characters are intelligent, witty, and daring. You cheer for them throughout the book. I wish this were made into a movie, so visual people, like myself, could indulge in it further. Whether you're a closet romantic, history student, or mystery buff --- you'll want to read it twice....like I did!!!

I am a HUGE Barbara Michaels fan, quite possibly because she has the ability to encompass mystery, thrills, and romance, without dwelling too much on one aspect. Which holds true for this book as well. You will absolutely love Francesca, Stefano, and Miss P., for their wit, and intelligence. I wish this book were turned into a movie, so all of us visual people can watch all the events unfold, IN STEREO! At any rate, if you're a closet romantic, history student, or mystery buff, this is sure to enthrall you!!!

Liza, a freed slave, hates having her life all planned out for her. She thanks Miss Bet for freeing her but she doesn't want Miss Bet to plan her life for her. After returning from school in Phildelphia and after getting married to a free black call Wilson she finally gets to live her own life. So when Miss Bet comes up to her to plee for her help in the fight against the Rebels in Richmond she is hesitant. Working at the rebel's president's house is going to be one hard thing for Liza to do. However her decision is finally made up when she sees how the Rebels treat her husband Wilson. When he finally escapes to the North and joins the Union army Liza begins her spying in the President's Residence. Through secret codes and letters she and Miss Bet use the code name Ellen Bee to communicate.

Written in diary from with drawing and scrapes from hear and there this book was really a very good book that gave great insight into the minds of two Union spies. I recommend anyone who likes this book to read the Dear America Series which is also historical novels written in diary form about different girl's lives in different parts of history.

Hi I am in the fifth grade and I read Dear Ellen Bee. It is a civil war scrapbook and there is a girl named Liza. She is black and her teacher is white her name is Miss Bet. Their two Union spies and they are the main characters in this story. Miss Bet wants Liza to be a teacher, but Liza wants to be an artist, Liza goes to college for a teacher. Well that's all I can tell you or it will spoil the book for you. I hope you read it.HAVE FUN!!!

Hi I am a 5th grade student. I am going to tell you about the book that I read called Dear Ellen Bee. I liked the book because it is about a little girl named Liza and a teacher named Miss Bet. In the book it talks about two union spies. If you read this book you wuold think it is worth 5 stars. Well I think it is worth 5 stars. I think you would like to read this book. Me and my group made a poster and gave it 5 stars. It was realy FUN to read this book!!!

I used this book in my third grade classroom. My student population was very diverse and it was a great way to help discuss not only the many ways that we are different but also the many ways we are all the same. My students loved to see how other kids dressed and were especially interested in what other kids ate!! A great book to have in any classroom and I even bought it for my two year old son's library.

This is the very best non-fiction children's book weve seen, and we have a library of almost 1000 children's books for our daughter. Also check out its companion titles, "Celebrations", etc. Our daughter began enjoying this book at age 3. She already has a great grasp of geography just from this book.

I just got my book in the mail today. I bought the book because I homeschool my 6 yr. old daughter and thought that this book would shed some light on the subject of other countries and the way they live. The book is absolutely beautiful. Each page has information and pictures of where the children live, the climate, friends, family, where they go to school, food they eat, animals, what type of work their family does. This is a book that is suppose to be for children, yet I found myself wanting to creep off into the next room to look at the book alone. I even took the book to my dad's house and he liked it so much that I left it for him to look at. I would highly recommend this book for any age. Once you get it, you wont want to give it up. I believe my daughter will relate better to this book than any other book, because it deals with kids her own age. Make the investment. You wont regret it.

Elizabeth Wakefield plays a modern-day Robin Hood,taking money from a party fund and giving it to a poor,homeless family at Christmas time.When she is caught she feels absolutely awful,everyone is mad at her and she whispers,"I wish I had never been born."Enter her guardian angel,Laura,a wise-cracking hippy chick from the 1960's.Just like in the classic film,It's a Wonderful Life,Elizabethh will be shown what life would be like without her,and realizes that we are all here for a reason and that she is very special.Also,Laura is fun to read about as she is so funny!

This is my favorite Christmas book of all time. In this story, Elizabeth Wakefield lends the money for the school party to a poor family so they can have a home for the holidays. But soon everyone turns against her for "misplacing" the money, and Elizabeth wishes she had never been born. Suddenly her wish has come true, and the Angel Laura comes down from above to be her tour guide, so Liz can see what life would be like without her. Elizabeth must see what life is like if she had never been born, and it isn't happy. This is an excellent book and it really gets me into the holiday spirit. I've been reading it every Christmas since I was in second grade, and it gets better each time! This book shows us that we all have a purpose on earth, even if we don't realize it. God has each of us here for a reason, and we have to remember that this holiday season. I would recommend this book to anyone!

Elizabeth Wakefield has been put in charge of her school's party money. But Elizabeth decides that a poor family needs the money more, and gives it to them, hoping her friends will understand. But her plan backfires when the family still doesn't have the money to move into the apartment, and her friends are furious with her. So Elizabeth, upset, goes to the Sweet valley Mall and silently wishes that she had never been born.
Elizabeth meets up with a girl who claims to be her guardian angel, who shows her how important she really is.
By far one of the more touching books in the Sweet Valley Twins series, "A Christmas Without Elizabeth" is a touching yet funny story about Christmas.