Olivia Wu has done a masterful job of pulling together the stories of baby boomers who found creative ways of celebrating their milestone fiftieth birthdays. Her book is also a celebration of the spirit of a remarkable generation.

Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation, is about people who selflessly did what they had to do to survive a depression, win a world war, and raise a family. By contrast, Turning 50 is about the children of that generation who went their own way and did what they wanted to do. The way each individual or couple in Ms. Wu's book chose to celebrate half a century of being alive was unique and fascinating.

I found the book thoroughly enjoyable and uplifting. It also made me feel proud to be a member of that generation. No matter how old or young you are, reading these stories will be a joyful experience.

If you're 50 or about to turn 50 or once were 50, you'll enjoy this book. It's inspirational. Wu collected a remarkable bunch of people to interview. Did these 50 people have great birthdays, or are they just the sort of people who live interesting lives, period? It's interesting to reflect that baby boomers, who have broken all kinds of records, continue to redefine the word "lifestyle." The values of the 60's generation come through clearly in the group Wu has found to interview. The book focuses on the depth of meaning and life philosophy that can come with the word "celebration". These people are celebrating not only a half century of living, but life itself. The intro, by Depak Chopra, is worth the price of the book alone.

At a point in my life when I don't know if I'm young or old, it's great to read these short stories of people who are not only quite alive, but are succeeding at their lives and striking out in new areas. This book is a kick in the hind quarters to not take aging sitting down. Those who are interviewed (I was one of the earlier ones) tell some amazing tales of survival; a few of course are simply trying some new things... but they all add up to the fact that turning 50 doesn't mean things have to stop. Just the opposite, actually, it's an age to begin doing those things you always wanted to do but "life" may have gotten in the way.

If you're about to turn 50, read this book! Then get off your duff and live.

THREE YEARS AGO I OBTAINED A BEAUTIFUL MARE,UNKNOWINGLY WITH WEITEZ II BLOODLINE TOP AND BOTTOM. MY MOTHER-IN LAW BOUGHT THIS BOOK IN 1976.A CLOSE FRIEND OWNED WITEZAN. WITEZ II WAS SHOWN BY ANOTHER CLOSE FRIEND BY THE NAME OF ROCKY WHITE. FOR YEARS I HAVE LOVED THIS HORSE AND HIS GITT. THIS STORY TOUCHED MY HEART IN THE MOST AMAZING WAY AND TO NOW OWN A DIRECT DESCENDENT GREAT GREAT GRANDAUGHTER THAT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE WITEZ II DOWN TO THE EAGLE EYES IS UNBELEIVABLE. WE WILL BREED HER AS SOON AS WE FIND A WORTHY STUD.

The author tells an interesting story of World War II throught the eyes of a proud family who valued both their own and their horses' heritage. I have 2 Witez II descendants. I was surprised to find out about their history through this story. Very good reading for young and old.

I first read this book in high school and fell in love with Witez II. I later bought a descendent of his and found him very sweet, willing and smarter than his owner. I have since owned another horse, an appendix quarter horse, but can't forget my Arab. Hopefully my next horse will be another Arabian and it would be lovely to find another descendent of Witez II.

I was fishing for something to read on my business trip to Chicago when this clean cut, well dressed but completely drunken guy stood beside me in an airport mini-mart. He handed me a book he'd had in his jacket pocket and told me he wrote it and sort of walked away. (no click) I read it on the plane. I read it again three times during my trip. I believe the guy who gave me the book to be the author. He'd signed it prior with a very nice quip. I am amazed that this is the only book he's published and would buy anything I could find by him. Very clever writing. Nice character development. I am a better person for having read this book. Thak you Mr Ziegler for an incredible life story!

This is a group of stories that seem disconnected and arbitrary at first. The setting slips around and may lose you during the first twenty "snap shots" or so. These five stories pull you in and have life that is refreshing, yet sometimes very disturbing. The curiosity of what may happen next keeps one reading further. Delightfuly so. I continued and found myself laughing openly in an airport awaiting my plane. Though these lives seem to have very little cohesion at first they may (and tend to become) linear and relative to each other. The fact that the stories may be true is intresting in and of itself. I understand that this book was written by an actual car sales person and the realities he shares regarding the human nature of himself and his peers is in every way as enlightening as it is refreshing. I can say that I felt better after reading Mr Zieglers' book and look forward to anything he may offer in the future.

A remarkable tour de force of restless, piercingly intelligent energy. Takes the seemingly disparate lives of several distinct characters and not only psychically ties them together, but brings them to shimmering, unforgettable life. Powerfully reminiscent of Charles Bukowski, Richard Brautigan, and Elmore Leonard. Fine literary company, indeed.

Not since Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird have I been so taken with a character. Lori Jean's perspective on life in l950's rural Georgia is as delightful as it is sad. She climbs into your heart and stays in your head. A mesmerizing tale of family dysfunction and where it can lead. I wager you will read this book in one sitting and I bet I win. This book was released a year before The Lovely Bones (which I also enjoyed, though it's a darker tale) Sorry I didn't spot Roseflower Creek sooner. It deserves to be "out there".

From the moment Lori Jean begins her story, with "The morning I died it rained. . .", I wasn't able to put it down. Read it and laugh, read it and weep. A most special story. An unforgettable child.
Lori Jean taps into your memories and never lets go. You might think it's a book for women. You may think it's a book for a friend. I think it's just right for anyone who survived childhood.

This book is short and a quick read, but you need to take your time to absorb the story, eventhough it's very tragic sad story of the only life this 10 year old little girl knew growing up in poverty with her mother and abusive stepfather. Lori Jeans young eyes witnesses her mother's sadness and bruises from the man her mother marries after Lori Jeans own father abandons her. This little girl tries hard to lead her stepfather down a better road. This story involves murder, incest, alcholism, wife & child abuse, poverty (beyond words), abortion, and so much more. But this story also involves love, deep friendship, mentorship, understanding, and most of all....forgiveness
I usually feel a little sad after a book like this, but this book leaves the reader thinking about forgiveness.
This book is exceptional. It's not just fiction, it's a book that makes you realize that others act the way they do because of the life they have lived......but it's not an excuse, only a fact. This author has done a tremendously good job with this storyline.
Don't miss the chance to read and think about this book. This book is terrific.

This was really like a videocam on somebody's private life. Just that it gets turned on and off randomly. It makes sense, if you just keep in mind that this guy is never up to any good, whatever he's doing.

Someone had left this on the seat in the Red Line when we got stuck the better part of an hour on the bridge. There is a limit to how long you can sit and look at MIT so I began reading it.
It seemed to be a pretty quick book, the kind you would hide behind on the subway to avoid any kind of contact with the other passengers. But I ended up reading the whole thing, finishing late that night while my upstairs neighbor was dancing to a Bruce Springsteen CD.
I cannot describe the sense of grief I had after finishing this book. Taking Merlin Black's (i.e. Miles Davis) final affair as its starting point, the author picks up various points in the trumpeter's life, using psychological rather than plot connections to explain who this man really was. Talk about an anti-hero! And yet you accept Merlin's sleaziness as his natural condition, rather like dealing with a life-long disease. It becomes impossible to judge him.
I would highly recommend this book.

One thing I do, on the road, is track this man Miles. I have been everywhere, this man has been. Every nasty dive that's now a parking lot, every apt. bldg., if he was there, I've been there. And sometimes I stop in a library, NYPublic by Grand Central usually, and look up the newest book on Miles. Until this book, which is kind of rare, I never got further than twenty pages.
Now this book fit with the pattern that I can see, going the places he went, and thinking of his music, which I memorized, all of it. I've talked to some people who actually knew him, but not big light people, and the picture you get is like the one drawn by this man Walter Ellis. He wasn't a nice guy, but mad all the time and even kind of violent when he wasn't too messed up to kick. This is the real picture. And Ellis starts the story when Miles was flopped, a sorry rich man who hadn't played trumpet in five years. By flashbacking to all the separate times he got somewhere and then got down with the dogs again, he gets you into this man's mindset, which was failure and all kinds of ways to fail in dealing with failure. And when you understand that, you'll understand the music.

I get a new Christmas Story book every year. I stumbled across this one several years ago and it instantly became my favorite. I look forward to reading the message each year and it is now a favorite gift to give to friends.

I am 6 years old and my mom read this book to me tonight. This book is not scary. It's good because it teaches you about the love of Jesus Christ.

This poignant tale of a generous little tree who gives wholly of himself to those around him reminds us all of the true message of Christmas and the sacrifice that each parent makes for his child. It's a moving legend for all ages and a wonderful gift for loved ones.

This was the first book of Jane's that I read. It amazed me how much she did and survived to tell about it, sometimes in a funny way. It is a great way to get to know Jane personally.

This was my favorite of Jane's many books. Jane's tale held me spellbound from beginning to end. I could hardly believe how much she and her husband lived through in order to establish a home in a very difficult environment. I felt like I lived the entire ordeal with them. Very worthwhile reading.

This is truly a "can't put it down" book. Jane's own story is deeply inspiring to anyone facing his or her own challenges. She writes with great humor and a deep faith in the power of the Almighty. Throughout the whole book the reader finds herself laughing and crying with Jane and cheering her on. Her descriptions of events are so vivid that the reader feels like it is taking place right here, right now. Jane has captured the spirit of the pioneer woman that she could have been if she had lived 100 years earlier.

This is a great book for beginners or for those like me who speak fluent Israeli Hebrew and want to brush up on grammatical points particular to Biblical Hebrew. Everything about the grammar book, supplementary workbook, CD-ROM and website is first-rate. Lots of care have gone into the designing and manufacturing of this set of Biblical Hebrew materials. It has a parallel brother in the Zondervan Basics of Biblical Greek.

I used this book and had the pleasure of being taught by Dr. Pratico at GCTS. The diagnostic system is, despite some criticisms, the best way for first year students to master basic Biblical Hebrew. The primary strength of this book (and Dr. Pratico's overall pedagogy) is to give students exactly what they need to know when they need to know it. There is virtually no information on the historical development of the language. This is perfectly suited to the first year English-speaking student, who has enough trouble making his or her way through what looks like a bunch of dots and scratches on a page. Diachronic philology, though interesting for the intermediate and advanced student, is almost completely irrelevant and off-putting to most beginners like myself.

A good example of the "need to know" philosophy of the book is that the book sometimes does not present all aspects of a particular point of grammar, simply because to do so would overwhelm students. When vowels are learned, no mention is made of _why_ they are called changeable long, unchangeable long, etc.; all the student need know is which is which. The significance of that distinction is raised in subsequent chapters. Also, it could be pointed out in early chapters that many substantives (e.g. cohen) are simply participial forms. But when I learned the word for priest in chapter 4 (?) that piece of information was totally useless and would only have served to aid in my forgetting of the vocabulary word.

I highly recommend Basics of Biblical Hebrew and the accompanying workbook.

I've studied several languages since high school, and this is by far the best of all the books I've used. It does an excellent job of introducing the Hebrew language at a rate that can be used in a class or as self-study. The grammar charts on the cd were handy for study and review. The flashcard program was helpful in demonstrating proper pronounciation for the vocab terms, though I wish it had included the alphabet (an audio file of whih is avaliable on the BBH website).
I would suggest this to anyone with an interest in Hebrew language or culture, though I would also suggest coupling this with some modern Hebrew, as the spoken language is just as important as the written.

***Personal Study Tip***
Complex languages like Hebrew and Greek can be really frustrating when you spend a lot of time learning the very basics. Once you have the alphabet and vowel system down, augment your studies with sections from later in the book. While you probably do not want to make a full study of the Qal stem at the same time as nouns, being able to compose simple phrases and sentences really helps to gain a sense of the language and it makes you feel as if you've done something useful.

Travel books about daring trips to places filled with hardships erupt like volcanic ash from the "featured on sale" sections of bookstores. Authors fill the shelves, as they have for a dozen decades, with endless sagas of how they climbed-a-mountain-and-everybody-died, why they sailed-the-Pacific-in-a-sea-of-storms, and even all-the-good-reasons-why-people-should-not-do-the-dangerous-pastime-the-author-does.

"Into a Desert Place" features many of the hallmarks of this unfortunate genre of "we nearly died" non-fiction. Baja California's alien landscapes, spiked with impassable mountains, rattlesnakes and boojum trees, certainly qualifies in many regions as a "need a sense of high adventure and a contempt for danger to tour there" area. Yet, "Into a Desert Place" does not repel in the way that "body count on Mount Everest" books can. On the contrary, this book simply charms. "Into a Desert Place" is a complete revelation--an accessible, winning account of how adverse conditions can be met by those most basic values--determination, a good attitude and, indeed, a good heart.

Mr. Mackintosh manages to convey the hardships of the trip, the kindness of most of the people he met along the way, and his own struggles to complete his quest, all without undue sentimentality or boastfulness. The book has a folksy, simple feel about it, but it is anything but a simple book. Instead of the usual travel book conceits based on machismo or "sheer pluck", we see Baja through the eyes of Everyman. We need more books like "Into a Desert Place" and fewer books about how many innocent tourists drowned at sea. We all belong in the desert place to which this book removes us. After reading this book, the reader may not wish to walk around Baja, but the reader might well wish to find that place of quiet, and think a bit.

I bought this book years ago, after reading a typewritten review in one of those "Doomsday Is Comming--Soon!" 'zines. Most of the books reviewed in it were those grim tomes about how to survive by eating nuts and berries after The Big One gets dropped and wipes out 50% of our population. Mr. McKintosh's book proved to be a pleasant suprise--a well- written account, an out-and-out adventure, a walk across the remote desert of Lower California on a shoestring budget.

When he got the idea to actually Do It, McKinstosh was slightly pudgy Scottish college professor whose main exercise seemed to have been lifting a bottle of beer to his lips while he watched football (that's soccer to us Yanks) on the telly. By the time he completed his several month journey, he was lean and sun-baked, the antithesis of his former couch potato self.

In the process, I'd say Mr. McKintosh grew, and actually "found the handle". He figured out what he was about, and what he wanted to do with his life.

For me, some of the most enjoyable parts were those describing how he begged equipment from manufacturers and outfitters, and how he raised funding along the way by writing accounts that he posted to newspapers and magazines.

Of course, there's The Adventure itself, including an amusing account of how he got sloshed from booze he obtained from gathering whiskey bottles that had washed ashore after being thrown overboard from cruise ships. (He sagely notes that staggering around in the boonies at night is risky business.)

Along the way, McKintosh gets befriended by all sorts of interesting, impoverished, and invariably generous folk. Those accounts have a Beginner's Mind freshness to them as well.

Since his original trek, McKinstosh has acquired a modicum of fame. He lectures and writes for the Baja Travel Club, and has since written another book about a second journey with a burro for company. That's a nice piece as well, but I prefer the freshness that only comes from seeing things for the first time.

I'm an old Baja hand myself, and over the years, I've collected a lot of books about Lower California. This one ranks at the very top.

So buy it, read it, and enjoy the photographs. I'm sure you'll find the money well spent.

This book totally captivated me. I was familiar with most of the areas traveled and found him to be right on target with his descriptions. I love Baja and enjoyed learning the experiences he encountered and how he tackled all the many hardships he faced.

I loved this book! I think that is has everything in that goes on to make a great mystery. There is a complex plot, lots of suspects and a surprise ending. The main character is Charlotte Willet, a young widow living in a small New England town in 1763. She finds herself in the middle of a perfect riddle and manages to come out of it with grace.

The supporting characters include her neighbor Rich Longfellow, an aspiring scientist with a Holmes quality to him; his sister Diana, a Boston, pampered lady who is smarter than people think and Lem, a young boy who works for Charlotte and wants to go to Harvard one day. The whole cast is wonderful and they add color to the overall story.

The mystery: a man who just flashed some gold in a local tavern seems to burst into flames and disappear! This is spotted by a local who begins to weave a strange story. This whole novel had a old-time flavor to it and is one of the best modern mysteries that I have read. Oh, by the way, the history is accurate and really places the story in time and place. I highly recommend this to anyone.

It is a fine line which Margaret Miles successfully treads, crossing a lively and well-paced mystery with a text that is historically accurate. The command of her scholarship is evident in the everyday details she provides about life in 18th century Massachusetts, yet her character development is modern, which is a major reason that the story is so riveting. This is a complicated murder mystery with none of the modern conveniences available in either weapons or forensics. Yet, again, due to the author's bone-deep scholarship, the whole premise is compelling and believable. A wonderful read, can't wait to get the next one in the series!

Ms. Miles has done a superb job of capturing the atmosphere of early America - furthermore, the images of New England fall ring wonderfully true. Those images of leaves turning, cool nights and harvest end offered some small relief to this reader suffering through a blazing hot Kansas August.

Charlotte Willett, the main character, is intelligent and self confident, without undermining the realistic treatment of her place as a widow in colonial society. I was much impressed by this balance as achieved by the author.

The developing political pressures between the colonies and England are present, and offer hope for additional volumes set in increasingly turbulent times. All in all, well researched, convincingly written and with well paced plot turns. I am seeking out the additional volumes immediately.