Anne Bruce has her thumb on the heartbeat of human nature. Her latest book "Building A High Morale Workplace" transcends corporate walls and infiltrates any business environment that demands human interaction, which in today's society is all of them.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants an instant surge of energy and posses the desire to implement techniques that will engage and inspire your team.

Thank you Anne Bruce, you have helped me to see the limitless opportunity, for the first time all over again!

Anne Bruce is a great author who has written a book that has a message that is both easy to digest and also easy to apply to the modern workplace. Her style is smooth and all of her chapters build towards helping the reader understand the importance of improving morale in the workplace. Her examples are interesting, her teachings meaningful and her conclusions insightful. Morale building made easy .... what a great thought. I heartily recommend this well-written book to all Managers!!

Anne Bruce's "Building A High Morale Workplace" is a must read for anyone truly interested in making their work environment a happy and productive place. Her use of the Management experiences of others together with specific steps for implementing morale building procedures will prove to be an invaluable resource.

The book "Butterflies in Flight" by Roger Camp is such a visceral experience. It is so striking, intuitive and emotional. It just grabs you and takes you on a visual and sensitive but demonstrative trip through an explosion of color that transforms it into a butterfly sanctuary. Wow! What a great book for everyone affected by Sept. 11. The book takes you to ethereal places far from hate and anxiety.

The joy that Camp brings to this accordian format tickles my senses and transports me to long-ago childhood gardens. Colors dazzle, while shapes and markings mystify me. He offers a wondrous world, indeed. I deeply appreciate the hours and patience Camp devoted to this digital project - that we might take off on our own flights of fancy. This is a marvelous gift for the holiday season. It should have a vast appeal to naturalists and photographers, both the young and the adult.

If you love art as much as you love butterflies, you'll find this book is an amazing combination of the two. The layout and design makes it all the more unique. If you have a butterfly lover in your family, you MUST add this to their holiday gifts.

"Candor & Perversion" collects nearly forty of Roger Shattuck's previously published essays on a broad range of topics in education, literature and the arts. Nearly all of these essays were published after 1985, predominantly in Salmagundi, The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. It is an outstanding collection of essays by a scholar of wide-ranging, thoughtful and sober intelligence.

The collection is divided into two parts. The first part, "Intellectual Craftsmanship," contains a series of polemical essays that deal with topics generally subsumed in recent years under the term "Culture Wars." In this part, Shattuck stakes out his position clearly in a number of essays dealing with the proper role of education and the importance of the canon. Thus, in the essay "Nineteen Theses on Literature," Shattuck states that, "we have brought ourselves to a great deal of perplexity about the basic role of education." This perplexity arises from the question of whether education's proper role should be "[to] socialize the young within an existing culture and offer them the means to succeed within that culture" or, in the alternative, "[to] give to the young the means to challenge and overthrow the existing culture, presumably in order to achieve a better life." Shattuck's response is in favor of the former, choosing a conservative view of education's role. In doing so, he essentially resolves this question consistent with a position he articulates in another of his essays, "Education, Higher and Lower," where he states that, "some of us have come to believe that it is possible, even necessary, to be liberal in political matters and conservationist in cultural matters."

These polemical pieces on the role of education are followed by a number of essays that explore such topics as "The Spiritual in Art," "How We Think at the Movies" (where he explores, among other things, whether thinking is possible without language), "Life Before Language: Nathalie Sarraute" (where he examines Sarraute's attempts to capture, in fiction, mental life as it exists before it "gets caught and stifled in the rough net of conventional language"), "Michel Foucault," and "Radical Skepticism and How We Got There." In all of these essays, Shattuck explores, with erudition and balance, a range of topics that have been prone in recent years to irrational polemics.

The second part of the collection, "A Critics Job of Work," contains essays that are best described as literary journalism. In a series of essays under the broad title "Tracking the Avant Guard in France," Shattuck explores the biographies and artistic significance of a range of artists and writers, including Marcel Duchamp, Hans Arp, Sarah Bernhardt, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau. The most telling of his essays in this part of the book is titled "From Aestheticism to Fascism," where Shattuck calmly proffers the lineage that ran from the "antinomian, decadent aestheticism" of the "art for art's sake" movement to the 'irrationalism, racism and nationalism that produced the most vicious and destructive aberration of modern times' in Germany and Italy.

The final essays in the collection are broadly grouped under the title "America, Africa and Elsewhere." Here, Shattuck explores a number of writers, including Mary Settle, Arthur Miller, Octavio Paz, V. S. Naipaul, and Leopold Senghor, as well as the artistic significance of the collaboration between Stieglitz and O'Keefe. These essays are wide ranging, insightful and balanced. The last of these essays, "Scandal and Stereotypes on Broadway: The New Puritanism," seemingly comes full circle from the opening essay of the book insofar as Shattuck reiterates his culturally conservative position in a stinging review of "Angels in America," stating that it was a play for which he was ashamed of himself for not having walked out. In Shattuck's words, the play "represents Puritanism inverted."

"Candor & Perversion" reaffirms Roger Shattuck's position as one of America's foremost cultural commentators. If you're interested in the polemics that have engulfed education, literature and the arts in the past decade, I can only say: read this book! You may not agree with Shattuck, but you will find his intelligent and careful reasoning regarding these issues a refreshing change from the often muddled and irrational posturing that characterizes much writing on these very important subjects.

'Candor & Perversion' collects nearly forty of Roger Shattuck's previously published essays on a broad range of topics in education, literature and the arts. Nearly all of these essays were published after 1985, predominantly in 'Salmagundi', 'The New York Review of Books' and 'The New Republic'. It is an outstanding collection of essays by a scholar of wide-ranging, thoughtful and sober intelligence.

The collection is divided into two parts. The first part, 'Intellectual Craftsmanship', contains a series of polemical essays that deal with topics generally subsumed in recent years under the term 'Culture Wars'. In this part, Shattuck stakes out his position clearly in a number of essays dealing with the proper role of education and the importance of the canon. Thus, in the essay 'Nineteen Theses on Literature,' Shattuck states that, 'we have brought ourselves to a great deal of perplexity about the basic role of education.' This perplexity arises from the question of whether education's proper role should be '[to] socialize the young within an existing culture and offer them the means to succeed within that culture' or, in the alternative, '[to] give to the young the means to challenge and overthrow the existing culture, presumably in order to achieve a better life.' Shattuck's response is in favor of the former, choosing a conservative view of education's role. In doing so, he essentially resolves this question consistent with a position he articulates in another of his essays, 'Education, Higher and Lower,' where he states that, 'some of us have come to believe that it is possible, even necessary, to be liberal in political matters and conservationist in cultural matters.'

These polemical pieces on the role of education are followed by a number of essays that explore such topics as 'The Spiritual in Art', 'How We Think at the Movies' (where he explores, among other things, whether thinking is possible without language), 'Life Before Language: Nathalie Sarraute' (where he examines Sarraute's attempts to capture, in fiction, mental life as it exists before it 'gets caught and stifled in the rough net of conventional language'), 'Michel Foucault', and 'Radical Skepticism and How We Got There.' In all of these essays, Shattuck explores, with erudition and balance, a range of topics that have been prone in recent years to irrational polemics.

The second part of the collection, 'A Critics Job of Work,' contains essays that are best described as literary journalism. In a series of essays under the broad title 'Tracking the Avant Guard in France,' Shattuck explores the biographies and artistic significance of a range of artists and writers, including Marcel Duchamp, Hans Arp, Sarah Bernhardt, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau. The most telling of his essays in this part of the book is titled 'From Aestheticism to Fascism,' where Shattuck calmly proffers the lineage that ran from the 'antinomian, decadent aestheticism' of the 'art for art's sake' movement to the 'irrationalism, racism and nationalism that produced the most vicious and destructive aberration of modern times' in Germany and Italy.

The final essays in the collection are broadly grouped under the title 'America, Africa and Elsewhere.' Here, Shattuck explores a number of writers, including Mary Settle, Arthur Miller, Octavio Paz, V. S. Naipaul, and Leopold Senghor, as well as the artistic significance of the collaboration between Stieglitz and O'Keefe. These essays are wide ranging, insightful and balanced. The last of these essays, 'Scandal and Stereotypes on Broadway: The New Puritanism', seemingly comes full circle from the opening essay of the book insofar as Shattuck reiterates his culturally conservative position in a stinging review of 'Angels in America', stating that it was a play for which he was ashamed of himself for not having walked out. In Shattuck's words, the play 'represents Puritanism inverted.'

'Candor & Perversion' reaffirms Roger Shattuck's position as one of America's foremost cultural commentators. If you're interested in the polemics that have engulfed education, literature and the arts in the past decade, I can only say: read this book! You may not agree with Shattuck, but you will find his intelligent and careful reasoning regarding these issues a refreshing change from the often muddled and irrational posturing that characterizes much writing on these very important subjects.

As with his previous works, such as FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE and THE INNOCENT EYE, Roger Shattuck manages to cover many topics in his new book. There is no thematic link between the essays--it is enough that Shattuck writes well about each subject. Shattuck is, along with William Pritchard, Denis Donoghue, and Andrew Delbanco, one of our most perspicacious and eloquent critics, as he is equally adept at analyzing a writer's words (such as in his essay on Mallarme's poetry) or a social phenomenon (such as in his essay "Radical Skepticisim and How We Got Here"). The clarity of his writing prompts one to question the value of the opaque prose produced by many academics in our age.

In this fascinating book, the authors (both sociology professors) look at the evolution of the American religious landscape since the Revolutionary War. In their study, they discovered three trends. First of all, in frontier areas (which in 1776 still included whole swaths of the thirteen colonies) there was a larger proportion of men to women, and consequently a lower rate of church attendance. As areas became settled, the proportion of men to women decreased, and the rate of church attendance increased.

Secondly, they found that sects (religious organizations with a high level of tension with their surrounding sociocultural environment) tended to have a higher rate of growth, and a higher level of commitment than churches (religious organizations with a low level of tension with their environment). The third trend is that over time, sects transform themselves into churches, lowering their demands on members and as such lessoning their tension with their environment.

As they follow American history, they show how these trends affected the growth and/or decline of the fortunes of various churches, both Protestant and Catholic. I must admit to have been absolutely captivated by this book. Not only do the author make an excellent case for their theory, but also the book itself is compelling reading. I was especially interested in what the authors had to say about how denominations change, and what it means.

I greatly enjoyed this book, and recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of the Christian church in the United States.

This easy to read work intrigues. It does this by carefully challenging the previous conclusions of the churching of America, i.e. Ahlstrom et al.

Starting with Colonial times, it reviews the quantitative analysis and the qualitative conclusions as well. It determined that much beginning from these times on has been distorted by bias and not using the best census material available.

They deduce that successful church movements base their focus on otherworldliness, starting out thus as sects which grow. The tendency however is to eventually make minor concessions to the culture, thus shifting the emphasis away from what gave them success, high tension with their culture towards lowered levels. This cyclical pattern they have found repeated over and over, the sects becoming churches thereby giving birth to new sects that revitalize the church and grow.

The pattern begins with the upstart Baptists and Methodists outgrowing the established Congregationalists, etc. Then themselves, especially the Methodists losing their dominant position to new groups.

Their conclusions are fascinating, disputing much of the established findings of scholarly American Christian history. Rather than finding the changes in churched American as attributable to sudden cultural/societal glitches, rather the authors find "a long, slow and consistent increase in religious participation form 1776 to 1926--with the rate inching up slightly after 1926 and then hovering near 60 percent. Second, they conclude that the primary factor is what they term "the sect-church process" (roughly sketched out above) in supporting the progress in America.

The future? They place confidence in humans as "rational beings, not puppets enslaved to the strings of history and always have the capacity to choose." Their surveys and literature they use suggest that American will continue to want and find or start movements which maximize otherworld rewards sufficient to inspire sacrifice.

One must remember this is sociology speaking, not theology. Theology of the best kind tells of God's unfolding plan of salvation (heilsgesitche) which will occur exactly as God has planned. True faith, belief and membership in this salvation is His doing through His church, where His Word and Sacraments are truly spoken and distributed.

Even though this book was published eight years ago, it still ought to be on the book shelf of any serious student of American Christianity, and be a part of the strategic knowledge base of any denominational executive who pretends to know what it will take for his or her denominational organization to be a viable force for societal and spiritual transformation in the twenty-first century.

The 214 years of American religious history covered by this book represents the transformation from a time when as a nation most people took no part in organized religion, to a time when nearly two-thirds do. The continual founding of new religious movements during this two-century period has allowed for a freshness that could not be controlled by institutionalized religion.

The control exercised by established churchlike religious organizations in the past actually led to their decline. They could not survive in a free market religious economy. Methods of establishing control included identifying a state-endorsed church, controlling who could be ordained and serve as pastors, and having a non-congregational polity or form of governance.

While it may seem to be a contradiction, it the high expectations that religious organizations--particularly congregations--place on individual believers that results in a tenacious and growing church movement. What was true in 1776 is still true in 2000 and beyond. To discover the secrets of past and future success and vitality, purchase and read this book.

This book would be laugh at loud funny if it wasn't so scary at the same time. I'll never look at indie films the same way again.W I'm not a real mystery fan (read a few) but this book is fascinating on every level. Totally unpredictable

Moses Wine, that wistful, ironic and always thoughtful P.I. has been with us through eight books and some thirty years, rambling from his beginnings in Berkeley to the capitals of the world. We've been along with him through marriage and family, divorce and acrimony, to what he hopes will be his final wife. Has Moses done everything? Well, not quite because now, in this new book, Moses Wine wants to direct.
In "Director's Cut," Roger L. Simon has rediscovered his satiric impulse. In "The Big Fix," the first in the series, Simon had fun with the Los Angeles-Chandler style. ("I turned left on La Cienega and drove right on Santa Monica...") This time around, Moses gets mixed up with the twin scourges of the present age: movie making and terrorism. He's game, if not quite ready, on both counts.
Book for book, I've always been caught up in the various capers and scrapes, and that, appropriately, is the case here. But this time, I saw something else. Moses Wine has become part of the American cultural landscape. Simon has created an American archetype, a fictional detective who has entered our collective mind and now stands for more than his adventures. Like Lew Archer or Sam Spade, Moses Wine -- who is just trying to get through the day -- finds people are shooting at him. Just like the country he reflects. What Simon has done to keep this series fresh is to let Moses grow and change. That's unusual for literary detectives who are usually frozen along one mean street or another. The joke is that as Moses ages, it seems that he's only going to make new mistakes, and he does, but then damned if he doesn't also manage to achieve a certain wisdom.
In "Director's Cut" he's in Prague with a pregnant wife, chasing down a completion bond problem (it's a kind of insurance)on a movie set. Moses winds up in the director's chair. He's not bad at it, at least he's no worse than the people who direct movies all the time, and after all Moses Wine can also collar miscreants, crack cases and crack wise.

Immediately following September 11th, Moses Wine's detective agency became seriously strapped for clients. They only had one case and his partner (who is also his wife) was handling it. Moses was puzzled when he was called into the local FBI office and questioned about the destruction of the Twin Towers, the Czech Republic and Radio Free Europe headquarters in Prague. Of course he knows nothing about the subjects the FBI asked him about but matters become a little clearer when he receives a call from a friend who is in Prague.

Arthur Sugarman, a completion bondsman for movies, wants him to come over there and act as private security for a film being shot in Prague. Almost as soon as he arrives, Islamic fundamentalists kidnap Moses and the film's leading lady. When government officials rescue them, the kidnap leader escapes. Moses becomes the film director because his predecessor was badly injured during the abduction. Moses works with CIA officials to try to stop a terrorist cell who infiltrated the movie set from carrying out their diabolic agenda.

DIRECTOR'S CUT is a wild and wacky thriller that satirizes the games one has to play to make it in the motion picture industry. It is also a somber reflection about the effect September 11th has had on the protagonist and how he needs to contribute to the cause. The mystery revolves around the leader who is manipulating events to further his personal agenda and how the hero finally figures it out and tries to stop him. Robert L. Simon is a talented writer who can always be counted to deliver a chilling thriller.

Harriet Klausner

This book is full of silly plays on words, like "Capt. Bug Rogers" and "The Bug in the Moon." Although my 4-year-old daughter doesn't get the references, she still asks me to read it again and again. Every page has a pop-up, a movable piece, or flap to open. She broke two of them, which I was able to glue back together, good as new. Personally I thought it was kind of hokey, but I rated it 5 stars because it certainly seems to reach its audience.

This is the first "Bug Book" by David Carter I have bought. It has wonderful illustrations and pop-ups. I thought it was a little young for my four-month old son when I bought it. However, I thought it was too cute to pass up. As it turns out the colors are so vivid and eye-catching and the pop-ups so entertaining, that he actually laughs when I read it to him. I highly recommend it for children of any age. I plan on buying many more of the "Bug Books".

Our five year-old son received this book as a gift and it was a delightful surprise! We laughed out loud through the whole book. It was very fun to read. Lots of interactive fun! This was our first book by David Carter but I would buy another. Very young children would like it too but I would be afraid of it holding up without getting ripped - not that it is too flimsy but that young hands would want to grab it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a very warm and tender true story about all the cats and other animals that live on Mr. Caras's farm. I can hardly wait to read another of his many books.

Roger Caras, a very talented writer and animal lover, takes us on a tour of Thistle Hill, his farm in Northern Maryland. Anyone who loves cats, dogs and other animals will love this book. Its gentle humor and compassion are quite absorbing. I must confess to a certain amount of jealousy, though--I would love to have a home like Thistle Hill Farm!

This is an outstanding, well written, entertaining book. Cat and animal lovers should all enjoy it. The book has a beautifully illustrated cover and nice pictures inside of various animals. The book covers not only various adventures of different animals but also shows their intelligence and emotional natures. Roger Caras, the author, writes in a clever, down-home, folksy way. The author also shows his deep caring, respect, and understanding for his many 4-legged friends.

My vet loaned me her copy. I like it so well I plan to buy my own copy and also one for a friend. I look forward to reading other books by Roger Caras. He has written over 60. Nancy Allen, Ada, Oklahoma

The other review nicely describe this gem, but makes it sound like something only a scientist could understand. I'd just like to add that any intelligent person will have no trouble following this lucid account of the first two years of Los Alamos.

This book is THRILLING in the scope and depth of its description of HOW the bomb was made. This was a unique historical event in that the best brains in the world, stimulated by a sense of extreem urgency and given, in effect, unlimited physical and financial resources accomplished in the space of three years somthing that in the 1930's was considered as Science Fiction.

The book is highly readable and understandable by non technical people. This book is proof that "once upon a time" we did things "Right the First Time" in this country. An outstanding historical and technical account of the "ultimate" invention.

Very well written and does not overwhelm the reader with technical minutia. This is an excellent companion to Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb and will please any student of the history of science.

This is a good discussion of a complex problem in Churches of Christ. I mean, just where are we going? Where did we come from? Overall, the discussion was adequate and worthwhile. Sometimes, it seems that conclusions are reached simply to be consistent with our heritage - not that that is all bad - but sometimes other conclusions are just as valid. Worth the time to read.

The authors provide a stimulating discussion of the need for reassessment and redirection within churches of Christ. Beginning with the perceptive observation that the church most of us know came of age in the 1950's, they highlight the growing sense of disorientation felt by many in an increasingly post-modern world.

Before suggesting directions and solutions, they provide helpful perspective by taking a giant step backward and tracing our modern roots from the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century through the American Restoration Movement of the 19th century. In doing this they demonstrate that at least some of our perspectives and distinctive doctrines were influenced by people and historical forces much more recent than the first century.

After that, the authors get to "the crux of the matter," retrace the current crisis of identity, diversity, and change in the church, and attempt to offer some directions for the future. Chief among these is a call to re-focus attention on the "core" of the gospel: "the story of our creator God's actions to save us from sin and death, culminating in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Christ." This focus, they submit, provides the best platform for biblical interpretation, individual growth and congregational unity.

On the issue of biblical interpretation, for example, the authors contend that good interpretation acknowledges the core as a "center of gravity, allowing that core to govern both the reading of the text and its application." This approach de-emphasizes a search for "rules" and "patterns" and re-focuses on broader aspects of the text: purpose, theme, genre, context, and principle.

The authors acknowledge that the book is not intended as a fully-developed theology, but as a starting point for further thought and discussion. From that standpoint, I would highly recommend it as a very interesting and thought-provoking read.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this clearly written, thought provoking book. It was especially meaningful to me because I know and respect Dr. Foster. Not growing up in the church of Christ, the brief history of the church's beginnings was very helpful in bring me up to speed and the authors made clear and easy to follow conclusions about why our history is vital in understanding the crises we face today. The ideas of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern (which can be difficult to grasp, at least for me) were expained in terms that made them obvious. It was not only informative, it was challanging. The authors managed to appeal to both the "traditionalists" and the "progressives" with out riding the fence themselves. As a post-modern woman in a rather conservative church, I was surprised that the authors were able to make me see the other side of the story (that of the more traditional member) and give me a larger respect for them. Their style of writing is so easy to read and their hearts seem to flow through their words. I recommend this book highly to anyone in the church of Christ who is looking to understand the problems we seem to be facing today. The book is a quick read and is not written in an "academic" style that might seem off-putting to a layperson. It is so relevant that I am hopeful we, at our church, will be able study it in a bible class in the near future.

I found this book exceptionally helpful for planning our vacation with our dogs. The places listed are great for taking your dog, and the book contains a variety of subjects: places to stay, places to eat, places to go have fun (hiking, beaches, etc.), and also lists events that are happening in the area. The only problem I had was that some prices have changed, and that there was some inside information omitted; for example, the beaches in Gloucester are leash free after the life-guards have left, even though the signs at the beach say "no dogs allowed." We missed out on some serious beach time because we didn't know that tidbit until the end of our visit. Just make sure you follow up (they include phone numbers for every spot listed) if you're counting on price or hours or something.

As a resident of Connecticut, I found it a daunting task to find places where my dog was accepted. This book took all the guess work out of who allows them and makes life a LOT easier! I was also surprised to find a few eateries in my own town which allow patio eating with my furry friend, which is a welcome surprise. Definitely, any dog owner who lives in New England or is planning on a visit here needs this book. It is much more extensive than most other dog travel guides, including a ranking system and descriptions of all places included, as well as some cute anecdotes of the authors' own experiences with their pooches at these places.

Like most people we love new england and especially the berkshires (lenox,stockbridge,ect)or a gettaway up to maine. I was always jealous of people that I meet with their dogs, and always yearn to go on vacation with our pets instead of worrying how they are doing at home with a petsitter or in a kennel somewhere. now, thanks to this book I never realized how many hotels and b&b's allowed pets! this book makes travels with your fido so much easier and they wont just be sitting in the hotel room bored, either. There are so many places for them to go to that are mentioned in this guide book, they can enjoy themselves as well. (after all, they are on vacation too, right)?
My dogs and I thank would like to thank the authors of this book from the bottom of our hearts! thank you, thank you!!cant wait to buy your new edition about New York!