The book captures a remarkable series of photos of desert canyons. The photos are good enough to keep the book on my office conference table. Ms. Williams' text provides stories of people encountering wilderness at the near edge of mystic experience.

Straight to my heart. If you love the red rocks and enjoy Terry's writing, this is it. The photography is excellent!

Coyote's Canyon is a collection of photography of the Southwestern US, coupled with Terry Tempest Williams's haunting prose. The photographs are, by and large, rich and full of the sense of the desert. The collection of short essays by Williams includes two of my absolute favorite stories about the Southwest--the one about the Man who Buries Poems, and the one about finding the Perfect Kiva. Worth the read, for anyone who yearns for the desert, or who lives there and wants to rediscover an appreciation for its magic, both in photographs and in lyrical prose.

This book chronicles the 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet starring Richard Burton and directed by Sir John Gielgud. The author played Guildenstern in the production.

Frank Rich (for 10 years the Drama Critic at the New York Times) called this his favorite book on an actor's perspective on mounting a play.

I agree with Mr. Rich on this one. The only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 stars was to avoid overdoing my enthusiasm. (I'm worried people will notice that I am the author's son. Shush, don't tell anyone.)

It got rave reviews at the time it came out and has pleased readers for over 30 years. It is both instructive and hilariously funny.

Please request it at book stores, on line and write to Proscenium Publishing requesting another release.

Thank you

Adam Redfield

I can do nothing more than echo the praise of the other reviewers. This very personal account of the rehearsal process and out-of-town tryout of the 1964 Broadway production of "Hamlet" that starred Richard Burton and was directed by John Gielgud is truly fascinating. William Redfield was a superb actor who could also write well, even though there are a handful of passages that perhaps should have been edited out.

I don't know of any book that gives you a better feeling of what it's like to be in rehearsal and trying to piece together a performance as everyone around you is trying to do the same. Redfield's account of a group of major actors--apart from Redfield and Burton, the cast included Alfred Drake, Hume Cronyn, Eileen Herlie, John Cullum, George Rose, George Voskovec, and Barnard Hughes--working under a director of undoubted genius who is somehow not really helping anyone much definitely makes you feel what it must have been like to be part of that.

If you're an actor, a director, or just love theatre, you will probably find this book fascinating.

I read this book in the La Salle College library in 1965 or 1966, when I was supposed to be in class. I made the right choice. The memory of the description of Richard Burton being booed still brings a smile to my face. Mr. Redfield's witt is a source of constant pleasure throughout. I fondly remember William Redfield as a superbly entertaining guest on many talk shows, during that golden era of talk shows that was the 1960's.

I saw this play in person, and just finished the book. Nothing better than great poetry made for our time. Highly recomend for those who who've seen it, or heard a review. Some of the plays are musical so they don't translate well to paper. One drawback.

Love's Fire embodies our perception of language. The spoken and unspoken voices of God, Love, Nature, and Humanity become the essential elements in this collection of one acts. Riveting and powerful, Love's Fire demands to be performed. Not only is the language spoken by the actors and heard by the audience, but the language of our contemporary masters blends with the master of language himself, William Shakespeare. As Love's Fire reinvigorates our grasp of language we come to an understanding that poems, sonnets, books, plays, spiritual songs, or body movements fuel the fire of love. An excellent piece of work by 7 masters who dedicated the collection to the Bard.

Shakespeare's inspired words talk to today's audience through the intriguing interpretations of master American playrights. Especially fascinating is John Guare's "The General of Hot Desire". These original works defy description...so read them...or better yet...perform them...and appreciate these unique literary gems in all their splendor.

This text book is outstanding in terms of clear pictures and detailed descriptions. It exhibits numerous color photos which help remember the clinical signs and appearances of common infectious diseases. On the other hand, the text excellently outlines and explains the underlying theory and treatments. This book takes a modern approach to teach Microbiology by introducing the contents in a system based mannar. This is very different from the traditional way of teaching the subject in which the materials are delivered species by species. I think this way is more clinically relevant and thus, suits the needs of health care students.

Medical Microbiology would be an excellent reference book for any microbiologist. It contains general information about any bacterium you can imagine as well as overviews of the diseases various bacteria cause. Symptoms, complications, diagnosis, and treatment options are covered in detail. The book also contains wonderfully vivid pictorial accounts of the bacteria and their various modes of pathogenicity. A fascinating, well-organized text of sophisticated microbiology!

At least a very "biologically correct" textbook of microbial diseases, I'm going to translate it only for fun, for me and for my italian entourage; and so many beautiful pictures that I never seen before in a similar text in Italy. I'd like to translate it for publication if possible. Antonio Angioi (microbiologist), Sassari, Italy

Newspaper stories about the oil spill created the impression that the cause of the accident was simply that the captain was drunk. This book shows that the real situation was far more complex. The captain was definitely not drunk. He did have a few drinks, which is against regulations. Even after all the analysis it is not clear what exactly went wrong. The fact that the captain had a few drinks was not the only breach of regulations. None of the officers had a six-hour off duty time in the twelve-hour period before departure. The ship was single hulled instead of double hulled as was foreseen when the oil terminal was built. When Congress granted permission to build the pipeline and the terminal one of the conditions was that there would be a state-of-the-art contingency plan for oil spills. There was nothing of the sort. A Vessel Traffic Services station was supposed to monitor the movement of the ships through the strait. Due to cost cutting measures the station was unable to monitor the movement of the ship. A major cause of inefficiency in the clean up was the lack of clarity about who was in charge, the Coast Guard or Exxon. It is not just the captain that acted irresponsibly, so did all parties concerned. This is described in one part of the book. The second part of the book describes the impact of the oil spill and especially of the clean up on the communities affected. Each of the communities split in the middle. Half of the members took the position of trying to squeeze as much money out of Exxon as possible whilst the other half did not want to have anything to do with Exxon. Exxon did not succeed in engaging the communities in a positive way. The third part describes the nature in Alaska. These descriptions are wonderful and make you want to go there. These three parts are interwoven. The advantage is that the reader gets a three dimensional understanding of what happened: the responsibility for the disaster and the clean up, the impact on different members of the community and the impact on nature. The author places the ultimate responsibility on the consumer. He writes, " the American population prefers to live in a fog and is willing to accept almost anything in return for the opportunity to keep its gas tanks topped up" (with cheap gas). The combination of corporations maximising short-term profits and consumers closing their eyes to the consequences of their behaviour makes one worried. There must be a better way.

Out of the Channel should be required reading for anyone who thinks environmentally ... not just environmentalists, but students, political and economic theorists, and most of all, writers. I had the good fortune to learn a great deal about writing from John Keeble, and reading his book is an education all by itself. As a rigorous study of the physical and human impact of the Exxon Valdez disaster, Out of the Channel is a comprehensive anatomy, a text that does not shirk any of the heavy load its vast subject demands. Without taking the easy route of righteous anger, Keeble explores every nuance of the oil spill, and he follows that tenacious blot of Prudhoe Bay crude as it seeps out of the tangible world and into the minds and spirits of the permanent and temporary inhabitants of Prince William Sound. This tenth anniversary edition, with the expanded coverage allowed by the perspective of time, is a gift that should not be overlooked.

John Keeble, whose writing focuses on the issues facing the American Northwest, paints a memorable picture of the Exxon Valdez oilspill and its aftermath. Asked by the Greenwich Village Voice to write an article on the spill, he travels to Alaska and observes first-hand the efforts made to restore the land and the wildlife. However, the more he observes the more he is haunted by two observations: 1) that the size of the oil companies, and the entangled relationship between the companies and the government, is enormously greater than we have suspected, and 2) that the vast amounts of money poured into the clean-up effort causes many to view that money as their goal. His investigations into the clean-up follow a theme he develops in his other works: that the intrusion of a company or government upon the land inevitably causes exploitation; and those who live in that land must invariably suffer the consequences. Torn between the desires to make money, to clear the oil, and to downplay the scope of the incident, the people involved with clean-up waste a good deal of their effort. The more damage Keeble assesses, the more in tune he becomes with the suffering of the people and animals truly hurt, and ultimately, the reader, too, feels the chill that shakes the author at each new discovery.

Two recurring themes of achievers are mentioned in the first few pages of this book, the importance of toughminded optimism and the power of persistence. It is in that spirit that Gardner develops his topic. With the inevitability of change, openness to new experience is vital to self-renewal he claims. Being active in intentional change leads to growth rather than change by default he explains. Knowing how to creatively interact with changes in the environment is a learned ability that can lead to the development of new potentialities Gardner writes.
This interactive process is experienced at the individual level also. Gardner describes healthy self-renewing people as those who both give and accept love. They depend on other people and are capable of having other people depend on them.
Passion is part of the self-renewed life. He says people of that bent know they must have conviction about what they are doing and if they don't, they need to find something they can have conviction about.
The principles he describes at the individual level have implications collectively as well. He goes on to state that "it is important that a society create an atmostphere that encourages effort, striving and vigorous performance" (p. 20). It is within social systems that individuals make their contributions. A lot of wise insight is provided in this book. He leaves the readers better off than when they picked up the book to read.

What a terrific book! What amazes me most is that this book was written over thirty years ago and still has so much to say to people today. A basic breakdown of the book is this: organizations and individuals must use innovation as a way of preserving and renewing their institutions. If one chooses status quo as a preservation method, one will do the exact opposite one intended: the institution will rot, not thrive. This book is great material for any leader who wants to understand the dynamics of change and the type of obstacles one will have to overcome if one wants to lead innovation.

A deeply perceptive (short) paperback on the self-renewal of individuals and societies; why some decay and others remain innovative and creative. Now in his 90th year, Mr. Gardner continues to teach at Stanford. In clear, concise terms the author sets down the factors that produce deterioration in people and societies. He maintains they are caused mostly by failure to deal with change. The factors? He names five.

SELF-DEVELOPMENT. Not just skills, but the whole range of our own potentialities for sensing, wondering, learning, understanding and aspiring. Gardner points out that this does not happen until one gets over the odd notion that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE. By midlife we are accomplished fugitives from ourselves. Our lives are filled with diversions; our heads stuffed with knowledge; we are involved with people. Result: we've never taken time to probe our inner selves. We don't want to know ourselves. We don't want to depend upon ourselves. We can't stand to live with ourselves. A better way is to develop a more comfortable view of who you are. It is the true basis of inner strength.

COURAGE TO FAIL. By the time we reach middle age, we carry in our heads a long list of things we'll never try again because we tried once and failed. Mature people learn less because they are willing to risk less. There's no learning without difficulty and fumbling, but if you want to keep on learning, you must keep risking failure.

LOVE. Develop the ability to have mutually fruitful relations with others. Be capable of accepting love and giving it; of depending upon others and of being depended upon. Develop the ability to see life through another's eyes and reach out to others.

MOTIVATION. A self-renewing person is highly motivated. The author points out that motivation isn't a fuel that gets injected into your system (motivation speakers won't do it); it's partly inner energy and partly the result of the social forces in your life. Gardner makes the point that we live in an over-verbalized civilization. Words have become more real than the things they signify and we need to return to the solid earth of direct experience because we are drowning in meaningless word tonnage.

"For those who have accepted the reality of change, the need for endless learning and trying is a way of living, a way of thinking, a way of being awake and ready. "Life isn't a train ride where you choose your destination, pay your fare and settle back for a nap. "It's a cycle ride over uncertain terrain, with you in the driver's seat, constantly correcting your balance and determining the direction of progress. "It's dfficult, sometimes profoundly painful."

For those who are able to achieve self-renewal, Gardner believes they will also develop a more realistic survival view of the world: "Sensible people will understand that there will never be a time when we are not in imminent danger. Cruelty, violence, brutality will be held in leash only by unresting effort--if held in leash at all. "Sloth, indulgence, smugness, torpor begotten of ease and flabbiness begotten of security will always lurk in wait." No society will ever solve the issue of the individual versus the organization. "No society will ever discover how to become civilized without running the risk of becoming overcivilized."

This is a profoundly thoughtful, penetrating piece on what makes you tick. Well worth your time.

Plumbers are just as important as our philosophers--that's the message of this book. If we don't respect both--neither our theories nor our pipes will hold any water. Gardner does not oversimplify education and say that every student should go to college: he only demands that you choose your own path and go at it full tilt. Excellence is the only thing that Gardner demands. This book is a call for Americans to be great: Americans love to be great, Gardner argues. They just need the leadership to inspire them.

I have read the most excellent first edition and this 2nd, too. These books pose interesting questions for the next generation of "Teachers" and the Educators that we spend money to support. The first edition has a preface or introduction that should be re-printed so that the Modern Reader can compare the two. This should be Required Reading in High School!!!

This book packs alot of punch for it's conciseness (155 pages of text).

Gardner starts off with observations of some important tensions in the American value system, namely between a society in which one's rewards are strictly related to one's performance versus a society where equality of results is more valued; the conflict between freedom and equality.

Next, there is a discussion of education. "Education as a Sorting Out Process" is the title of one of the chapters. There is a discussion of how standardized tests and various degrees are used as markers of talent and merit. Gardner puts forth the controversial opinion, which I agree with, that too many people in our country go to college because they feel like it is the only path that is truly respected and valued in our culture (he wrote this in 1984 so I think this applies even more so to today). The idea is that college is only one kind of education, an academic one. But some people are more suited to technical or vocational education or simply to learn by working, rather than manipulating abstract symbols, composing essays, etc... Life and society require all kinds of different skills and math, science, literature, and other intellectual skills are just one dimension.

Third, there is a discussion of the many forms of excellence (related to the many kinds of education discussed previously). In our society, we value scientists and Phds and CEOs but there are excellent plumbers, excellent gardeners, excellent teachers, excellent volunteers, excellent parents, others who are excellent and contribute in big ways but are not given the same prestige in our society. He talks about continueing to learn through one's life; and not just academic, book learning, but learning about oneself, about relationships, about managing one's life, taking care of the ordinary business of life, developing character.

Lastly, there is a discussion of excellence and leadership in the context of the big organizations (government, large corporations, small companies) that most of us find ourselves working in day to day. He talks about expecting alot from people, holding them up to high standards and making them feel like they can make a difference.

Overall, this is a book about HIGH STANDARDS. It is about maintaining high standards in the activities we choose to pursue and thus contacting what is deepest and best in human beings: our desire to grow, develop, and be the best we can possibly be, as individuals and together as a society. As Socrates said to Bill and Ted, "Be Excellent to Each Other".

A very well-written, comprehensive, clinician-friendly account of a treatment that appears to capture much of the essence of mindfulness and its benefits. Straight forward enough so that clinicians from all theoretical orientations should be able to appreciate the nature of the approach. It is very nice to see, in the past 15 years or so, psychologists finally trying to take a serious scientific stab at traditionally Eastern approaches like mindfulness and acceptance. The only drawback of the book, for me, was the relative lack of a serious scientific technical analysis of the approach, as the description of how the treatment theoretically works is largely discussed in metaphorical and somewhat lay-language. This may simply be because the book is aimed primarily at practicing clinicians, rather than academic psychologists and other researchers. Readers intrigued by this approach should also read Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (1999), by Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson.

If your interests include psychotherapy (especially cognitive therapies), or meditation (especially Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction), or if you are interested in research on depression, then I suspect that you will find this book as compelling as I did.

Here is what I found profound about this book, from a cognitive therapy perspective. Cognitive therapists have long known that automatic thoughts are related to various psychopathologies, but they typically theorized that CHANGING those thoughts was the royal road to psychological health. The alternative studied and developed by the authors is that carefully ATTENDING to cognitions fully as they arise and fall is itself healing. Rather than focusing on cognitive restructuring of thoughts and thinking, this cognitive therapy postulates that observing thoughts, feelings, perceptions, bodily sensations, and world events in a compassionate, "non-attached" manner liberates one from the suffering that accompanies them. The authors have begun to collect outcome data consistent with this unusual cognitive theory.

I found the authors' review of the depression literature quite informative, and the evidence in support of MBCT is described clearly. At the same time, I couldn't help noting that the MBCT approach is specifically designed to target recovering depressives, with an eye toward preventing relapse. So although MBCT is "for depression, " it is not currently intended to treat depression per se, and it is intended as an adjunct to other treatments (e.g., medication, individual psychotherapy, etc.). So, the authors focus, at least for now, on a narrowly defined population. This is not a criticism of the book or MBCT. But for now, MBCT is quite limited in scope by its infancy. I expect that someone eventually will attempt to systematize a form of MBCT for depression in general, for individuals, or for other clinical populations.

I'm always tempted to buy another book on meditation and psychotherapy. I have to be careful here. There is a glut of excellent, relevant books (e.g., books by Mark Epstein, Daniel Goleman, Ken Wilber). Buying or reading yet another book is the easy, habitual behavior when books are your drug of choice, and your cluttered house is screaming at you with volumes of printed matter. Practicing mindfulness continuously, noticing a habitual tendency, and attending fully to the present moment, presents itself as the mindful, non-habitual alternative choice. Did I really need yet another book?

Well, I'm glad I read yet another book on this topic. This book shares many elements with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), an influential meditative approach that has considerable empirical support and is finding its way into many medical and psychological settings (seeJon Kabat-Zinn's "Full Catastrophe Living"). Initially the authors attempted to bolt MBSR approaches onto previously existing variants of Cognitive Therapy. But as their methods and awareness evolved, MBCT increasingly came to resemble Kabat-Zinn's MBSR. Their current MBCT approach is an 8-week group program that strongly resembles the UMASS MBSR program, with some elements of traditional cognitive therapy added. I think that the MBCT variant of MBSR will be valuable in that it provides additional tools and strategies for running Mindfulness-based groups in a clinical setting. Additionally, I think MBCT nicely integrates empirically-validated components of CT with empirically-validated components of MBSR. It is worth noting that the MBCT approach is specifically psycho-educational, and takes place in a group setting. This could be the beginning of a beautiful psychotherapy.

This is a fantastic book for a variety of audiences: (1) practicing psychologists and therapists who want to learn about a useful -- and empirically supported -- skill for treating depression; (2) people who think may suffer from sad moods -- even if not full-blown depression -- and who want a medicine-free and therapy-free way to feel better; (3) academic researchers who want to know more about varieties of meditation and how to adapt meditation programs to more specific goals; (4) people interested in mindfulness meditation who want to see a psychological angle on why it works so well; (5) academic researchers who want to know more about some theories about why cognitive-behavioral therapy works so well.

Whew! So many good things to say:

The book actually reads very well -- not just by the minimal standards of academic writing, but by popular standards as well. It's clear, unpretentious and has a surprising amount of drama to it.

Many people now try to adapt some kind of mindfulness a la John Kabat-Zinn to a variety of needs for people to overcome this or that disorder, pain, etc. Nearly all assume that one can just take the whole Kabat-Zinn plan and just throw anyone into it. As someone who has taken a class based on the Kabat-Zinn program, and someone who has tried to adapt it to teaching law students and others about negotiation, I can tell you this does not work too well. Among other things, few people really manage to meditate 45 minutes a day.

The book explains how the researchers tried to adapt the program to a more specific need: preventing people from getting depressed again after they've been treated. They explain how they changed their thinking about meditation and how to teach it.

One of the most beautiful parts of the book is how frankly the authors admit how their first attempts fell short. They also frankly explain how they needed to meditate themselves before they could teach it.

Highly recommended!

685 pages divided by 31 chapters and 6 big parts. The big parts are: Linux basics (entering commands, using text editors, etc, everything on the command line), Configuring your system (from the command line), The X window system (with an overview of multimedia tools), Connecting to the ISP (and using email, FTP, browsers, telnet and IRC), system administration (basic programming and shell programming, boot managers, users, network connections, daemons, FS, kernel,...) and appendices.

This book pretends to teach how to do things not why you need to do this or that. So this is a practical book and, because linux is evolving fast, it is outdated.

Another problem of the book is that there are many authors, each responsable for a chapter or so, and there is no good coordination between them. This brings some repeated things and a feeling of no constant evolution in complexity or evolution on the presentation himself.

This book has repeatedly saved me when I needed information that the man pages are too arcane to provide. I used the book for practical suggestions on how to use the grep utility to search for multiple terms. And, it was the only UNIX book I could find that gave practical and meaningful suggestions about how to configure the modem via the command line.

Get this book, it will save you a lot of time!

This book is one of the rare guides which is organize not by what the author knows but what are the typical problems you (the reader) have to solve. I would call it "How to.." book. Almost every time when I need to mount the disk, add the device I found exact instructions how to do it and it worked.

I am not very experienced Linux user (< 2 years) and I found this book just right for me.

THIS BOOK IS TYPICAL OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS PRESS PRESIDENTIAL SERIES. GREAT INSITE OF THE GROWING UNITED STATES DURING OUR POLITCAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE UGLY SIDE OF PERSONAL POLITICS. INTRIGUE REACHED A FEVERED PITCH WITH LESSOR KNOWN INDIVIDUALS ELECTED AS PRESIDENT WHILE THE ICONS, CLAY, BENTON, WEBSTER AND CALHOUN HELD OUR COUNTRY IN THE SENATE.

This book reads more like a novel than the Polk book in this series (which I found to be very informative). This book is well documented. There is a sense that the author is generally sympathetic to and sometimes apologetic for Tyler and Webster - However I am not informed enough to know if this is a bias or a valid conclusion on the part of the author. With Tyler becoming the first VP to 'inherit' the presidency after the death of Harrison, our country was still navigating in the dark waters of our constitution and a world of threats (Mexico and England). Major players such as Clay, Webster, and Calhoon dominate the scene. Tyler's presidency would make a fine fiction drama. Misplaced trust, overwhelming ambition, and the drumbeat of sectionalism. I very much enjoyed this book.

This book fairly and vividly relates the "accidential" presidency of John Tyler. The author conveys the unique difficulties faced by Tyler as he assumes the presidency from W. H. Harrison. In fact, Tyler was most courageous in standing firm against Henry Clay and his Whig cohorts, who tried extremely hard to bully Tyler into submission. Norma Peterson, the author, provides credit where it is due, be it with Tyler or his equally courageous Secretary of State, Daniel Webster. The story in total flows extremely well, and maintains the interest of the reader throughout. The author's stance overall is pro-Tyler, and she bases this on clear reasoning and factual analysis. In total I agree with her position, that Tyler has received far less credit for his accomplishments and strength of presidential character than most historians have given him.