I'm a fan of what the author calls 'self-made worlds' and take pictures of them wherever I find them. This book treats its subjects with respect, but could include more photos of each place, and perhaps a general map to its location. I find myself wanting more from each section. Also, there are some particularly famous spots that are missing from the book, most notably Gilgal Gardens in Salt Lake City. There is a very handy index to self-made worlds in the back.
Maybe a Self-Made Worlds Volume II is in order?

As a collector that is just getting started in this field, I found this book both highly interesting and amazing. Anyone who is interested in this field will find this book enjoyable. I would have given it five stars, but it is the first one I have read and did not have a reference point.

I just keep buying this for gifts -- it's a coffee-table book that not only stays on the coffee table, it gets read and passed around. amazing background on how America's visionary roadside shrines are imagined as well as built -- i love the insights into the hearts, minds, and spirits of these folk art contrarians. by giving copies of this book as gifts, i feel i'm doing my own small bit to help people appreciate this art form -- and maybe even create something startlingly original of their own someday! the perfect present for every outer yuppie/inner wildchild on your list, or for anyone who's stuck in a rut or going through a life change. this book reminds us all to cherish eccentricity -- keep America weird -- and nourish our own (and everyone else's) inner visionary.

If your idea of love is limited to visions of puppies and balloons, The Thing About Love Is... probably not for you. In Polyphony Press' first effort, the heavy topic of love is tackled in gritty, gutsy pieces that cut to core of this complex emotion. Sometimes it's bliss, sometimes it's bizarre, and quite often it hurts, but regardless of its form, love is always intriguing. This anthology is in keeping with that notion. With a variety of styles and voices, the works featured here are unanimous in their ability to draw the reader in and keep him hooked. It is truly a great read that may challenge one's personal definition of love. Call it an enjoyable experiment in mind expansion!

It's difficult to find an anthology that has as much stopping power as this one. Reading it, I was impressed not only by the diversity of the authorial voices, but also by their veracity. Each story, poem and play seems to have come straight from the gut. What's more, the contributing writers help to remove our blinders; particularly when it comes to matters of the heart. Love, they argue, is nothing less than a battlefield on which each of us daily chances victory or defeat.Those seeking to enter the contest fully armed would do well to buy this book.

Anthologies are not my usual choice of reading material, but as this was recommended to me, I decided to give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised. While I could not relate to some of the pieces here, I enjoyed the underlying topic immensely. The poetry, drama, and short stories were a good blend. The Thing About Love Is... an enjoyable and fast read, but has a peculiar lingering effect that required that I return to it for further exploration. It's a perfect book to read from the relative comfort and safety of your best chair, where you know that you can dip into the joy and angst of love and for once, walk away unscathed.

These 'planners' are a great place to start when designing a treatment plan. They are the equivalent of a 'manual' that refreshes memory, assists with language and format- and gets you past the block. Its weaknesses lie in its treatment methods and assessment paradigm.
The chapters as they delineate conditions and DSMIV categories were well chosen. Academic disorders received appropriate emphasis within the total clinical perspective.
So what's missing? The advances of neuropsychiatry for one. The Ungame and the other published materials are offered in the back for purposes of purchase and review.
The methodologies are limited to play therapy and techniques like the "ungame." The precision, as in, what and how such activities will yield is just too vague and rather dated.
A nonverbal learning disability, for example, will need a qualitatively different play activity than a child with disorder of written expression, or autistic spectrum. No more one size fits all.
The book suffers from a fixation on the psychodynamic approach which we know from research has not effectively met the needs for many disturbed kids. All patients, but more so for children, need successes to undergo change. Brain science has given us more precise tools to assess where those weaknesses lay and therefore a map to gain greater insight into the nature of the condition. Interfamilial discord, then, may be a result of poor communication or an inability to model behaviors- to treat all such dynamics similarly is generally a waste of time. Children have not got the resources to be in such confusing and often haphazard services.
The basic product then can be used for limited support and I see that as a solution in writing treatment plans. I think a good updating would do the trick.

I have found this book of tremendous help as I have worked with children in clinical practice. I higly recommend it!

Una excelente fuente para diseñar planes de tratamiento!

Add this book to your reference section. Very helpful in writing treatment reviews, treatment goals and objectives. Great bibliography. Very complete.

I read this to my 4 year old before she goes to sleep each night. It's become one of her favorites. It's the story of a hurried goodnight kiss that a king blows to his young son. Of course the kiss misses and the king sends his loyal knight to retrieve it. The knight and his horse have a little adventure ending with the kiss being returned to it's intended recipient. The book has cute, well executed illustrations, but the ending just doesn't seem like an end. Otherwise I would have given a full 5 stars. Still, I'd recommend it.

What might happen if a king's goodnight kiss is blown to his son, but accidentally misses...and lands on a dragon instead? In this funny picture book for little princes everywhere, that's exactly the dilemma at hand. The king is in too big of a hurry to give his son a proper tucking in bed, so the kiss goes astray, floating out the Prince's bedroom window. The king orders his knight to mount his horse and give chase, but the forest is filled with spooky things. Faced with bears and wolves, they loose sight of the kiss, which flies right up the nose of a giant green dragon. As the knight ponders the problem, a bigger problem finds him when the dragon takes chase. Will this the tragic end of the knight and his horse? The big kiss off? Author/illustrator David Melling ("Gerda The Goose") builds the climax into a grin-worthy story twist, and the moral of the story is one that will not be taken lightly by all those too-busy dads out there. This "Kiss" doesn't miss a thing.

I picked this book up by chance, and my son will not let me put in down! It is great. The illustrations are very detailed and lead to great conversations. It is almost a shame it is a "bedtime book" because we get so involved in talking about the story and the pictures that he doesn't really get sleepy. It is a favorite of us both. I am sure that this will be the gift we bring to every birthday party we are invited to in the future.

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.

Minding the Machines reminds us of one crucial fact: technological disasters are almost always the result of human error. But the flip side of this truism offers hope: humans learn from their mistakes, and technological disasters can be prevented. Evan and Manion, both professors in Pennsylvania, study a number of key technological disasters spanning the twentieth century-from the sinking of the Titanic to the poison gas release at Bhopal. The result is Minding the Machines: a systematic analysis of technological risk.

In each case study of technological disaster, the authors go straight to the heart of the problem: human error. Evan and Manion rightly recognize that "technological disasters are failures of sociotechnical systems." In other words, technologies are human creations, and therefore the root causes of technological disasters should be sought in the human systems that gave rise to the technologies in the first place. Once the causes are isolated, future solutions can be developed. But only at the social, economic, and political levels can acceptable solutions to technological risk be generated. To prevent future disasters, we must mind the machines; the machines will not mind themselves.

The pace of the book is slowed somewhat by the exhaustive analysis to which academics are prone. Yet the diligent reader is rewarded. The case studies of the Titanic, Challenger, and Three Mile Island disasters make for fascinating, if sometimes morbid, reading. The meat of the book can be found in chapters five ("The Root Causes of Technological Disasters"), eleven ("The Role of Corporations in the Management of Technological Disasters"), thirteen ("Assessing the Risks of Technology"), and fourteen ("Technological Decisions and the Democratic Process"). With these four chapters alone, Minding the Machines may prove invaluable for those in industry and government who want to better understand how a little prevention can be worth billions in cure-not to mention saved lives.

[This review is modified from my original review of Minding the Machines, Colorado Springs Business Journal, 12 July 2002]

The enormous technological advances of our time bring with them great vulnerabilities. Things break down, people screw up. This has always been so, but now the very power and scope and pervasiveness of our devices and systems give leverage to the breakdowns and screwups. Cost-saving refusal to install an $11 part in the Ford Pinto cost 500-900 lives, untold injuries, and $137 million in damages. Miscommunication among pilots and traffic controllers, and mismanagement of stressful demands on pilots, resulted in 587 dead, 57 injured, and $110 million in property and damage costs in the Tenerife runway collision. Chernobyl, Bhopal, asbestos poisoning, the list goes on.

Unlike natural disasters, technological disasters are predictable and preventable - but only if we recognize the new vulnerabilities and risks inherent in technological advances and effectively neutralize them. For that, it is essential that we learn from those man-made disasters that have already occurred. Evan and Manion have analyzed a wide range of technological disasters to their root causes, and describe how they can be prevented by appropriate training and action by scientists and engineers, by corporate executives and managers, by administrators of government agencies, by legislators, by academics like themselves, and by the general public. Here we have the example of the Year 2000 problem. Many believe this was overblown because it came to nothing. But it had so little effect because corporations and governments world wide spent more than $600 billion to avert it, aided by teams of engineers and scientists, largely from the US.

We also have the example of September 11. With the likelihood of terrorists exploiting the vulnerabilities in the technologies on which we increasingly depend, it is vital that we understand and act upon the very important work that Evan and Manion have done for us here. Executives and shareholders will be especially interested in how a corporation can avoid causing a technological disaster, with its potentially crippling costs - while by the same means being an exemplary corporate citizen.

The book is thorough, well documented, and easy to read. Every page is an eye opener.

Evans' and Manion's Minding the Machines is one of the most accessible and readable texts I have seen in an area known for its significant obscurity and evasion. While its wealth of case study information makes a welcome addition to any philosopher's or engineer's library, its topic of preventing technological disasters is a contemporary must-think for layman or "expert." I highly recommend it.

Being a teacher, I find this book is very useful for beiggners as well as for teachers. Basically, In my opinion, accounting can never be understood without concept and principles. This book satisfies all the basic requirements of learners. This book is written in simple and useful business enviornment. It depicts all the concepts and attracts it`s users. The accounting treatments are stated in a simple way. One should can easily understand the basic purpose of financial and manegerial accounting. Really this book is remarkable!! I found this book is very useful. I have not words in my mind to describe it`s actual utility. But one thing is that there is a lack of problems in few chapters, if that could also be included then I am assure that the major problem of practice should be solved. This book described in a simple way, How the accounting performs as the "Language of Business".

I find this is one of best textbooks available in the market. I love reading it very much.

It is a very good book but there is no solution for the problems

An awesome way to ignite (or re-ignite) passion in your marriage. This was a great idea. The mystery, the romance, the anticipation is all wonderful! It is heightened by the fact that all of this is done to glorify God!

I HIGHLY reccomend this for couples (married of course) of all ages!

This is more than a book. It is a resource package for married Christian couples. No, there's nothing earth-shattering here, but the book gives so much background information about God's gift of sex. This, coupled with the 24 fantastic date ideas, is sure to renew any marriage bed!

My husband and I have loved doing the "date nights" in this book. I feel so special when he is planning and carrying out his dates, and I feel so close to him while I am planning and carrying out my dates! This is a great plan and so easy to follow! I highly reccommend it!!

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!

good book

Psychology in Action by Karen Huffman, et.a

A terrific general psych book for the beginning of my psychology study. Very general, good intro into basic study. Easy to study from.