Open

This book is an interesting recount of the authors' experience, but it by no means reflects what many other patients go through. I felt the tone of the book depressing.

this book is very informative and well written. it gives you a lot of information about what can happen to you after heart surgery that your doctors may not tell you. it's also easy to read without a lot of medical terms that are hard to understand. i'd recommend this book to anyone who was facing heart surgery.

I really enjoyed the honesty of the content in which the author revealed to his readers, as he gives a first hand account of his journey through the somewhat unknown. I'm sure this will be a great insight to those facing such a journey and my hope is they gain the encouragement, and the empowerment from the authors words. May it be a blessing!

CHRIS WALL

Just received this book...all it contains is pictures and descriptions..NO mention of value! How will I know if $25 is too much OR too little to spend on a certain salt if I have no guideline??!! USELESS. Am sending it back in the morning. I'm very disappointed..wish I had a better idea of what I was ordering...

This and the other nine books by Helen and Allan Smith are excellent sources of photos and information on open salts. These were the only sources for many years. They still show salts that are not shown in any other books. There are no prices listed in these books because often small leaflets of prices were included that might have been lost. There is a price guide that can be obtained seperately and which was written by an expert dealer in open salts. This was written in l987 by the dealer who has since died. Many of the prices are still relevant, but it is hard to update the guide as many of the salts in the books can not be seen first hand. This is especially true of the silver ones. The books are still of great value to all serious collectors.

Even though I am a co-author of a new book on open salts, I still value these books greatly. There was no way we could include all the salts found in these books in our new one even if we had wished to.

The immediate sequel to Eclipse of the Kai, The Dark Door Opens builds onto the storyline of its predecessor. The writing cannot compare too well against the later books in the series, when John Grant has a firmer foothold with this line, but there are some memorable moments. The tension-charged confrontation between Vonotar the Traitor and the Guildmaster, the firestorm attack upon the city of Toran, and the flight to Holmgard are highlights of this book.

The Dark Door Opens take place immediately after the first Legends book, Eclipse of the Kai. It begins with the young hero, Silent Wolf, who has just changed his name to Lone Wolf, fleeing the desetruction of the Monastery where those of his order had trained for centuries. Lone Wolf is now the last of his order, the Kai, and must make his way to the capital of Sommerlund to warn the king that the Darklords have destroyed the Kai. And so, he makes a treacherous journey on foot and horse, through forest and stream, hills and ancient hallowed grounds before the spires of Holmgard are visible. But he is not alone, another young man, Banedon of the Magician's Guild at Toran has also learnt of the destruction of the Kai and becomea spiritual brother to Lone Wolf. Banedon must return to his guild and convince those present to take action. Meanwhile, the forces of darkness await the two would-be heroes around every corner, plotting their destruction and a fall of Sommerlund. Vonotar the Traitor's treachery and betrayal of his homeland has caused the downfall and almost complete extermination of the Kai, and only Lone Wolf has the abilities to stop him...before it is too late.

Illich is faced with a problem. He deplores modern civilization as dehumanizing but recognizes only subsstence existence as an alternative. Unfortunately subsistence existence and other historically based cultures prensent strongly based sex roles. This flies in the face of feminism which denies the value of culurally defined sex roles and thus denies the values of Illich's ideal culture. Since feminism is a powerful political force, Illich must find a way to make his views compatible with it.

Illich overcomes this by defining modern sexual roles as sexist but historical cultural roles as gendered This is the book. He overcomes the challenge to his ideal by a linguistic definition. His history of social roles is spotty and biased to prove his point.

The book is a sophistic muddle. Mnay many better books that the social history of the home are available.

The reviewer who criticized Illich for not making his views compatible with feminism either has an agenda or misses his point. Yes Illich has a deep suspicion of modernity--and feminism is the defining discourse of modernity )or post modernity or whatever). Illich rejects a society in which everyone is a player--a geographic isolate in favor of something John Crowe Ransom and the Agrarians would have admired. Read the Odyssey for example: it is among other things a rule book of civility and societal harmony (and its enemies). The greatest scandal of present day academia and its cousins in the medea is its historical amnesia. Maybe traditional society has something to offer us (and I am curious to know what the reviewer thinks will happen when bacteria become resistant to all antibiotics) It is after all globalism starting from WWI hich has brought us pandemics of flu, aids and diseases yet unknown. The 19199 flue pandemic killed as many people as the plague of 1348. Hey I don't see that we've come that far.

If you are building your experts in Delphi 3 or 4 this book is a must-have. Using Delphi 5 and later, you have to consider that Borland made some rather big changes to the OTA interfaces.

If you are starting out writing experts for Delphi 3, or even looking to fill gaps in your Open tools API knowledge, then this book is the one. Check my site http://www.burn-rubber.demon.co.uk for a full (copyrighted) review.

One reviewer compared this book to George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London," a gritty look at the lives of transients in France and England in the 1930s. In truth, this book and its author bear more resemblance to Ted Kaczynski and his anti-technology "Manifesto."

The difference is that Orwell never became part of world he described. Exploring the world of the lower classes, he was constantly betrayed by his "lower-upper-middle-class" mannerisms and tastes. Timothy Donohue is all too much a part of the world he describes--namely, the nightmarish world of the late-stage alcoholic.

On the surface, "In the Open" is about a man who freely admits he's trapped in alcohol's clutches but is somehow able to string together a carefully reasoned argument in favor of food stamp reform, typing his manuscript at public libraries whenever he's sober and has the opportunity.

His thesis proceeds with fits and starts, however, as Donohue--who sees himself as an unappreciated visionary--struggles with simple tasks made monumentally difficult by his disease. Obtaining money, finding and keeping a menial job, avoiding the police and bullies, keeping his few possessions intact--all these things demand increasing expenses of time and energy as the author tries unsuccessfully to moderate his drinking.

It's not unusual for an alcoholic to reason that the problem isn't with himself but with the rest of the world. What's unusual is for an alcoholic to go to the lengths to which Donohue has gone to persuade the world that he's right and it's wrong. There may be some sense to Donohue's economic proposals, but then there may be some sense to the musings of a teenager who talks metaphysics while smoking pot. His ideas are nothing if not grandiose--and grandiosity is one of the hallmarks of alcoholism. There's something about Donohue's economic plan that rings false; perhaps it's our awareness that what Donohue's really trying to reconstruct is not the American welfare system but his own shattered Self. If he can prove (to himself at least) that the system's broken, then who can blame him for checking out?

Donohue is at his best when he's describing the landscape and his immediate surroundings, which are by turns enchanting and menacing. There's no denying he has a gift for descriptive prose. Seeing this gift in the service of such a wayward project, however, is somewhat depressing. If he can hit patches of brilliance while drunk and living on the street, where's the limit to what he could do if he got his life turned around? (On the other hand, if Donohue were leading a "normal" life, he might not feel compelled to write at all.)

Oddly, this book is presented with no commentary apart from what's on the dust jacket. There's no Introduction or Forword to put the author and his plight in perspective. There's no Afterword; the narrative ends abruptly, and the reader is left with many questions. Did Donohue ever get his drinking "under control"? Did he ever realize that he wasn't that much different from other alcoholics after all? Did he ever find a spiritual solution to his torment? Is he even still alive?

Because the publisher, the University of Chicago Press, offers such scant explanation, we're also left wondering why the book was published in the first place. Did the editors find merit in Donohue's economic proposals, or is the book intended as an example of the lengths to which a damaged psyche will go to justify itself? The reader is left to draw his or her own conclusions.

In this autobiography, Donohue chronicles his peregrinations across the USA while drinking himself silly. He gets a few lucky breaks, some money here and there, a little success, but he drinks it all away. In the end, the book snaps shut abruptly with no conclusion, no climax, no denouement, nothing. Just snaps shut in a very odd way. But then it is just a peek into one man's life, the life of an alcoholic. I definitely had more sympathy for homeless people, even alcoholic homeless people, after reading this book. The potential reader should be warned that it contains a lot of economic theory that Donohue, who actually graduated from college with a business degree, develops. So that stuff is a bit dry and you can safely skip over most of it.

I much preferred the Holy Bible : King James Version, New Open Study Edition, Burgundy Bonded Leather than the newer ones by Thomas Nelson.. as in the title: Open Bible with New Living Translation...

Two reasons: 1. If this Bible is supposed to be a study bible I was surprised that it did not even have a page that tells you the weight,length and dollar unit measure of conversion.. I check the older one which is ironically called the "King James Version, New Open Study Edition" and they have two full page of weights,dimension and monetary measures (right after the topical section) very clearly put forward in chart tables...

I'm quite dissapointed as I own the Open Bible + New Living Translation.

2. Second reason, also the Open Bible + NLT version does not underline the text of the bible version when commentary are given below the page... this makes the reading of the commentary not so relavant to the scripture readings ... what they have was to bold some of the words and put a reference verse next to it...

If you are reading the Bible your concentration should be reading the Word of God and when you come to a difficult passage of scripture you then look at the commentary below... but here there is no reference or relationship, they want you to read the commentary below and then find the scripture from the commentary they have written. Now, which is more important God's words or their commentary? I leave this choice to the reader..

But if you look at the "Holy Bible : King James Version, New Open Study Edition" the scripture verses are underline for passage of scripture that have comments for those verses underlined. That means you won't be reading commentaries first but the Word of God, and then when you see those underlined passage of scripture -- you will then look at the commentaries for better understanding... this is much better in terms of the layout of the Bible.

I would certaintly and highly recommend the Holy Bible : King James Version, New Open Study Edition, Burgundy Bonded to the newer version of Open Bible: Bonded Leather with New Living Translation...

This is an excellent study Bible that contains an abundant concordance, maps, information on Biblical cities and events, and study notes. In the previous review, the writer pointed out that they do not have a conversion chart for measurements, which is entirely correct. Had he actually read the Bible, however, he would have realized that in the New Living Translation the measurements are already converted to modern units. Furthermore, as far as the study notes go, the verses are marked that contain a study note at the bottom of the page. I believe this is an excellent Bible that not only lets you read the Word of God, but encourages you to have a more complete understanding of it.

I stumbled across Amosoff's The Open Heart in a shelf full of free books at my university. I skimmed thru it, and my first impression was that it was a pulp novel from the 40's. I was mistaken. What this book actually is is a couple of days in the life of a doctor who performs open heart surgery, and also has an open "humanistic" heart himself- hence the title. He seems like a pretty nice guy, but he's not that great of a prose stylist, and the whole cybernetics angle was rather dull. I don't know that I'd recommend it for an engaging read; I'm only giving it 3 stars because the intent was good and the doctor's compassion and feelings were at times expressed very well; there were moments when I got a glimpse of this man's soul and felt he was writing from his "open heart". But these points in the book are few and far between, so you might want to pass this one up. It's out of print anyhow. Not surprising.

Gripping first half of the book. A dramatic look into the origins of Soviet cardiac surgery -- Amosoff was a general surgeon who learned how to perform open heart surgery on his own using cadavers and hopeless patients. The book provides a great insight into the tension and the uncertainty behind the facade of one of the premier Soviet surgeons. The theorizing on cybernetics in the second half of the book was rather dull and disappointing but obviously very interesting to the author.

A named academic is quoted on the back of this paperback as saying this translation is 'without doubt the best English version'; he has evidently not seen the 1922 version (the ONLY previous translation) which has aged so well that it's unlikely now to be surpassed - though I only sought it out after being repelled by this appalling translation - clumsy, leaden, inept - which almost put me off Schnitzler for life. (He is a creepy guy, though.)

Anybody interested in Viennese culture before World War I and between the wars ought to read this book. It portrays the atmosphere of a city that was one of the most influential centers of European culture, where contributions by the Jewish community were epoch-making and masterful. A must for anybody wanting to understand the marvel that was Europe.

Ah, Schnitzler. That magnificent chronicler of old Imperial Vienna - the Vienna of sweet young things (usually working- or middle-class), slightly neurotic but charming young men (usually upper-class), and their fleeting love-affairs, terminated so easily once ennui starts to exceed pleasure, the Vienna of walks in the Prater and talks in the cafes (ever so full of interesting artistic types), the Vienna where the nostalgic strains of Johann Strauss provide a suitably bittersweet accompaniment to the beginning (or the ending) of the abovementioned love-affairs ...

All of which occur in The Road into the Open; nevertheless, the Vienna depicted here does not only consist of only the sweetened tableaux so frequently dismissively (and unfairly) attributed to Schnitzler. The easy charm of the Vienna here is extant, but by no means idealised - it masks the artistic impotence that seems to afflict nearly all of its inhabitants, haunted as they are by the sense of being epigonal; grandiose artistic projects are continually being talked about, but never executed, whether because of an aversion to actually setting them down on paper, or simply because of what is commonly called a "lack of inspiration". More sinisterly, it also masks the habitual anti-Semitism of what one of the characters wittily calls those of "indigenous physiognomy"; though written in 1908, there are passages that almost foreshadow the rise of Nazism. Schnitzler subtly intertwines the study of the individual with ruthlessly objective social commentary and evocation of the atmosphere (both artistic and political) of fin de siecle Vienna, to produce a fascinating book highly recommended not only for those with an interest in the period, but also for anyone who fancies a thought-provoking book

Dan's obviously read some of the other books out there and simply regurgitated bits randomly. Dan just hasn't got it. The use of hackneyed phrases through-out this book emphasise an obvious lack of imagination as well as a desperate desire for wealth. One to avoid.

One of the best books I have ever read. These guys put the essence of success into simple to understand terms, that really hit home with me.

My biggest problem was believing that I could do it, but I think the title of the book really hits the nail on the head...if others can be successful, why not me?

I highly recommend this book.

I have read just about every personal development book out there.

I have been hearing about this book for years. So I wanted to give it a read. It took me a while to find one - they are really hard to come by.

At first it struck me as a very straight forward and well thought out book... and then I realized its true magic. The simplicity of how to apply the principles turned a light on in my mind and has since opened new doors in my life.

I thought I had read it all before... but this book opened a new paradigm for me and changed the way I view and think about the world around me. It made the path to success so simple and easy to follow.

These guys really hit me square between the eyes. Now I can see why Robert Schuler wrote the forward for this book and why Mark Victor Hanson endorsed the book long before he ever became famous for Chicken Soup for the Soul. (The copy of Why Not Me? I found was about 10 years old.)

By the way my teenager read the book and it made a huge impression on her.

A definite read!