Opening

This book is mainly interesting to those who wonder "Whatever became of that star from TV's That's Incredible?" As this autobiography (of sorts) indicates, she hit rock bottom. Bankruptcy, sued by her former lover, career going nowhere.

She then tells us how she recovered through discovering a "spiritual path." Talked to shamans and such. Began eating health food from Trader Joe's. She includes recommended food at the back of the book, including brand names.

She drops lots of celebrity names to let us know how "connected" she is to Hollywood. She dishes no dirt on anyone. Nothing juicy in this book. This is no "tell all," but rather her calling card to get back in the business.

I was a fan of That's Incredible, so I bought the book. Reading it, I ended liking her more, and respecting her less. She seems a nice person, but real flakey. Typical Hollywood personality.

If you enjoyed That's Incredible, and wonder whatever became of its star, you may enjoy this book.

It's been awhile since I've read Cathy Lee Crosby's book, but when I finished it I recommended it to friends "in need" and they loved it, too. I want to recommend it to you.

I've rated "Let the Magic Begin" with five stars because it is an inspiring story of a woman on a magical journey...if I had not believed that the events had happened as magically as they seemed to, perhaps I would have rated it lower, but I have seen the power of "coincidence" in my own life enough to know that there is no such thing! As Cathy clearly points out in the course of her story, perception is the key to the magic of life. First you must believe to make the magic work!

Read this book if you feel there is something undefinable missing in your life. Read it if you want to stop making the same mistakes over and over again. Absolutely read it if you feel you have an insurmountable problem. Read it if you'd like to become a healthier person...read it if you like people.... But most importantly, when you read it, Believe, and the believing will make it so.

Cathy Lee's book is beautifully written. Her journey takes every popular "how-to" book in my library at least one step further, farther, faster. I have been buying copies for everyone I know who's forgotten how to have fun!

The translation is good, based on the latest scholarship. The commentary is extensive, and from a historical point of view, illuminating. But from a religious point of view this book is, in most places, a deep disappointment. While Plaut offers this as a book for religiousReform Jews, it spends most of its time disparaging the laws in the Torah as outdated anachonisims that have no place in the lives of Jews today. Those Jews on the more traditional side of the Reform movement - or anyone at all in Conservative Judaism - will be disappointed to learn that the introduction spends a great deal of time trying to show how God has little or nothing to do with the Bible, nor for that matter does Moses. While I aprreciate the editor's correct impulse in comabtting the extreme claims from religious fundamentalism, I do not understand why the response was go totally in the other direction (religious abandonment), I do not find the Ultra-Orthodox Torah commentaries (The Artscroll Torah, by Mesorah) to be any better. While Plaut's Reform commentary commits the sin of abandoning Judaism by worshipping archaeology, the Artscroll books committ the sin of intellectual dishonesty by abandoning - and denigrating - all archaeology, history and linguistics. If I had to make a choice, I'd say that Plaut's book is better than Artscroll books So where can one go for an authentic Torah commentary that is deeply religious, yet non-fundamentalist; one based on adherence to the latest scholarship, as well as traditional Jewish commentary? I would suggest the five volume JPS Torah Commentray series, published by the Jewish Publication Society. (2 Volumes by Nahum Sarna, 1 by Jeffrey Tigay, 1 by Baruch Levine and 1 by Jacob Milgrom). Used by Modern Orthodox, Reform and Conservative Jews, this is the set for a serious student of Torah to have. If one wanted a one volume Torah /Pentateuch commentary, I would get "The Pentateuch and Haftorahs" by Dr. Joseph H. Hertz or "The Chumash" by A. Cohen. (Also note that an affordabel, one volume edition of the 5 vol. JPS set is due to be published by the Conservative movement in about 2 years)

I think the reviewer who wrote a long 3 star review in 1999 described the major strengths and weaknesses of this book: definitely more detailed than I expected, but insufficiently respectful of traditional interpretations. I think the Hertz Chumash and the Conservative Chumash (Etz Hayim) both strike a somewhat better balance between tradition and modern views.

But I would like to point out one thing that this book does very well: Plaut goes out of his way to incorporate not just the views of today's commentators, but also views other than the most traditional Jewish views (at one extreme) and his own: for example, he uses 19th and early 20th century commentators more frequently than Etz Hayim, and (unlike Etz Hayim) occasionally takes passages from the Koran to show how the Muslim tradition addresses Torah laws and stories.

On balance, I can't say this is my favorite Chumash- but nevertheless I am glad I spent a year using it.

If you are interested in the Torah then buy this book. There is no other biblical commentary that I can even compare with this one. The language is enlightening but not overpowering. It's scholarship is wonderful and not overdone for the everday folk who don't work in the field of biblical history. I've purchased a couple of other used Plaut books after buying this one - "The Rise of Reform Judaism", for example. All are terrific. Great gift for a bar or bat mitzvah.

I agree that Irving Stone's Men to Match My Mountains is an entertaining series of intertwined stories about the settling of the west, but it is tainted by a couple of obvious and major factual errors in the early going. Before page 60, he's got 1840s explorers walking the banks of Shasta Lake, which didn't exist until Shasta Dam was completed in 1944. He's also got guys climbing UP the Eastern Sierra to Owens Lake, which is impossible since Owens Lake is at the base of the Eastern Sierra (or was, until the City of L.A. diverted its water). It makes me wonder what else he got wrong. An entertaining book about history loses a lot of its appeal if it's inaccurate.

Irving Stone is known more as a novelist than a historian. Consequently some serious historians have relegated this book to the realm of popular blather. But in spite of the fact that the book is entertaining and readable it is also serious history. Stone conducted extensive research and produced a masterpiece. It has been continuously in print for over 40 years. Its pages encompass the mountain west from Colorado to California and it is populated with heroes, visionaries, eccentrics and rogues. A must have book to be enjoyed again and again.

I agree with the previous reviews so I will not duplicate their effort. I too want to emphasize that this book's strength is in its wonderful telling of the stories of western expansion that many Americans know only a piece of. It is an excellent survey with enough detail to do justice to the individual episodes without getting bogged down. Each subject in the book has been treated in more detail elsewhere; where this book shines is in covering them all and deftly weaving them together to give a portrait of 19th-century western America. I think those of us who live in California especially appreciate learning about the people for whom much of our landscape is named. Read it and tell your friends about it.

I kept waiting for this book to get boring. It has all the potential to be boring. But it's not. It's an excellent introduction to the history of the West. I learned little tidbits about all sorts of varied subjects - Native American tribes, government, the history of the USGS. Stegner does get a little too wrapped up in the details at a couple points, especially when he gets into all the wrangling in Congress over Powell's various ventures, but in general it's an excellent book.

This classic work is a penetrating and insightful study of the public career of Maj. John Wesley Powell, from the beginning of the Powell Survey, which most famously had Powell and his men descend for the first time by anyone the Colorado River, to his eventual ouster from the Geological Survey. Stegner does a magnificent job of detailing both the myriad accomplishments by Powell in his remarkable career as public servant, but the philosophy and ideas that undergirded his work. Most readers at the end will conclude that the history of the United States might have proceeded differently had his profound insights into the nature of the American West been heeded.

Stegner writes in a lucid, clear, frequently exciting prose style. Although his history is solid, his writing is somewhat more. For example, at one point Stegner writes of one person who was more than a little deluded about the nature of the West: "The yeasty schemes stirring in Adams' head must have generated gases to cloud his eyesight." Especially in context a brilliant sentence, and not of the quality one anticipates in a historical work, especially one that deals at length with questions of public policy. The volume also contains an Introduction by Stegner's mentor and teacher Bernard DeVoto, an essay that contains in a few pages the heart of DeVoto's own understanding of the West, and which alone would be worth the cost of the volume.

Stegner does an excellent job of relating Powell's own insights and visions to those of others of the day. He contrasts Powell's philosophy with the desires and urges of the people who were rushing to obtain land in the West, and the politicians who were trying to lure them there. He points up similarities and differences in his way of looking at things, from those stoutly opposed to his views, and those in some degree sympathetic to him, like Charles King and the oddly omnipresent Henry Adams. From the earliest pages of the book to the very end, Stegner brings up Adams again and again, which is somewhat unexpected since Adams is not an essential participant in this story.

I have only two complaints with the book, one stylistic and the other substantive. The book contains a few maps but no photographs, and this book would have profited greatly from a number of illustrations. He refers to many, many visual things: vistas, rivers, people, paintings of the West, photographs of the West, maps, Indians, and locales, and at least a few photographs or illustrations would have greatly enhanced the book.

The second complaint is more serious. Stegner is completely unsympathetic to the attacks of Edward D. Cope on Othniel C. Marsh and, primarily by association, Powell. The Cope-Marsh controversy was, as Stegner quite rightly points out, the most destructive scientific controversy in United States history, and one that does absolutely no credit to either major participant. My complaint with Stegner's account is that he makes Cope sound more than a little psychotic, and his complaints more symptoms of mental illness and irrational hatred than anything generated by reasonable causes. Cope's hatred of Marsh was not rational, but neither was it baseless. Cope had indeed suffered grievously at the hands of Marsh, who had used his own considerable political power to prevent Cope from obtaining additional fossil samples. In this Powell was not completely innocent. I believe that anyone studying the Cope-Marsh controversy in greater detail will find Cope and not Marsh to be the more sympathetic figure, and certainly the more likable. The careers of both Cope and Marsh were destroyed by their controversy, but so also was that that of Powell greatly diminished. I can understand why Stegner is so unsympathetic to Cope, while at the same time believing that he overlooks the justness of many of Cope's complaints.

This book written in 1954 not only captures the story of this remarkable man, Major John W. Powell, but also discusses and reflects on the challenges of too many people living in the Western desert. As a resident of a now "drought impacted state" the wisdom of Powell's ideas and the lack of implementation of those ideas are represented in the chaos local and state governments are facing as they attempt to keep lawns green, golf courses open, and drinking water available for all of the "new" residences of the state. I only hope that some of this generations politicians pay attention to Powell's "topographical" analysis and begin shaping more effective land and water policy for the West. A terrific read with many classic Stegner quotes.

If Philanthropy is about building a better life for everyone in the world community, i.e. seeing ourselves as citizens of the planet; then, Opening Doors: Pathways to Diverse Donors, is a useful guide for thoughtful fundraisers. This book is a well-researched, well-documented look at different cultural perspectives on giving...how to include and empower those ethnic groups who are living the American Dream and want to give back in ways that are culturally meaningful to them. Bravo to Diana Newman for taking a broader view of community and studying in-depth what have heretofore been invisible groups of resourceful, caring people.

As Emmet Carson points out in the introduction to Opening Doors, "successful fund development occurs from effectively carrying out and communicating the organization's mission" and to succeed the "heretofore largely taboo" issues of culture and race must be dealt with appropriately and sensitively. Ms. Newman provides a panoramic view of what these issues are and provides practical, step by step advice in how to deal with them.

Diana Newman provides a overview of the problems faced by community philanthropic agencies and provides detailed strategies on how to deal with them. Newman has extensive experience herself in these areas and has invited other contributors to provide detailed insights based on their experience. The book discusses cultural groupings that really matter in philanthropic fund raising and these are subtly and importantly different than groupings used by the US Census. There is an extraordinary level of detail and statistics that are brought to bear on this topic. This is book that anyone who is managing a community philanthropic organization should read and should consult as a reference.

Opening Doors by Diana Newman not only provides excellent background and statistics on diverse donors, but many concrete suggestions and examples of "how tos" which are already proving to be extremely helpful as our foundation develops its outreach to attract more diverse donors.

Sleep is one of the most common activities in our lives. As such, one would expect that everybody would know a lot about it.

This book shows that this is not the case. Our western work-ethos has led us to believe that sleeping is for weaklings and that sleeping very little is a sign of discipline and diligence . This book is full of examples of the results of that attitude. As a renowned researcher into the science of sleep, the Author is able to list a considerable number of instances where a lack of sleep did not only lead to less productivity, but led to downright disasters such as the sinking of the "Exxon Valdez" or the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

I found that the book gives a real insight into the importance of obtaining enough sleep. In my case, I found it convincing enough to change some of my habits and go to bed earlier, if need be. As the author shows, a like change throughout society might safe us billions of dollars per year.

We spend a full third of our life sleeping, but what do we really know about it. Why do we sleep? What causes us to sleep? What happens when we sleep? All these questions remain unanswered, but scientists are working--dare I say it? oh, why not--around the clock to explain why we can't work around the clock.

Lighter in tone, and much more accessible to the most techno- or medio-phobic of lay readers is Sleep Thieves by Stanley Cohen. While Cohen's book does not have the same claim to impartial accuracy of the researcher, it gains ground by its engrossing style and an ability to merge folklore with medical studies. The whole, as it appears, is then dissected, and Cohen ends up destroying as many myths as Prof. Lavie in The Enchanted World of Sleep (in many cases, the same ones). Cohen does have a purpose with his book, and that is to say that as a culture, we are running up a "sleep debt"; that is, by denying ourselves the amount of sleep that our bodies need, we endanger ourselves and others. Before he gets to this conclusion, his common ground with Prof. Lavie is visited, including studies on sleep deprivation and its results, people's perceptions of sleep, and the amount of sleep that our bodies fall into without the self-regulating clock of the sun. His conclusion is tied together neatly, with a fine work of statistical research using the time lost and gained during the change from and to Daylight Savings Time. Lack of sleep, due to cultural demands, is a major cause of accidents that are often fatal.

Cohen's book, with its amazing conclusion that lives with you, makes it obvious that "sleep debt" is not just a funny phrase, but a real problem, and one that is being ignored by almost everyone. It is time, as Cohen ironically states, for us to wake up about sleep.

I ordered this book just because Dr. Coren is my favorite author (How To Speak Dog, The Intelligence Of The Dogs, Why We Love The Dogs We Do). I was certain that I would find this book very interesting, and I wasn't wrong. This book is truly wonderful. He explains how many hours should we sleep and what happens to us if we don't. How our mental and physical health depends on sleep, and gives advices as to how to improve the quality of our sleep.

There is a test you can perform in order to understand how many hours of sleep you need. It's just great.

I wish all doctors read this masterpiece and instead of giving Valium or whatever to people with sleeping disorders, were giving them advices taken from this book. Once more, thank you Mr.Coren

I own many books by John Hassler, and cherish them all. This is my favorite (except The Love Hunter).

The story is dark: about that child whom we've all met. Unruly, boistrous, unwanted, but terribly lovable. It is about the goodhearted family who takes in that child, and the disasters that occur thereafter. It is a tale of hope, love, redemption. It is a tale that makes one examine, oh so gently, ones responsibility to their bethren.

Like all of Mr Hasslers work, this is not a book which demands, threatens, accuses, or grabs you by the neck and throttles you. It is gentle and subtle and sweet. And in it's darkest moments, warm rays of light shine and you are left hopeful, albeit thoughtful. Read them all. Then read them again.

I seldom keep any of the many books I read, but this one is an exception. I first read this book at least 15 years ago and I still pull it out once in a while to reread. It is one of those stories that remain timeless in capturing small town America and the characters that make these small towns interesting. The story is told through the eyes of 12 year old Brendan, moving to a new town when his mom and dad took over a defunct grocery store. As Brendan and his family struggle to adjust, they meet people along the way that will change their lives. The writing is rich and draws you in to each character. I'm very surprised this hasn't been made into a movie, done right it would be a great one.

If you grew up in a small town in America, you will enjoy this book. The best book that Mr. Hassler has written. Hollywood should make a movie!

This is a good book...full of USEFUL traps, but at $20 it seems a little pricey to me. Not counting the title pages; index; and ect., it's only about 40 pages!

This is a good book because it specializes, it's not stuffed with useless traps.

What a great idea to get beginners thinking about transposing.These traps really are the best

A full chess openings book. Everything you want to study about chess openings you can find in it. It is resumed and it's not complex. Good and easy to read!

The Chess-Player's mandatory reference work. If you are a postal player, or aspire to be a good player one day, this book absolutely, positively belongs on your shelf.

You don't think careful study of the opening's will improve your game? Look at the author. (Nick DeFirmian.) Right after he finished this book, he won the U.S. Championship. 'Nuff Said!

As a beginning player, (ICC standard rating around 1300), I find MCO to be extremely useful to familiarize myself quickly with the correct responses to virtually any opening. At my level, my opponents quickly leave the book; but up to the point they do, at least I'm not the first one to make a mistake. If one wants to quickly get familiar with an opening without studying it in great depth, MCO works. I'm sure it's useful to better players also; but I'm just commenting from a beginners point of view.

The first chess book I ever waded through, was all about tactics, mating patterns, etc. After reading it, I schooled all of my friends. But I had a rude awakening in my first tournament when I got had by fool's mate in the first game. So I commenced on learning openings in order to get into position to use my tactic skills. How To Win in the Chess Openings is a book I've studied in two phases. The first phase was just learning the different patterns and typical sequence of moves. I really didn't understand the theory and logic behind most of the opening moves. So at first, I was pretty disappointed in the book and left it alone. But now, 5 years later, I've been using the book to really get the logic behind the opening moves and it's finally making sense.

As some of the other reviews have stated, it only goes over a few different openings and not to a depth of being able to learn every variation. However, the openings covered are very common and the knowledge provided is very good for someone trying to get into the middlegame.

Thanks to my memory and gray matter I was able to grab 1500 ELO points in under first year of learning chess that too without reading any book on chess..but then my game stagnated due to lack of experience in different openings and I sought help to my professor who gave me this book..It really helped me understand the concepts and Lo behold I defeated a 2300 rated player twice before going down at 2-3 in a match within two weeks of reading this book !

If you are a beginner at chess, you need to read this book. After reading it, and using a reasonable amount of diligence on your part, you should have a workable knowledge of the very important principles of opening chess. Without "talking down" to the beginner, Horowitz uses an easy to understand language and very appropriate examples to explain his lessons. He makes learning the openings of chess what it should be- fun and helpful.