Melvins Blog

Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness Description:

BRAIN PRESCRIPTIONS THAT REALLY WORK
In this breakthrough bestseller, you’ll see scientific evidence that your anxiety, depression, anger, obsessiveness, or impulsiveness could be related to how specific structures in your brain work. You’re not stuck with the brain you’re born with. Here are just a few of neuropsychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen’s surprising–and effective–”brain prescriptions” that can help heal your brain and change your life:
To Quell Anxiety and Panic:
¸  Use simple breathing techniques to immediately calm inner turmoil
To Fight Depression:
¸  Learn how to kill ANTs (automatic negative thoughts)
To Curb Anger:
¸  Follow the Amen anti-anger diet and learn the nutrients that calm rage
To Conquer Impulsiveness and Learn to Focus:
¸  Develop total focus with the “One-Page Miracle”
To Stop Obsessive Worrying:
¸  Follow the “get unstuck” writing exercise and learn other problem-solving exercises

From the Trade Paperback edition.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1228 in eBooks
• Published on: 2008-06-10
• Released on: 2008-06-10
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Customer Reviews:

A 1st -hand view
Since both myself and a loved one have been diagnosed and treated at Amen’s clinic, I’d like to respond to this book from the view of my actual experience.

First, I agree with most of the what is said in the other positive reviews. The book is engaging, informative, and most importantly, it offers a great deal of hope. It breaks new ground, and it allows the layman to make better sense of the complexities of brain biology, personality, and behavior. To those few reviewers who insisted that Amen does not actually tell us “how to change your brain” - this is simply not true. Amen offers a variety of options including traditional meds, (even a nice chart to help with the benefits of each), and alternative treatments such as herbal and dietary suggestions.

As many know, Amen’s use of SPECT scans is very controversial. Although he has a following of professionals, he is also careful to say that the scans are NOT a primary diagnostic tool - only a way to confirm a tentative diagnosis. This may be because SPECT is not approved by the DSM, nor the APA(to my knowledge), as an accepted and reliable diagnostic tool for ADD or any of the other problems Amen discusses. Given the stodgy psychiatric mentality in the US toward new approaches, this should not be a problem in and of itself. Yet given the controversy, a serious flaw of the book is that it does not address the number and types of cases in which this approach does NOT work.

But I also want to offer some cautions to those who might be tempted to passively accept the book in its entirety.

1) In my own case, two Drs and a thrapist in Amen’s own office had different interpretations of my loved-one’s SPECT scan, yet there was no consultation among them to resolve the issue. 2) In this layman’s view, the book also seems to show some inconsistency in interpreting the scans. Why does the same over-active image area become the diagnostic key in one case, but then seems irrelevant in another ? 3) Again in my personal case, the drug protocol for my loved-one was the opposite as that described in the book. Despite my questions, this was never explained to me. 4) A recent read of another book by a different author using PET scans showed completely different parts of the brain producing some of the same symptoms as Amen describes. But I suppose this doesnt matter as long as the treatment works.

So what is the upshot of my review? My experience causes me to question the credibility of some parts of the book. Interpretation of these scans needs refinement, and Amen may need to get his own house in order as well. Yet, I have found no other professional who understands the intricacies of ADD and the associated problemsas well as he does. Amen truly cares, and this book is a ‘must-read’. Regardless of the imperfections, his approach DOES work for many, many people. But do not be lulled into a passive acceptance by the enticing simplicity of the diagnosis and explanation.

Feel free to email me your thoughts. And to those dealing with the pain of ADD its related problems, I wish you peace and comfort. Remember that the heros in a race are not only those who win, but also those who continue to struggle until they finish.

One of the Most Important Books I have Ever Read
This book shows you that there is hope for everyone! Though the title is a little silly, it is appropriate. This book actually shows you pictures of brains with different emotional/chemical imbalances. Give it to anyone who questions whether diet or medication really affect their feelings and relationships. Many people believe that medication is for weak people and that they should be able to conquer their problems through sheer will. I have known countless people who have tried everything to overcome emotional issues but actually changing their physiology. This book gives indisputable evidence that problems like depression, aggression, ADD and Alzheimers are physically based. The changes in patients’ brains before and after treatment (often, but not always medication-based) are phenomenal. It demonstrates with the SPECT series brain scans that our brain chemistry rules our emotions.

I learned that even minor bumps to the head can change people’s personalities and ability to learn. Dr. Amen shows pictures of brains with little or no activity in areas that have been injured, mirroring the patients’ emotional or intellectual difficulties.

Amen is very clear that he always uses talk therapy and teaching communication skills before he contemplates having a SPECT series done. His point is that many people can benefit from learning new skills and ways of looking at life, but some are truly stuck because their brain activity keeps them looping on negative thoughts, reacting with extreme anger, obsessing about limited situations, or shutting down when they try to concentrate. When medication is used these patients can finally put the communication and coping skills they have learned to good use.

This book helped me understand people in my life who have seemed hopeless, shallow and even vicious. It showed me that there is hope for everyone who is willing to open their mind, get proper treatment, and challenge how they have viewed the world up until now. The exercises he gives the reader are very specific and helpful. If another reviewer thinks that there is nothing concrete in the book, then they aren’t willing to look at their diet, their habitual way of thinking, and herbal and medical treatments. The prescriptions are plentiful and very specific.

It is an easy read, very accessible, with fascinating stories that pull you in. It is not academic or inaccessible. Quite the opposite. It’s a great book for anyone who wants to know more about themselves and how their body works.

In the past 3 weeks I have lived the title of this book.
I read this book three weeks ago and am performing as an actor in a stage musical for the first time in over a decade. I have to admit that I first took it from the shelf in the “new books” section of the library because it struck me as having (my apologies to the designer) the ugliest cover I had ever seen! In spite of my having been on Prozac since 1996, I have experienced continual mental problems which resulted in periods of severe depression. The first sentence on the inside cover grabbed me: “Do you panic at the thought of walking into a room full of people you don’t know?” I checked out the book. I am, as I write this, in the process of ordering my own copy and one to send to my sister. I am a 45 year old male teacher/ actor/writer. I hold a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theater Arts and have previously made my living as a working actor as well as having had books, plays and songs published since 1976. My spouse of twelve years died in 1994. Suicidal, I returned to my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, after living fifteen years in New York City and Los Angeles. I have not been able to work on a regular basis since. Going back on stage and working as an actor was not even a consideration. Since 1995, I have only been successful at doing sporadic tutorial work with English Composition students at local colleges and universities.

The suicidal tendencies I was suffering stopped with the administration of Prozac, but I have spent the past two and one-half years wondering what was wrong with me because I could not focus long enough to complete any of the dozens of projects I would start. I had no patience and could not even keep still long enough to attend a film. I have been in grief counseling during this period, but have not seen a psychiatrist (poor insurance). Fortunately, my regular physician is very receptive and listens to his patients.

I did not know adults suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder. I thought it was something children suffered but outgrew (I have no children, but have four out of nine neices and nephews on Ritalin). I took the test for Cingulate problems at the end of Chapter 9 in Dr. Amen’s book by asking myself what I had been like, before I began taking Prozac, compared to my present state of mind. I went from almost all 3s and 4s, indicating serious problems with worry and obsessiveness, to 0s, 1s, and 2s. This was an obviously improved state, and very much in line with Dr. Amen’s findings. I read the entire book in two nights, and did the remaining four checklists. I had very few 3s and 4s with the exception of a huge majority of those numbers on the Prefrontal Cortex Checklist. Not only did I discover adults can have ADD, but that there may be a genetic tendency. I spoke with my Mother who said the pediatrician had her give my brother and myself coffee in the early sixties before sending us to school and it seemed to help, to a small extent, with our behavioral problems. I immediately made an appointment with my doctor and showed him where Dr. Amen had used the combination of Prozac and Ritalin. He prescribed Adderall and I began to see results in only two or three days. My doctor immediately ordered a copy of the book from Amazon.com. He was going to have his daughter read it. Her son is on Ritalin. She is on Prozac, but suffers many of the same problems I described.

I began taking the Adderall with the Prozac three weeks ago. During that time I have submitted lyrics to the composer with whom I had written songs, but not been in touch for several years. I have completed a play upon which I began working in 1992, and it is being produced at the local University in May.. I had been offered a number of stage roles by local directors since my return to Birmingham, but turned them down. As previously mentioned, I have just agreed to perform in a musical this summer for the first time since 1988.

Dr. Amen offers many, many suggestions for ways to change your brain and your life which have nothing to do with prescription medication, but he convinced me to explore every possible avenue available, without any of the reservations I originally had about going on Prozac. Just knowing my debilitaions can be physiological instead of “all in my head” has made me view my total self differently than at any time since realizing I was “different” around the age of twelve years. I have, at this point in time, had the most productive, fulfilling three weeks of my adult, possibly entire, life. I am literally able to maintain a peace of mind I truly believed impossible.

Dr. Amen’s writing style is most accessible to the “lay-reader”. The book is a blessing. Anyone who has ever doubted his or her “sanity” should read this work, and find a doctor willing to listen to its message!

Amazon.com Review
In this age of do-it-yourself health care (heck, if the doctor only sees you for 10 minutes each visit, what other options are there?), Change Your Brain, Change Your Life fits in perfectly. Filled with “brain prescriptions” (among them cognitive exercises and nutritional advice) that are geared toward readers who’ve experienced anxiety, depression, impulsiveness, excessive anger or worry, and obsessive behavior, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life milks the mind-body connection for all it’s worth.

Written by a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who has also authored a book on attention deficit disorder, Change Your Brain contains dozens of brain scans of patients with various neurological problems, from caffeine, nicotine, and heroin addiction to manic-depression to epilepsy. These scans, often showing large gaps in neurological activity or areas of extreme overactivity, are downright frightening to look at, and Dr. Amen should know better than to resort to such scare tactics. But he should also be commended for advocating natural remedies, including deep breathing, guided imagery, meditation, self-hypnosis, and biofeedback for treating disorders that are so frequently dealt with by prescription only.

From Library Journal
Clinical neuroscientist and psychiatrist Amen uses nuclear brain imaging to diagnose and treat behavioral problems. He explains how the brain works, what happens when things go wrong, and how to optimize brain function. Five sections of the brain are discussed, and case studies clearly illustrate possible problems. The accompanying brain-scan photos are difficult to read with an untrained eye. Although Amen provides step-by-step “prescriptions” geared toward optimizing and healing the different sections of the brain (”create a library of wonderful experiences”; “try meditation/self-hypnosis”), 80 percent of the patients in his case studies were given medication to treat their behavioral problems. The audience for this book is ambiguous. While it encourages readers to evaluate themselves and others, it would be more useful to a professional in the social sciences than to the general reader. Buy where self-help or brain-research books are popular.?Maria Uzdavinis, Rochester P.L., NH
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
“Revolutionary. Dr. Amen shows how your brain can become your worst enemy, and how with the proper treatment, your best friend.”–Martin Stein, M.D., associate clinical professor of psychiatry, George Washington University

“Opens the door to assessment and interventions that can change your life.”–Robert D. Hunt, M.D., associate clinical professor of psychiatry, Vanderbilt School of Medicine

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Smithsonian Handbooks: Birds of Florida Smithsonian Handbooks Description:

The most comprehensive series of field guides to North American birds ever. This impressive collection highlights birds from all regions of the United States including localized areas such as the Mid-Atlantic, the Pacific Northwest and New England.

Whether birding in the foothills of New England, the prairies of the Midwest, or the beaches of Florida, Smithsonian Handbooks are the most comprehensive field guides to North American birds on the market. Looking for the Great Blue Heron or the Piping Plover while visiting the Great Lakes? Desperate to find the rare Long Billed Curlew or the Marbled Godwit during a hike in the Cascade Mountains? There’s no need to look any further! Created in association with the Smithsonian Institution, these amazing guides are an absolute staple for any birder or amateur ornithologist. Each local species receives its own profile, along with descriptions of habitats and annotated photographs that highlight specific characteristics and other points of interest. Take bird watching to new heights!

• Amazon Sales Rank: #91529 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780789483874
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Customer Reviews:

Great guide to Florida birds
Whether you want to take up the hobby of birdwatching, identify the water birds you see while touring the Everglades, or simply recognize the birds at your backyard bird feeder, this is a great guide to the birds of Florida. As with every DK guidebook I have ever used, this one is high quality. Within its heavy paper covers are lots of brilliantly colored illustrations and a wealth of information about each of the 331 species of birds known to occur regularly in Florida. It is published in association with the Smithsonian Institution.

Information in the full page profile of each species includes clear drawings and photographs with distinguishing features labelled, song, behavior, breeding, nesting and nest identification, flight patterns, location, habitat, and migratory habits. There is also general information on the anatomy and topography of birds, species and gender variations, birdwatching techniques, and tips on ways to identify birds, including physical and flight characteristics.

Since the bird profiles are arranged in taxonomic order, you have to page through the book, matching illustrations, in order to locate the profile of the bird you wish to identify. To help speed up identification, use the handy “similar birds” feature. When you find a bird close in appearance to the one you are seeking, this feature lists other species that are similar in order to help you hone in on the one you are looking for. This guidebook is a great resource for everyone from the casual observer to the serious birdwatcher. Happy birding!

Eileen Rieback

A good index would help
As the other reviewers have pointed out, this book covers every bird that has ever been seen in FL (well, not counting the dusky-headed parakeet we saw south of Tampa), but the index is terrible. On arrival in Florida we saw two egrets, one of which I knew was a great egret and other of which I knew was a snowy egret - but which was which? Unfortunately, when I went to the index for page numbers, all that was listed under “egrets” was cattle egret and rusty egret. The others were listed by their latin names only in another listing. The information was in the book, but not to be found through the index. The same with herons - the index lists only great blue, green, little blue and tricolored, although the book also includes info on the black crowned night-heron, and yellow crowned night-heron, both permanent Florida residents. I turned back to my Sibley’s almost immediately because I had lost confidence in this book. Better books are available in Florida.

Highly recommend
Great book for novice up to advanced bird watchers! So good I’m even buying one for my friend. Easy to understand, with great pictures. I’m hooked!

About the Author
The Smithsonian Institution is a center for research dedicated to public education, national service, and scholarship in the arts, sciences, and history.

Predators and Prey Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 5 Product: Predators and Prey Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 5 Review. List Price: $15.95 Amazon Price: $10.85 Click Here To See Amazon Sale Price Add to cart to see low price@ Availability: In Stock Usually ships in 24 Hours Free Shipping Available

Compare Prices on Predators and Prey Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 5

Buffy’s world goes awry when former-classmate-turned-vampire Harmony Kendall lands her own reality TV show, Harmony Bites, bolstering bloodsucking fiends in the mainstream. Humans line up to have their blood consumed, and Slayers, through a series of missteps, misfortunes, and anti-Slayer propaganda driven by the mysterious Twilight, are forced into hiding. In Germany, Faith and Giles discover a town where Slayers retreat from a world that has turned against them, only to find themselves in the arms of something far worse. A rogue-Slayer faction displaces an entire Italian village, living up to their tarnished reputation as power-hungry thieves. And finally, with the help of a would-be demon lover, Dawn addresses her unfaltering insecurities.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2908 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781595823427
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Wow! That really sucked …
(warning: spoilers!)

Buffy Season 8 comics continue their downward spiral with this latest collection.

This is a series of one-shot stories designed to set up the environment for the next big arc. You can almost hear chess pieces being moved around on a board. The problem is that the chess players are on drugs.

Briefly, the episodes can be summarized as thus:
1) Harmony creates a reality TV show on herself as a vampire - and suddenly the world falls in love with vampires and considers the slayers a menace, who must go into hiding(!?). No, I don’t understand it either.
2) Lesbian Slayers Kennedy and Satsu discover a race of robotic toy vampires created by Twilight who temporarily de-gay Satsu (no, I am not making this up)
3) In the only half-sane plot, Buffy and Andrew bond as they track down a cell of rogue slayers. There is a demon, among other things, and wackiness ensues.
4) Giles and Faith discover a town with a nasty secret concealed by the only other surviving Watcher.
5) Dawn is in trouble. Again. Buffy rescues her. Again. The Summers Sisters reconcile. Again.

The comic concludes with two short stories on Harmony and the robotic toy vampires. These are intended to be humorous but come across as completely lame.

In fact, that is the problem with this whole collection. The plots are so thin, weird and contrived I can’t believe they were meant to be taken seriously. The writers must have been going for wry amusement instead. Strangely, I am not amused. I have seen better writing from teenage fanfic.

Oh, the art hasn’t improved either. It remains passable at best.

I’m not sure what the problem is at Whedon enterprises. Was everybody having a bad couple of months? Has this little season 8 shindig run out of steam (and ideas, and credibility)? All I can tell you is that if the next collection is this bad, I will be sorely tempted to cut my losses and stop buying further issues.

I think people missed the point…
I actually thought the premise of Harmony getting her own reality-TV show was pretty hilarious. I think, rather than trying to cash in on the whole “vampires integrating into popular culture” thing like the True Blood series, Joss and Crew are generally poking fun at all the Twilight/True Blood fans who have suddenly gone… well.. vampire crazy! Everyone wants their own vampire, and everyone is sooo in love with Vampires that they fail to see that vampires would actually be dangerous. Harmony has always been a huge comic relief for me, she’s absolutely silly and fails to feel like a threat, when in truth she totally is (well, okay mostly she’s hilarious and ineffectual as a threat). I could totally believe that she took her Angel-certified recommendation, her former ties to W&H and her glowing/whacky personality and went straight to TV execs with her “woe is me! I’m a misunderstood vampire!” angle to cash in. What’s even better is that they bring to light the damage that misrepresenting certain groups can do, and how easily people are swayed. I mean, vampires easily get people to turn against the “Slayer Threat” even though the Slayer “Threat” is their only real defense. I think it’s more of Joss just poking at current pop-culture and maybe even the current political climate.

As for the rest of installment, I can see where this is setting up the plots for the next story arc, and that’s fine. Just remember that exposition and pawn placement is always a little… dry.

Oh, and just for fun, “Dawn’s in trouble. Must be Tuesday.”

Series slowing down but Vampy Cat rules!!
This collection has really proven that this can’t possibly be how Joss Whedon saw the next season of the TV show because this is so all-over the place that viewers would have been disappearing super fast. I loved the Harmony Bites idea. Good stuff but threre was no follow through. Faith & Giles together is interesting but once again, not much happened. I hope the next trade amps up the story or I probably will stop reading this.

Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan Description:

First time in paperback, with a new Introduction and final chapter

World affairs expert and intrepid travel journalist Robert D. Kaplan braved the dangers of war-ravaged Afghanistan in the 1980s, living among the mujahidin—the “soldiers of god”—whose unwavering devotion to Islam fueled their mission to oust the formidable Soviet invaders. In Soldiers of God we follow Kaplan’s extraordinary journey and learn how the thwarted Soviet invasion gave rise to the ruthless Taliban and the defining international conflagration of the twenty-first century.

Kaplan returns a decade later and brings to life a lawless frontier. What he reveals is astonishing: teeming refugee camps on the deeply contentious Pakistan-Afghanistan border; a war front that combines primitive fighters with the most technologically advanced weapons known to man; rigorous Islamic indoctrination academies; a land of minefields plagued by drought, fierce tribalism, insurmountable ethnic and religious divisions, an abysmal literacy rate, and legions of war orphans who seek stability in military brotherhood. Traveling alongside Islamic guerrilla fighters, sharing their food, observing their piety in the face of deprivation, and witnessing their determination, Kaplan offers a unique opportunity to increase our understanding of a people and a country that are at the center of world events.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46444 in eBooks
• Published on: 2008-12-24
• Released on: 2008-12-24
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Customer Reviews:

The Roots of the Taliban
Soldiers of God is a first-hand narrative of journalist Robert Kaplan’s travels with the mujahadeen in Afghanistan during the waning days of the Soviet occupation. Set in the late 1980s, this book does not cover the more recent Taliban movement that will probably be of more immediate interest to most readers. However, Soldiers of God does impart a clear understanding of the background conditions that led to the rise of the Taliban and the influence of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Soldiers of God is the story of a third-world nation that was brutalized by the Soviets, then manipulated and mismanaged by the Pakistani agents who were acting as U.S. surrogates. Kaplan explains how the United States entrusted the Zia and Bhutto regimes of Pakistan with most of the day-to-day details of the war. The result was the gradual encouragement of the militant Islamist elements that would eventually coalesce into the Taliban.

Tragically, Afghanistan was a comparatively minor sideshow in the Cold War. The country was difficult for journalists to enter, so the conflict was largely neglected by the American press; and Eastern Europe and Nicaragua were much higher on the list of U.S. priorities. Kaplan provides detailed accounts of Soviet atrocities which received little mainstream press attention at the time.

However, the most captivating aspect of the book is richness of the narrative itself. Part diary, part political commentary, Soldiers of God gives the reader a visceral sense of what it was like to live as a mujahadeen during the Soviet-Afghan conflict. Kaplan describes the miserable climate, maggot-infested food provisions, and the constant fear of Soviet mines with exacting detail.

Kaplan also gives us insights into the characters of the mujahadeen themselves. As a reader, I felt a mixture of contempt and admiration for the men who lives unfolded in this book. On one hand, the mujahadeen emerge as heroic underdogs fighting to free their country from a vastly superior Soviet military. On the other hand, Kaplan acknowledges many of the Afghan societal flaws which would later be amplified by the Taliban. We read about a country in which women have little or no rights, and religious laws have no secular counterbalance.

I have found few books on the Soviet-Afghan conflict; and I would guess that this one is among the best of the bunch.

A war forgotten and rediscovered
September 11 offered an obvious answer to why Afghanistan mattered, and several books have examined the interaction between the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the rise of militant Islam. Last year, Steve Coll was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book “Ghost Wars,” a twenty-year history of America in Afghanistan. But save the exception of Taliban published by Ahmed Rashid, Afghanistan was consistently conspicuously absent from the Western booklist.

When Robert Kaplan first published this book, in 1990, he meant to shed light into a war whose geopolitical importance was inversely related to its attention in the press. “Soldiers of God” is a typical Kaplan book that interweaves the author’s first-hand account of the region with a deep interest in understanding its history and a solemn sense of realism that pervades the narrative.

In telling his story, Mr. Kaplan begins with an introductory chapter on the war’s barbarity-particularly the impact that Soviet mines had on the war and the country’s landscape. He then looks at Peshawar, the Pakistani city that acted as the war’s staging room, at least for the mujahedin side, before examining the tribal dynamics of the war, and specifically the Pathans’ men relationship to their women.

It is in chapter 3 that Mr. Kaplan makes his trip into Afghanistan and gives a first-hand account of the Khyber Pass that connects Pakistan to Afghanistan; from then on, the reader gets an intimate and intricate image of the war’s first line of attack, just as the portraits of the mujahedin get enriched with more detail and precision.

The greater image that emerges is how America let the Pakistani intelligence services, the ISI, run this war and how this jeopardized the subordination of American interests to Pakistan’s own geopolitical priorities. Mr. Kaplan is very somber about this: “In the end, the mujahidin’s willingness to suffer to a nearly unimaginable degree eventually overcame, and thus masked, the awful mistakes of American and Pakistani policy makers.”

The revised edition includes a new chapter, “The Lawless Frontier” which marks Kaplan’s return to the region (in the spring of 2000), and which narrates the way that Pakistan promoted the Taliban as a substitute for Gulbuddin Heykmatyar’s inability to consolidate his power in Afghanistan and thus serve Pakistan’s interests.

If there is an easy way to explain this complex dynamic between Afghans, Pakistanis and Americans, “Soldiers of God” is it. But in the end, Mr. Kaplan would shy away from any grandiose statements; “For American policy makers, there may be no reliably applicable lessons of the Afghan war except that you win some and you lose some,” he writes. A sad conclusion to a war that cost 1.3 million lives.

Superb insight, well written.
This is an extremely well-written book that covers many asepcts of the mujahidin battle against the Soviets (and their Afghan proxies) in Afghanistan throughout the 1980’s. Although Kaplan gives a disclaimer in his new forward that, “Soldiers of God is not a primer for current or future policy in Afghanistan,” I disagree and think this should be at the top of the list for an easily digestable and insightful view into what it was like to be with the mujahidin then– a view that is probably still applicable today.

This was the third Kaplan book I have read. It differs from the other two (Eastward to Tartaray and Balkan Ghosts) in that it is a more focused– both geographically and in its narrative– and Kaplan reveals a lot more of himself, especially in candidly revealing his weaknesses in trying to keep up with the muj. He also discusses his personal views and biases about faith, and how those views evolved after observing the muj he was with exercise their beliefs and faith in a simple, noble fashion.

Kaplan was lucky enough to have fallen in with a group of “good” muj– they took care of him and earned his admiration– he admits this bias. Even back then, however, the more fundamentalist groups were extremely hostile and the sinister designs that would culminate in the catasrophic events of 9/11 were developing.

Kaplan’s insights from that era are just as relevant today. Many of the same characters are still running around, and the struggle is in many ways similar– an element of the population revolting not just against the foreign influence, but also against the Afghan government and its forces.

Overall, this is an excellent book to read if you want to understand the motivations and intricacies of this conflict, which still rages today. Kaplan is honest and articulate in his assessments not only of events on the ground, but also the international community’s treatment of the problem, and his own personal views and how they were formed.

This is an informative, engaging, and most importantly essential read if you want or need to know about Afghanistan.

Review
“Robert Kaplan [is] a scholarly and adventurous journalist. . . . He draws attention to long-term trends that other writers have little noted.” —The New York Times

“Soldiers of God is a thoughtful, insightful, highly readable book. Battlefield smart, rock solid.” —Dan Rather

“Affecting and informative. . . . [Kaplan] answer[s] a number of important political questions.” —The New Yorker

“[A] first-rate account. . . . [Kaplan’s] combination of firsthand war experience inside Afghanistan and extensive reporting . . . makes him sensitive to distinctions that often escaped even devoted promoters of the muj[ahidin].” —The Wall Street Journal

From the Trade Paperback edition.

From the Publisher
The bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts’ blistering portrait of war-ravaged Afghanistan and its devoted Islamic guerilla fighters—from the mujahidin who defeated the Soviet invaders in the 1980s to today’s Taliban militants. First time in paperback. VINTAGE DEPARTURES.

From the Inside Flap
First time in paperback, with a new Introduction and final chapter

World affairs expert and intrepid travel journalist Robert D. Kaplan braved the dangers of war-ravaged Afghanistan in the 1980s, living among the mujahidin?the ?soldiers of god??whose unwavering devotion to Islam fueled their mission to oust the formidable Soviet invaders. In Soldiers of God we follow Kaplan?s extraordinary journey and learn how the thwarted Soviet invasion gave rise to the ruthless Taliban and the defining international conflagration of the twenty-first century.

Kaplan returns a decade later and brings to life a lawless frontier. What he reveals is astonishing: teeming refugee camps on the deeply contentious Pakistan-Afghanistan border; a war front that combines primitive fighters with the most technologically advanced weapons known to man; rigorous Islamic indoctrination academies; a land of minefields plagued by drought, fierce tribalism, insurmountable ethnic and religious divisions, an abysmal literacy rate, and legions of war orphans who seek stability in military brotherhood. Traveling alongside Islamic guerrilla fighters, sharing their food, observing their piety in the face of deprivation, and witnessing their determination, Kaplan offers a unique opportunity to increase our understanding of a people and a country that are at the center of world events.

Coming of Wisdom Description:

Wallie Smith is staring death in the face; only a miracle can save him. And then one does! The Goddess appears to preserve his soul, but she does much more than that. She promises to bestow upon him a new and powerful body, and, more importantly, to endow him with the fabled Sapphire Sword of Chioxin. But nothing in this world or any other comes without a price. The Goddess demands that, for her services, Wallie become her champion. It will be an honor to serve such a presence, to have the chance to be victorious over all challengers. But Wallie and his sword quickly find themselves outmatched in a world of high-stakes magic. Even the Goddess’s priests cannot offer any resistance to the invading sorcerers and their quest to conquer souls for the Fire God. Wallie will need to find in himself and in the world the powers that will save all mortals. He will need to find The Coming of Wisdom.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #493 in eBooks
• Published on: 2010-02-17
• Released on: 2010-02-17
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful Series
The Seventh Sword is a great series. I couldn’t put the books down. Wally Smith dies on earth and wakes to find himself in the body of a master swordsman, living another man’s life in another world. Suffice it to say, his 20th century values don’t quite match those of the man’s body he is inhabiting, which makes for some interesting turns as he runs into people who recognize him…

Best Trilogy by a Major Talent
“The Reluctant Swordsman” (Seventh Sword, Book 1)introduces the characters and world/universe the author continues with in “The Coming of Wisdom” (Seventh Sword, Book 2)and “The Destiny of the Sword” (Seventh Sword, Book 3). This is a brilliant trilogy which remains at the top of Dave Duncan’s impressive body of work.

The characters remind me of Dungeons and Dragons Roll Playing Games (D&D RPG’s). The hero is a 7th level swordsman who picks up a 7th level priest as a travelling companion. There is the same satisfaction of watching a companion swordsman advance through the ranks as there is developing your own character’s skill levels in an RPG. There are also some other character types familiar to RPG’s (archer’s are held in contempt). This is not one of those cheap knockoffs on a D&D game though. This is just one element of the world the author has created which is kind of fun.

The author created a universe with a multitude of gods, like the Greek and Roman gods. While this is very common in the sword and sorcery genre, Dave Duncan has made the gods active participants in his story. One god makes repeated appearances, talks with the hero, and performs the occasional miracle. The author is able to keep the gods from completely overshadowing the human characters by stressing how they value “free will” for there own purposes. The author’s brilliant use of deity characters (a recurring element throughout his best series) add facets to this story which lift it above a simple Conan type “guy with sword” story.

This trilogy has a detailed, multi-leveled plot which twists enough to keep you in suspense right up until the ending. And the ending reaches the appropriate dramatic climax, then has a satisfying denouement where the characters reap their rewards and the author ties up any loose ends. When this book ended, I was left saying, “Wow, imagine that!”

The only thing I can even think of that I didn’t like about this trilogy is that it ended. The author really wrapped things up for the characters. It would be almost impossible to continue the story. I do hope that Dave Duncan comes back to this world with some new characters though. Maybe the old characters can have a cameo in the new story. . .

A magnificent book that turns the fantasy genre on its head
Some people complain that middle books are the worst in fantasy trilogies. But in this series, it only gets better as it goes along. This book starts out slowly, but it gets increasingly broader in scope until the ending, which is among the most shocking and ingenious things I have ever seen in a fantasy. The genre really deserves this book, and, if you’re curious what I mean by that, then read it.

From the Inside Flap
The Goddess had rescued Wallie Smith from certain death, endowed him with a magnificent new body, and gifted him with the legendary Sapphire Sword of Chioxin. She asked only one service in return…

So Wallie became the Goddess’ champion — and promptly found himself on the losing side in a battle against magics far beyond any the priests of the Goddess could hope to summon, After eons of exile, sorcerers walked the World again, claiming lands and souls for their Fire God.

Wallie quickly found that swords were no match for spells — and how could mere mortals prevail against the powers of magic?

I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like Product: I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like Review. List Price: —- Amazon Price: Price Too Low To Display! Click Here To See Amazon Sale Price Add to cart to see low price@ Availability: In Stock Usually ships in 24 Hours Free Shipping Available

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The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.

America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people.

Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.

Describing something by relating it to another thing is the essence of metaphorical thought. It is one of the oldest activities of humankind—and one of the most impressive when done skillfully. Throughout history, many masters of metaphor have crafted observations that are so spectacular they have taken up a permanent residence in our minds.

In I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like, quotation maven Dr. Mardy Grothe fixes his attention on the three superstars of figurative language—analogies, metaphors, and similes. The result is an extraordinary compilation of nearly 2,000 feats of association that will entertain, educate, and occasionally inspire quotation lovers everywhere.

In this intellectual smorgasbord, the author of Oxymoronica and Viva la Repartee explains figurative language in a refreshingly down-to-earth way before taking readers on a tour of history’s greatest word pictures. In chapters on wit, love, sex, stage and screen, insults, politics, sports, and more, you will find quotations from Aristotle and Maya Angelou to George Washington and Oprah Winfrey.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19267 in eBooks
• Published on: 2008-08-05
• Released on: 2008-08-05
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

another of Mardy Grothe’s joyful romps with tropes
With “i never metaphor i didn’t like” [sic] Dr. Mardy Grothe once again succeeds in deriving both amusement and plenty of food-for-thought from the nuances of figures of speech-this time from metaphor, simile, and analogy. This is another of his books worthy of multiple browsings for examples of linguistic wit, wisdom, pathos, and bathos thoughtfully arranged by subject. Dr. Grothe intersperses the quotations with background information, anecdotes, and reference linkages that enhance the reader’s enjoyment and make the book more than just a list of quotations. I’ve thoroughly perused all of his figure-of-speech books, and I’m sure this one will wind up as well thumbed as his others on my shelf.

His introduction provides a quick brush-up on the characteristics of analogies, metaphors, and similes that is bright and readable without being tedious. And his index by author will be appreciated by anyone seeking specific who-said-whats that are scattered among various topics.

Mardy triumphs again in showing the feedback loop by which our language influences our thoughts and our thoughts influence our language.

Mardy’s Done It Again
I never met a Mardy Grothe book I didn’t like. And “I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like” is certainly no exception. In his Introduction, the author describes himself as “a serious quotation collector,” and in this newest of his four books, containing nearly 2,000 analogies, metaphors and similes, he provides indisputable evidence of that fact. He has indeed delivered what he promises in the book’s subtitle: “A Comprehensive Compilation of History’s Greatest Analogies, Metaphors, and Similes.”

However, “I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like” is far more than simply a collection of quotations. In his own highly readable, entertaining and informative style, the author tells often fascinating stories behind many of the entries.

I can’t imagine any word lover not wanting this delightful volume in his or her library. But be advised! This is not a book to be devoured in one, two or even in a dozen readings. In what he calls his attempt “to compile some of history’s greatest word paintings,” Mardy Grothe has succeeded beautifully. To fully admire and appreciate these “paintings” will take time, but it will indeed be time very well spent.

A National Treasure!
Mardy Grothe is a national treasure and so are his books. I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like lives up to Mardy Grothe’s platinum standard of wit, wisdom and insight.

It is absolutely amazing that one man has such a comprehensive collections of quotes. It is even more amazing that he has them well-organized into topics. However, the presentation of each quote, painted into a context and story is nothing short of sheer delight.

I am a big fan of Mardy, his books and his “Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week” e-newsletter (drmardy.com). If it seems that I might be overstating and exaggerating, then I welcome the reader to purchase a copy in a failed attempt to prove me wrong!

Vampire Knight, Vol. 6 Description:

R to L (Japanese Style)

Cross Adademy is attended by two groups of students: the Day Class and the Night Class. At twilight, when the students of the Day Class return to their dorm, they cross paths with the Night Class on their way to school. Yuki Cross and Zero Kiryu are the Guardians of the school, protecting the Day Class from the Academy’s dark secret: the Night Class is full of vampires!

Yuki sneaks into an exclusive vampire party and sees Aido’s parents introducing their daughter to Kaname. They, like many other Night Class parents, desire an alliance with the pureblood. Kaname is the most eligible bachelor in the vampire society–but will he choose Yuki?

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59801 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781421523538
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Customer Reviews:

The Game’s Afoot
Although it includes the usual Yuki and Zero moments, this volume of Vampire Knight mainly focuses on expanding it’s mythology while peeling away more of the layers of the Night Class.

As it begins, Yuki and Zero begin a search for Yuki’s missing childhood - a search which by association sheds a light on her foster father Headmaster Cross, about whom we only now realize we don’t know very much about. The rest of the volume, however, centers on the Night Class’ school break.

When a series of events lead to Yuki being sheltered in Aido’s home, we meet his immediate family and get a rather amusing and quite human explanation of why his personality is what it is. We also get a revelation about Aido which ramps up our sympathy for his plight regarding Kaname and changes the way we view their relationship. We also learn more about Shiki, who after having spent most of the series in the background turns out to have a rather unsettling and disturbing home life. And as always, there’s Kaname, evoking mixed feelings in us with his alternating loyalty and cruelty towards his inner circle.

It all ends as the web becomes even more tangled - and one Night Class member becomes the victim of a horrific betrayal while another forges into danger to protect the one he loves.

One of the best volumes so far, and further proof that for all it’s melodrama the series is fast becoming more than we originally expected it to be.

Great volume!
Great volume!

Vampire Knight gets more interesting with each volume.

Volume 6 is particularly nice, because you get to know a bit more about the background of the Night Class characters, which is not only interesting but also so cute, since five years old Kaname and four years old Aidou are absolutely adorable in the flashback!

Continues nicely.
Matsuri Hino, Vampire Knight, vol. 6 (ViZ, 2007)

Vampire Knight returns with a volume that halts the forward motion of the story to set u0p a number of plot points that will seemingly be used farther down the road. We’ve spent most of our time up till now with Yuki, Zero, and Kaname, but over the winter break, the night class head off to the country, giving us some insight into some of the previously minor characters in the series. Looks like Hino’s setting this up for a good long run now that she’s had a series go beyond five volumes. ***

About the Author
Matsuri Hino burst onto the manga scene with her title Kono Yume ga Sametara (When This Dream Is Over), which was published in LaLa DX magazine. Hino was a manga artist a mere nine months after she decided to become one.With the success of her popular series Captive Hearts and MeruPuri, Hino has established herself as a major player in the world of shojo manga. Vampire Knight is currently serialized in LaLa and Shojo Beat magazines.

Reading in the Brain Description:

A renowned cognitive neuroscientist-s fascinating and highly informative account of how the brain acquires reading

How can a few black marks on a white page evoke an entire universe of sounds and meanings? In this riveting investigation, Stanislas Dehaene provides an accessible account of the brain circuitry of reading and explores what he calls the -reading paradox-: Our cortex is the product of millions of years of evolution in a world without writing, so how did it adapt to recognize words? Reading in the Brain describes pioneering research on how we process language, revealing the hidden logic of spelling and the existence of powerful unconscious mechanisms for decoding words of any size, case, or font.

Dehaene-s research will fascinate not only readers interested in science and culture, but also educators concerned with debates on how we learn to read, and who wrestle with pathologies such as dyslexia. Like Steven Pinker, Dehaene argues that the mind is not a blank slate: Writing systems across all cultures rely on the same brain circuits, and reading is only possible insofar as it fits within the limits of a primate brain. Setting cutting-edge science in the context of cultural debate, Reading in the Brain is an unparalleled guide to a uniquely human ability.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41517 in eBooks
• Published on: 2009-10-13
• Released on: 2009-11-12
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
An astonishing work, explaining convincingly how mankind acquired (only in the last 5,000 years) a skill we all take for granted: reading. The brief explanation, as I (a non-scientist) understand it? Reading takes quite a lot of brain computer firepower (because of the multiple processing required), such that our eventually huge frontal lobes were necessary. The portions of our brain used initially for visual recognition lead to the wiring of our brains to recognize certain key shapes, shapes that eventually become the key “strokes” used in writing (by all cultures) such that they are in effect structured into our brain’s learning algorithm, creating specific neuronal circuits and structures, previously used as visual pathways. It’s an amazing story, well told by one well placed to present the many brain science studies (many of which he conducted) which fully explicate the story. Also numerous “side-stories” worth hearing: e.g., re the origins of our alphabet, along with occasional hints of possible future evolution of the human brain. An A+ book.

Good detail in some areas, mostly speculative in others
The book contains good detail, with what seems to be quite rigorous experimental results as backup, for how the brain learns to recognize letters and words. Dehaene provides a nice walk-through of the reasoning to support his description, drawing on a variety of experiments and studies such as MRI and other types of brain scans, dissection of brains (both human and animal), developmental cognitive studies with children and clinical studies of people with brain lesions.

Dehaene’s theory of word recognition covers not just acquisition of English and other alphabetic languages, but also discusses the similarities and differences to reading in Chinese and Japanese, which is revealing. All of this description convincingly supports Dehaene’s hypothesis that a specific small region of the brain that he calls the “letterbox” is responsible for invariantly recognizing letters, letter pairs, and so on up to full words.

The book also contains quite a bit of material on dyslexia and on the educational implications of the neurology of reading, but that material appears to be a lot more speculative, not very detailed nor rigorous. In several places, Dehaene points out conflicting studies and briefly describes why he agrees or disagrees with the assertions of each study author, but one is left primarily with a feeling that the subject is complex and largely unsettled. Dehaene makes his recommendations on education, but he is unable to provide much in the way of well-supported positive recommendations. Mainly, he provides a convincing case against the “whole word” approach to teaching reading, based on the details of how the brain learns to recognize letters and words.

Dehaene repeatedly explains that efficient learning of reading requires a dynamic interplay between learning to recognize letters and words and learning to associate spellings with phonemes. Unfortunately, there is very little detail in the book about the science (either neurological or linguistic) of phonemes or about what is known about the parts of the brain that learn and process phonemes. The details in the book focus primarily on the visual aspects of letters and words.

Also missing is a description of how the brain handles the higher level processes of reading such as scanning a page, learning rules of syntax, constructing a cognitive model of the meaning of the text. There is no science given in this book to describe how words get associated with meanings.

In summary, the book is a nice lay-person’s introduction to some of the science behind how the brain learns to recognize letters, and to some extent, words, but it is decidedly lacking in describing how the brain reads (if we acknowledge that reading is more than just recognizing individual words!) Take away the highly speculative sections and the polemics on educational policy and that leaves perhaps 30% of the book which is truly interesting. It would have been a much better book if it left out the speculations and instead included more known science on the aspects of reading that were mostly left out (syntax, phonemes, meaning).

The brain is an amazing place
Author Dehaene, who has some very impressive credentials, has made an exhaustive exploration of how the human brain reads. What he has concluded is that we `recycle’ parts of the brain that were evolved to do other things. Humans have been evolving for several million years, but only reading for a few thousand- a new structure just for reading couldn’t have been created in that time. And reading arose in several geographical areas around the same time- the chances of a special mutation for reading happening in all those places is pretty slim.

Hundreds of experiments, from EEGs, fMRIs, split brain surgeries, tests on people who have had strokes or other brain damage, have found how reading works. From how the eye functions, to the recognition of letters on paper, to turning them mentally into sound, and putting those sounds together into words, Dehaene has traced the path. He gives his opinions on what seem to be the best way to teach reading, but also calls for large experiments in teaching reading to resolve, once and for all, what is the best, most efficient way to teach all- not just average children but adult illiterates and people with dyslexia.

The book is very interesting, but it can be slow going. He gives the conditions and results of test after test, and tells us what the information gained tells us about reading. What the reader learns about their brain makes it worth sticking with the book.

From Publishers Weekly
The transparent and automatic feat of reading comprehension disguises an intricate biological effort, ably analyzed in this fascinating study. Drawing on scads of brain-imaging studies, case histories of stroke victims and ingenious cognitive psychology experiments, cognitive neuroscientist Dehaene (The Number Sense) diagrams the neural machinery that translates marks on paper into language, sound and meaning. It’s a complex and surprising circuitry, both specific, in that it is housed in parts of the cortex that perform specific processing tasks, and puzzlingly abstract. (The brain, Dehaene hypothesizes, registers words mainly as collections of pairs of letters.) The author proposes reading as an example of neuronal recycling—the recruitment of previously evolved neural circuits to accomplish cultural innovations—and uses this idea to explore how ancient scribes shaped writing systems around the brain’s potential and limitations. (He likewise attacks modern whole language reading pedagogy as an unnatural imposition on a brain attuned to learning by phonics.) This lively, lucid treatise proves once again that Dehaene is one of our most gifted expositors of science; he makes the workings of the mind less mysterious, but no less miraculous. Illus. (Nov. 16)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post’s Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Susan Okie About 5,000 years ago, societies in ancient Sumeria, China and South America invented writing, and in the millennia since, the ability to read has propelled human intellectual and cultural development, vastly expanding our capacity to learn, create, explore, and record what we think, feel and know. Reading supplies our brains with an external hard drive and gives us access to our species’s past: In the words of Francisco de Quevedo, it enables us “to listen to the dead with our eyes.” But how, in such a short time, did the human species evolve this unique skill, one that requires the brain to decode written words visually and process their sounds and sense rapidly? In this fascinating and scholarly book, French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene explains what scientists now know about how the human brain performs the feat of reading, and what made this astonishing cultural invention biologically possible. Presented with a word’s image on the retina, average readers of English can, within a few 10ths of a second, match it with one of 50,000 or more words stored in their mental dictionaries, comprehend its meaning in context and proceed seamlessly to the next word. Amazingly, most children become proficient readers during elementary school (although learning to read Italian is easier, and learning to read Chinese harder, than learning to read English). In recent years, new imaging techniques have allowed researchers to watch normal brains in the act of reading, and studies have shed light on why the brains of dyslexic children, as well as those of certain stroke victims, fail to process written words successfully. “Only a stroke of good fortune allowed us to read,” Dehaene writes near the end of his tour of the reading brain. It was Homo sapiens’s luck that in our primate ancestors, a region of the brain’s paired temporal lobes evolved over a period of 10 million years to specialize in the visual identification of objects. Experiments in monkeys show that, within this area, individual nerve cells are dedicated to respond to a specific visual stimulus: a face, a chair, a vertical line. Research suggests that, in humans, a corresponding area evolved to become what Dehaene calls the “letterbox,” responsible for processing incoming written words. Located in the brain’s left hemisphere near the junction of the temporal and occipital lobes, the letterbox performs identical tasks in readers of all languages and scripts. Like a switchboard, it transmits signals to multiple regions concerned with words’ sound and meaning — for example, to areas that respond to noun categories (people, animals, vegetables), to parts of the motor cortex that respond to action verbs (”kiss,” “kick”), even to cells in the brain’s associative cortex that home in on very specific stimuli. (In one epileptic patient, for example, a nerve cell was found that fired only in response to images or the written name of actress Jennifer Aniston.) Children learn reading in a stepwise process: first, awareness that words are made up of phonemes or speech sounds (ba, da); then the discovery that there’s a correspondence between these speech sounds and pairs or groups of letters. Later the child begins to recognize entire words, and after a few years, reading speed becomes independent of word length. Dehaene deplores the whole-language approach to teaching reading, in which beginning readers are presented with entire words or phrases in the hope of fostering earlier comprehension of text. He cites research showing that children who first learn which sounds are represented by which letters, and how pairs or groups of letters correspond to speech sounds, make steadier progress and achieve better reading scores than those taught using the whole-language method. He also notes the success of teaching methods that incorporate multiple senses and motor gestures, such as those used in Montessori schools. For example, in preparation for learning to read, young Montessori students are often asked to trace with their fingers the shapes of large letters cut out of sandpaper. The exercise makes use of vision, touch and spatial orientation, as well as mimicking the gestures used to print each letter. Between 5 percent and 17 percent of U.S. children suffer from dyslexia, or severe difficulty in reading. The disorder runs in families and probably has no single cause. Several susceptibility genes have been identified, most of them influencing the migration of nerve cells within the developing brain of the fetus. Research suggests that, even as infants, many dyslexic children have trouble hearing the difference between similar-sounding consonants such as b and d; but about one in four dyslexics has primarily visual difficulties with word-processing. Although there is no prospect of a cure for dyslexia, Dehaene points to promising results with various intervention strategies aimed at strengthening awareness of speech sounds and letter differences. After dozens of hours of training using such programs, Dehaene writes, the majority of dyslexic children “end up reading adequately, even if performance continues to lag behind that of their peers.” Reading, in Dehaene’s words, is “by far the finest gem” in humanity’s cultural storehouse, and judging by the ubiquity of electronic messages and Web surfing, it’s a skill no less essential in the digital age than it was during the age of print.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

About the Author
French scientist Stanislas Dehaene is a world authority on the cognitive neuroscience of language and number processing in the human brain. He is the director of the Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit in Saclay, France, a professor of experimental cognitive psychology at the Collège de France, a member of the French Academy of Sciences and of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He is the author of several books, including The Number Sense. In 2008 he was profiled in The New Yorker for his work in numerical cognition.

My Weird School Daze #2: Mr. Sunny Is Funny! Description:

A.J.’s family rented a beach house for the summer, and you’ll never guess in a million hundred years who rented the house next door. Well, you have to read the book to find out. So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you!*

*Okay, okay, it’s Andrea and her family. And she has a monster crush on Mr. Sunny, the hunky (but weird) lifeguard. Ooooh! When are they gonna get married?

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38185 in eBooks
• Published on: 2008-08-18
• Released on: 2008-09-02
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Customer Reviews:

Really Good!
As soon as I got it I was happy. When I read it it was really funny because weird stuff was happening. A person’s worst enemy has to stay at a beach house with him. Luckily his 3 best friends are also staying with them. Even the cover looks hilarious. After I read it I couldn’t wait till I got another book in this series.
By Robin, age 8

Summer vacation with a teacher
Reviewed by Matthew Feliciano (age for Reader Views (9/08)

“Mr. Sunny Is Funny!” is about a teacher from Ella Mentry School who rents a beach house for the summer. The house he rents is next door to the house that one of his students is staying in for the summer. At first, A.J. (the student) is not at all happy his teacher is next door. Summer is supposed to be months of “anti-teacher” zones. Eventually, A.J. and Mr. Sunny start doing things together. They build a huge sandcastle, invent solar-powered panels for ipods and they go surfing.

Another student named Andrea and her family rent the house on the other side of where A.J. is staying. Then things start to get really messy! Andrea is annoying to A.J. and he always wants to get rid of her. She doesn’t care and insists upon hanging around him.

I liked “Mr. Sunny Is Funny!” by Dan Gutman and thought it was really, really funny. I liked reading about teachers who make kids go crazy and about kids who make teachers go crazy!

SPOILER (A student’s review)
I looooooooved this book so much. I would recommend it because it’s the best book of the My Weird School series. It takes place on the beach. I really loved it and I hope you do too!

About the Author

Dan Gutman is the author of many fantastic books for young readers. Besides baseball, he has written about soccer, basketball, bowling, and aliens. Thanks to his many fans who voted in their classrooms, he has received fifteen state book awards and thirty-seven state book-award nominations. Dan lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with his wife, Nina, and their two children, Sam and Emma.

Back Story Description:

In 1974, a revolutionary group calling itself The Dread Scott Brigade held up the Old Shawmut Bank in Boston’s Audubon Circle. Money was stolen. And a woman named Emily Gordon, a visitor in town cashing traveler’s checks, was shot and killed. No one saw who shot her. Despite security-camera photos and a letter from the group claiming responsibility, the perpetrators have remained at large for nearly three decades.

Enter Paul Giacomin, the closest thing to a son Spenser has. Twice before, Spenser’s come to the young man’s assistance; and now Paul is thirty-seven, his troubled past behind him. When Paul’s friend Daryl Gordon-daughter of the long-gone Emily-decides she needs closure regarding her mother’s death, it’s Spenser she turns to. The lack of clues and a missing FBI intelligence report force Spenser to reach out in every direction-to Daryl’s estranged, hippie father, to Vinnie Morris and the mob, to the mysterious Ives-testing his resourcefulness and his courage.

Taut, tense, and expertly crafted, this is Robert B. Parker at his storytelling best.

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9611 in eBooks
• Published on: 2006-09-01
• Released on: 2006-09-01
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

Customer Reviews:

In defense of Spenser
Many of the reviews I’ve read about Robert B. Parker’s latest Spenser novel, Back Story, suggest that it is unlikely to win any new Spenser fans. This may be true, but Parker’s 30th Spenser offering seems to be designed not with new fans in mind, but for old Spenser junkies like myself who have grown older along with the gumshoe, Susan, Hawk, Lt. Quirk, and the rest of the series characters. After several novels, a series become less story-driven and more character-driven. Back Story is a classic example.

Hired by surrogate son Paul Giacomin for a box of six Krispy Kreme donuts, Spenser sets out to solve the murder of a woman who died in a 1974 bank robbery. Following a trail that’s nearly thirty years old, he soon discovers that several people don’t want the murder solved — and that some people are willing to kill to keep it under wraps.

Character-wise, Parker pulls out all the stops. In addition to Hawk, Paul, Quirk and Belson, we are re-united with some of Parker’s more colorful characters: former Joe Broz gunman Vinnie Morris; Junior and Ty-Bop, two enforcers for black crime kingpin Tony Marcus; and Ives, the mysterious Company man (too bad Parker didn’t find a way to weave Rachel Wallace into the story). There is very little suspense in the book, but that’s never been Parker’s strong suit anyway. Action-wise, the series peaked with A Catskill Eagle, but there are just enough punches and bullets here to keep the story rolling, culminating with a shootout in Harvard Stadium. And of course, there’s the fabulous verbal interplay between Spenser, Hawk, Susan, Quirk, Frank Belson, and just about everyone else. Susan, whom I’ve often found superfluous to the series, shows her value here, as she helps Spenser through a brief bout of self-doubt. Hawk is — well, he’s Hawk: unfailingly loyal to Spenser and Susan, deadly to just about anyone else. And Spenser never lets us down, working a dangerous case for no money, finding out things his client (a co-worker of Paul’s) would rather not know, determined to see the case through to the end. Not many people can understand the complex moral code he lives by, but Susan does, Hawk does –and maybe that’s enough.

If you’re a fan of detective fiction and you’ve never read a Spenser novel, I would recommend that you begin from the beginning and pick up The Godwulf Manuscript, the inaugural novel of the series (I would also wonder what planet you are from, but that’s neither here nor there). The Spenser novels truly are one of the great treasures of contemporary American fiction. Back Story is a satisfying read, but it is nothing special — unless you spend a little time with the characters first.

what can you get for 6 donuts?
You can get Spenser, that’s what. A lady wants Spenser to solve her mom’s murder from 28 years ago, and once Spenser starts snooping, he discovers both the mob and the FBI wants him to stop. But why? He snoops around a bunch that reminded me of the Sybonese Liberation Army (remember Patty Hearst?), i.e., overgrown hippies who break laws in their quest for social justice.

As usual, Robert B. Parker keeps his book moving quickly, with rapid fire action and snippy dialog between Spenser, Hawk and Susan. A classic Spenser novel.

Got Two Hours to Kill?
I don’t know what compels me to keep reading Robert B. Parker’s “Spenser” series. The plotting has become almost nonexistent, the dialog is recycled from book to book, the books are getting shorter and shorter and Parker mainly seems to amuse himself by seeing how many characters from previous books he can pack into the current one, so it obviously isn’t for the fresh, original take on the private eye genre.

But it’s still fun, dammit. Somehow, Parker always manages to engage my attention. The interaction between Hawk and Spenser still amuses, Spenser’s twisted honor code still thrills and Susan’s soppy shrinkiness still annoys.

In this outing, we are on the hunt for the perpetrator of a killing 30 years in the past. The actual plot is incidental, as Parker seems to be making things up as he goes. The characters are, as usualy, thinly written and heavily dependent on stereotypes. But Spenser gamely travels from Boston to New Hampshire to California and back, giving us all our two hour’s worth of lively description and jaunty heroism.

If you are already a fan of the series, you’ve already bought this one and don’t need my review. But if you are not already a fan, don’t start here. Go back to the fabulous days of Ceremony, A Catskill Eagle, The Judas Goat and you will become a fan, ready to read and grouse over each new entry in the Parker oeuvre.

Amazon.com Review
In this 30th entry in one of mystery fiction’s longest-running and best-loved series, Spenser–the tough yet sensitive Boston private eye with no first name–takes on an unsolved murder nearly three decades old. The client, an actress, is a friend of Paul Giacomin, Spenser’s surrogate son (who first appeared in 1981’s Early Autumn). Her mother was slain by leftist radicals at a bank holdup in 1974, and now she wants to know who fired the shot. As Spenser digs into the past, he soon learns that powerful people on both sides of the law want the case left alone–badly enough to kill.

These death threats provide a fine excuse for Hawk, Spenser’s extremely scary (yet sensitive) bad-guy pal, to tag along in nearly every scene as bodyguard. The interaction of the two friends is one of this series’s familiar pleasures, as is the presence of Susan Silverman, Spenser’s longtime love interest. Another pleasure is Parker’s stripped-down prose, a marvel of craftsmanship as smooth as 18-year-old Scotch. (Plus we get the first meeting between Spenser and Jesse Stone, hero of another Parker series.) Alas, the whole enterprise feels a little tired. The plot never generates much sustained suspense, and the author’s adoration for his central characters renders them at times almost cartoonesque. Still, Back Story is excellently prepared comfort food, even if it isn’t five-star cuisine. –Nicholas H. Allison

From Publishers Weekly
Spenser’s respectable 30th outing (he debuted 30 years ago in The Godwulf Manuscript) finds the veteran Boston PI teaming briefly with Jesse Stone, the cop hero of a newer Parker series (Death in Paradise, etc.). The move works because Parker plays it low-key, presenting Stone as just one of many characters who cross Spenser’s path as the PI-hired by a friend of his adoptive son, Paul, for the princely sum of six Krispy Kremes-digs into the 28-year-old murder of a woman during a bank robbery; the friend is the slain woman’s daughter and wants closure. Before Spenser bumps into Stone, the top cop in Paradise, Mass., he connects the killing to the daughter of big time Boston mobster Sonny Karnofsky, an old foe. When Spenser won’t back off, Karnofsky threatens Spenser’s girlfriend, Susan, then orders a hit on the PI. Enter as protection longtime sidekick Hawk; other series vets make appearances too on Spenser’s behalf, including cops Belsen and Quirk and shooter Vinnie Morris. An interesting new character, a Jewish FBI agent, also helps out. The repartee between Spenser and Hawk is fast and funny; the sentiment between Spenser and Susan and the musings about Spenser’s code are only occasionally cloying; and there’s a scattering of remarkable action scenes including a tense shootout in Harvard Stadium. Series fans will enjoy this mix of old and new, but the title kind of says it all: this series, probably the finest and most influential PI series since Chandler, could use some forward momentum.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Spenser’s back to help a friend of his prot‚g‚, Paul, track down the men who killed her mother years ago in a holdup.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.