5 comments about Being Real: An Ongoing Decision.

1. This had to be writing that was inspired by greater beings. The words were heard not only by my ears but within my body. My relationships and my relationshp to myself were altered immediately. This was a real person not wanting to impress anyone, but to inspire and awaken those that read his words. I am grateful to the writer for taking the time to inspire others to be honest and real instead of nice and "should." I recommend this book to others not because it is just a good read, but because it helps us all be real with each other



2. In Being Real, Bruce Scott reminds me of the magic of living. Unlike many books that leave me awed but somehow discouraged by the gap to my own life, Being Real is inspiring because it feels so close, so encouraging for my own experiences and perceptions. Bruce Scott's story is personal--he speaks from his heart, from inside his own struggles and confusion...and the fire of awareness that comes from there. Through his own journey, he takes the not-so-fantastic stuff of everyday life--relationships, odd encounters, dreams and the environment--and reveals its absolutely fantastic nature. Out of sleep-walking comes the magic of daring to follow yourself, your body, curiously discovering what that humble wisdom is all about. This book is a radical living practice, touching me deeply. In fact, Bruce's book is a star on the map for me, saving my life by saying through the "crazy" is the magic is the real. Thank you.



3. Step into the life of Bruce Scott and find yourself stepping into your own. If you choose you can put into practice a step by step guide to being real in all relationships beginning with yourself. The reader learns what being real looks like, and when applied to the self what it feels like. Through storytelling and personal disclosure, Bruce demonstrates how one can be both gentle with themselves while taking themselves seriously, and decide moment to moment how to act from inside rather than from how we're "supposed" to act or be in the world.



4. It has taken me several months to review this book..which is just right..i previously thought i had reviewed it after having read it for the first time..(i am currently reading it for the third time..) but somehow my review never made it to the computer screen..this book has become to mean so much to me..each time i read it-i learn new things about myself and about relationships. each time i read it, i notice more, i feel more, i laugh and i cry more. in between reading this book, i have started to learn how to notice things..how to listen to my body, how to be intimate with people..all people, and what that really means..to be intimate..i have begun to learn how to stay with myself..to follow my heart..although at times it has been hard..and truthfully, as bruce says in the book.."friends will drop away" - they have..and while those experiences have been challenging..they were just right..this is more than a book..it is a way to get to know yourself..to learn how everything is relationship. everything. it is work, to be real..at times i have become lazy in terms of my awareness, my presence, my quest to remain "real"..and have noticed at those times, i begin to physically feel weak..tired, farigued..depleted. i encourage everyone to read this book and to share it with anyone you wish to..it will be a fantastic surprise!



5. I wondered, as I contemplated what to write, how much if any I should reveal about my personal relationship to the author of Being Real, Bruce Scott. I quickly realized it is not important. What is important is that reading his book affirmed many of my own most sacred beliefs. I live in the body of a "minority" person and have had numerous experiences that lie outside the perihery of the mainstream. I have sought through many channels ways to affirm and support my existence in the world. The words and experiences contained within the pages of Being Real: An Ongoing Decision often had the effect of bringing me home to a place I know in my most sacred self. There were many times I felt relieved to have words put to some of my innermost thoughts about myself and the world I live in. Bruce has a deft way of uncovering the myriad ways in which we indidually and collectively limit and repress that force in us which wants to live and and do so fully. This book is a must if you believe that we have yet to tap our collective potential. That potential can only be realized as we individually risk, as often as we are capable, being real. Real with our intuitions, body sensations and that still small voice knocking at the door of our hearts to bring us more compassion for ourselves and others. Bruce Scott's book is a signpost on that path. Do yourself a favor. Read it and share it with others.

No comments about Understanding Vygotsky: A Quest for Synthesis.

No comments about Pulling the Right Threads: The Ethnographic Life and Legacy of Jane C. Goodale.

3 comments about Pushing Time Away: My Grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna.

1. Australian philosopher Peter Singer, now a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, has written a thoughtful, well-researched portrait of his grandfather, David Oppenheim, who perished in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943. "We all know that six million Jews died," writes Singer in the Prologue, "but that is a mind-numbing statistic. I have a chance to portray one of them as an individual."

   His grandfather was a classical scholar in Vienna, a teacher of Greek and Latin at a prestigious gymnasium (high school), and an active participant in the city's psychoanalytic circles as a collaborator, then critic of Sigmund Freud, and a friend and supporter of Alfred Adler, the first of Freud's colleagues to defect from his inner circle over basic disagreements about psychoanalytic theory.
   
   Oppenheim's wife, Amalie (a math and physics scholar in her own right) was also sent to Theresienstadt, but she survived, the only one of Singer's four grandparents to do so. She moved to Australia in 1946, the year Singer was born, and lived with his family for nine years until her death in 1955. Singer went on to study philosophy at Oxford and teach at Monash University in Australia, but always in the background there was a cloud of sadness and silence that hung over his family's recent past. (On his mother's side he comes from a long line of rabbis stretching back to the seventeenth century.)

   His aunt's master's thesis about her father inspired Singer to learn more about his grandfather and write this book. He collected his grandfather's personal papers, letters between his grandparents before their marriage that he retrieved from his aunt's attic, and letters his grandparents wrote to his parents and aunt after they emigrated to Australia in 1938. Singer also travelled to Vienna to see where his grandparents lived and visit the school where his grandfather taught. He searched for additional pertinent information in the Austrian archives, interviewed his grandfather's surviving students, and went to Theresienstadt to see for himself where his grandfather died. Singer believed that reading through his grandfather's vast collection of writings in German, most of them in longhand that was difficult to read, would be "to undo, in some infinitely small but still quite palpable way, a wrong done by the Holocaust."

   The final part of the book describes the departure of the children to Australia in 1938 after the Anschluss, the illusory hope that life would somehow go on, the desperate efforts from faraway Melbourne to save the parents from the impeding catastrophe, and finally Theresienstadt. During his research Singer also learned what happened to his paternal grandparents: the Germans transported them to Lodz in Poland (after that they were probably gassed at Chelmno).

   Professor Singer's well-crafted tribute to his grandfather and the lost world of Jewish Vienna is a valuable contribution to Holocaust remembrance and mourning.

   --Charles Patterson, Ph.D., author of ETERNAL TREBLINKA: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust




2. An excellent and important story that needs to be told over and over again. But for those of us who use non-fiction books such as this for research as well, this book lacks a crucial element--an index. I could not recommend this book to someone researching information on the Holocaust because there is no way for someone to retrieve important information without laboriously searching page by page through the book. When will publishers learn what researchers and librarians know, a non-fiction book without an index is not complete?



3. This is a compelling and frequently moving account of the author's grandparents' lives from the turn of the century in Vienna to the middle years of the twentieth century. The grandparents, David and Amalie Oppenheim, had both the good and bad fortune to live through some of the most interesting and tragic times of the last century. As young, educated, middle-class Jews living in Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century, they experienced the last days of the Hapsburg empire, the intellectual currents of the time and place (including being part of Freud's circle), the first world war, the depression, anti-semitism, Nazism and the Holocaust, as well as the great intellectual achievements of Austro-German culture.

   The book is a fascinating account of the period, as well as the curious relationship between David and Amalie, whose homosexual feelings towards others seem to lead them into marriage and children of their own. The final chapters, describing post-Anschluss Vienna, the ghetto conditions in which they were forced to live, and finally Theresienstadt concentration camp are harrowing and moving. As a memoir rather than a history, the book is written well and reads easily; though there are references to other works, it is not in any way dull or academic. The author's frequent comparisons between his grandfather's way of thinking and his own are I feel a little forced, but this is only a minor quibble, especially when the humanity of both the author and the grandparents about whom he is writing is evident. Highly recommended.

   One book which Singer refers to frequently is Stefan Zweig's "The World of Yesterday", which I would also highly recommend to anyone interested in the period or subject matter.

No comments about Tribute To Freud: With Unpublished Letters By Freud.

1 comments about Piaget for Beginners (For Beginners Series).

1. This 150-page book is a very quick read, having the "for Beginners" format of pictures and cartoons mixed with very concise text. The book gave me an appreciation for Piaget far beyond his most famous idea of the "stages" of cognitive development, which is actually only covered very late in the book. Piaget was as much epistemologist as psychological theorist and researcher. This is a fine and entertaining overview. The explanations are short and merely give one an appetite for more details, but what is said seems to be stated very carefully and clearly. All in all, a few hours well spent if one seeks an introduction to Piaget.

No comments about Masters of Sex and Love.

1 comments about William Henry Holmes and the Rediscovery of the American West.

1. William Henry Holmes & The Rediscovery Of The American West provides the first full-length biography of the western artist and his involvement in western excursions. The topographical illustrator's geologic knowledge set him apart from the usual illustrator and helped advance science as well as discoveries about the West. An intriguing survey.

1 comments about Jacques Lacan.

1. Very well written.
   
   First of all, this book is interesting from a peeping Tom perspective. And not surprisingly, Lacan is portrayed as self-absorbed, cold and opportunistic, desperate for recognition. The book covers the bitter institutional battles, too.
   
   However, the book is also quite relevant from the point of view of Lacan's theoretical development. Roudinesco's explicit account of the thinkers Lacan uses / is inspired by when developing his concepts is very helpful. Note, though, that Zizek claims that some of these interpretations are problematic. To me it was particularly interesting to note that in addition to Freud, Bataille was important for Lacan when developing the notion of the Real.
   
   Overall, Roudinesco's is number two on my list of intellectual biographies, just behind Safranski's superb Heidegger-biography.

No comments about R D Laing: Creative Destroyer.