If I take the wings of the morning--

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If I take the wings of the morning--
Elizabeth Beckwith
Manufacturer: Forward Movement Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00073BEGO

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Take the Wings of Morning
Jeanette Thomas
Manufacturer: AuthorHouse
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1418484377

Book Description

Take the wings of Morning is written about a student majoring in Botany. She will be a teacher. She is terrified of the out-of-doors, poison ivy, and wild animals. In an argument with her Botany professor another professor hears and offers her his estate for the summer to study plants and write her thesis. In her stay at his estate she finds, her lost family, love of a child that is a mute and cripple. Would Omer milestone ever let her be Charla's tutor. Hate and resentment comes from the house keeper that has been the primary caretaker of Charla.

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Take the Wings of the Morning
Cal Carpenter
Manufacturer: Trafford Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 155369242X
Release Date: 2006-07-06

Product Description

Three men in the aerial dogfighting in the skies of France in 1918: a hillbilly country preacher, a wealthy, conniving politician whose ambition is to be President of The United States and a vengeful German ace.

Book Description

Carl Gustav Jung, along with Sigmund Freud, stands as one of the two most famous and influential figures of the modern age. His ideas have shaped our perception of the world; his theories of myths and archetypes and his notion of the collective unconscious have become part of popular culture. Now, in this controversial and impeccably researched biography, Richard Noll reveals Jung as the all-too-human man he really was, a genius who, believing he was a spiritual prophet, founded a neopagan religious movement that offered mysteries for a new age.

The Aryan Christ is the previously untold story of the first sixty years of Jung's life--a story that follows him from his 1875 birth into a family troubled with madness and religious obsessions, through his career as a world-famous psychiatrist and his relationship and break with his mentor Freud, and on to his years as an early supporter of the Third Reich in the 1930s. It contains never-before-published revelations about his life and the lives of his most intimate followers--details that either were deliberately suppressed by Jung's family and disciples or have been newly excavated from archives in Europe and America.

Richard Noll traces the influence on Jung's ideas of the occultism, mysticism, and racism of nineteenth-century German culture, demonstrating how Jung's idealization of "primitive man has at its roots the Volkish movement of his own day, which championed a vision of an idyllic pre-Christian, Aryan past. Noll marshals a wealth of evidence to create the first full account of Jung's private and public lives: his advocacy of polygamy as a spiritual path and his affairs with female disciples; his neopaganism and polytheism; his anti-Semitism; and his use of self-induced trance states and the pivotal visionary experience in which he saw himself reborn as a lion-headed god from an ancient cult. The Aryan Christ perfectly captures the charged atmosphere of Jung's era and presents a cast of characters no novelist could dream up, among them Edith Rockefeller McCormick--whose story is fully told here for the first time--the lonely, agoraphobic daughter of John D. Rockefeller, who moved to Zurich to be near Jung and spent millions of dollars to help him launch his religious movement.

As Richard Noll writes, "Jung is more interesting . . . because of his humanity, not his semidivinity." In giving a complete portrait of this twentieth-century icon, The Aryan Christ is a book with implications for all of our lives.

Customer Reviews:

Entertaining, informative yet highly biased ........2007-08-10

I loved reading the book (thus the 3 stars) yet the authors politically correct bias and penchant for sensationalism made the book somewhat irritating at times. The Author doesn't even try to "just present the facts" and write a biography in which Jung's life and works speak for themselves. I have nothing against Noll pointing out the possible implications of Jungs views mind you I didn't like the PC moralizing. Anything remotely "volkish" or that takes into consideration the importance of race ( especially Jung's view that race plays a part in the psychological make up of a person ) is blasted by Noll as "unscientific", "unenlightened" , "Dangerous. He also seems to have a lurid fascination with Jung's sex life.

Good Documentation.......2007-06-17

To some of us who have read widely and been around a long time, the "revelations" in this book consist less in its main theses than in the detailed evidence provided by the author. Jung's affections for the Nazis have been extensively documented elsewhere, so this is perhaps the least surprising of the major points Noll describes. In fact, the Jung Institute itself issued a book--Jung's Shadow--in an attempt to defuse at least some of the dismay arising from information dribbling out from behind the Archetypal wall.

For some, the fact that Jung was more pagan than not in his spiritual leanings, will be hot stuff; to me, it's old hat; the interest, as I said, is in the specifics provided by Noll. The fact that Jung was not monogamous may similarly upset--or titillate--some people coming for the first time to know the man behind the mask, but once again, it's no great excitement to those who have read widely in psycho-spiritual literature.

That Jung regarded himself as having been initiated and elevated to the rank of a god, depends on how 'god' is understood...and Noll does a good job of showing that this was intended in a pagan sense, and not a Judeo-Christian one.

All in all, this is an informative book, one that provided documentation and detail--both things the Jung Archives try to prevent by keeping The Great One's original works and personal correspondence controlled and under seal.

Richard Noll in the Right Dosage.......2006-10-11

As might be expected this book, The Aryan Christ, has caused considerable controvery in the US and in Europe. The argument is convincingly presented that Carl Jung's scientific description of the psyche and pyschoanalysis are based more on volkish notions prevalent in the late 19th century, coupled with assumptions from the likes of Max Muller about the truth of a deep "sun religion" behind the plethora of world religions, and all ginned up with allusions to Wagner's Parsifal and the Knights of the Holy Grail. Noll does well to present a plausible explanation of how Jung's theories were generated in the context of Jung's rather voracious reading in a range of fields including, not just comparative religion as it was construed in his day, but also the altogether wacky "fields" such as Theosophy, alchemy, and astrology.
Naturally, this is just the problem for those who would like to keep Jung on his pedestal: it seems to be the case that Jung was VERY MUCH a man of his times and to read Jung and take away the sense that he represents a universally valid account of human subjectivity is to be nothing but silly. Put otherwise, Noll has significant evidence that Jung "found" in the unconscious a wide variety of things that were also found in his library (see p. 133 where Noll writes: "If so, the collective unconscious may still be said to exist, but only on the shelves of Jung's personal library"). And this seems to me to be critical for the 21st century to understand: Jung read a lot of half-baked accounts of religions around the world and then claimed, in good faith or otherwise, that he was finding just these same elements, themes, and symbols in his patients. Beside the audacity/arrogance to interpret and explain the Other, for all time, and in all traditions, there are two pressing problems: first, no credible figure in Religious Studies would hold up the 19th century works of Max Muller et al as reliable information; so, the specific elements that Jung is discovering to be universally relevatory of the deep truth of humanity are based on "scholarly" information that has long been discredited: in effect, Jung appears to have read a lot of books on religions, "found" these same symbols in his patients (many of whom were reading the same books), and then wrote a lot of books about just these symbols claiming, adamantly, that they didn't come from their reading. Thus, just like the joke that communism is the fastest way between capitalism and capitalism, Jung's writings are the fastest way between shoddy scholarship on religion and shoddy scholarship on religion. Second, if reading books is how this kind of religious symbolism is getting passed around, then the unconscious in the Jungian sense is a useless idea since what is getting passed around is a body of fadish symbols that both patient and doctor agree are deeply significant. Jung's theories will fall flat if it can be shown that the unconscious and the analysis that uncovers it are really a refraction of the best seller list of spiritual hits at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, in league with contemporaneous assumptions about the Germanic people and the dehumanizing effects of Judeo-Christianity, effects that stand in the way of Germans recovering their original identity.
That said, I find Noll's qualities as a historian troubling in places. Let's agree for the thousandth time not to write about what other people are supposedly thinking or feeling, especially when we weren't there. Then, Noll doesn't do himself any favors when he seems to use Jungian categories to talk about Jung's troubled invention of Jungian analysis. Similarly, even if a book is being written for a popular audience, no one needs to read chapters that start with sentences such as " Without her, he might never have succeeded."
And, also on the topic of Noll's sense of historiography, how about some admission of negative evidence? Is it just as Noll has it in this book, or are there spaces for doubt? Wouldn't the book have been stronger to let in some doubt about the narrative that Noll constructs for Jung's life, along with some room to debate the selection and interpretation of evidence? History _is_ interpretation, of course, with the substantiated facts and footnotes in view. And, in my opinion, I think Noll goes too easy on Jung's anti-semitism -- it's appalling what Jung said and wrote about Jews (and Christians for that matter), not to mention evidence presented in the French reviews of this book that Jung went on the radio in support of Hitler in 1932 or 1933. Arguably, this story could have been cast even darker than Noll has it.
At the end of the book, I am left with the two sentiments. First, Noll has done us all a favor -- I read Jung in my early 20's and didn't know what he was talking about or how to contextualize him -- now, with Noll's assistance, I have a way to situate Jung in the milieu of the likes of Ernst Haeckel and Ernst Junger. Second, Jung now, justly, appears as a symptom of his time: another German writer desparate to recover his Germanness at any cost, and fired up with Goethe, Nietzsche, and Max Muller, hopes that the unconscious and Jungian analysis will be his highway to the Teutonic soul and salvation -- a rather pathetic and truly atavistic hope, all in all.
Three questions remain: 1) why it took nearly 100 years to figure this out; 2) why modern readers find Jung so captivating - the answer isn't going to be flattering; and 3) what to do next in light of the deep influence that Jung has had on the formal study of religion in America and Europe, especially as refracted through the works of Eliade Mircea which, though tilting Jung's project somewhat away from the Germanic focus (Eliade's relation in the 1930's to the Romanian fascist group, the Iron Guard, is another matter to be dealt with), still share much of the basic plan of recovering archaic man and his chthonic spirituality in a quasi-Jungian effort to return to primitive homo religioso. Don't we really need to understand this phenomenon of "reactionary modernism" and see how problematic it really is? And, similarly, shouldn't we awaken the likes of Karen Armstrong and other who draw so heavily on Jung and Eliade, to the troubled tradition to which they belong, even as they promise to save us from ourselves?
In sum, though I wish Noll wrote history with less purple prose, I am sure that his work will continue, deservedly, to be part of the self-evaluation that Religious Studies, at least in America, began roughly a decade ago.
And, for the prospective buyer who has read my lengthy review: buy the book!

the tune of those not in harmony.......2006-09-14

This book is an example of Richard Noll's self loathing. One writes a negative, critically dissective, slanderous account of another if and only if that individual has certain secrets or behavioral predilections that conjure an amount of resentment and regret in that individual's Self. Perhaps Noll's feminine half, his anima, or shall we say, his own aryan-poking-fun unconscious, meant to flash a slight knowing smile admitting such - while his self-righteous, or perhaps self-emulating, conscious half, and he is surely a half, not a whole, constructed this work of laughable fiction attempting to damage the personality of a man who understood more than Noll ever will.

However, I'm sure Jung appreciates, as do I, a serious wannabe humorist. Who wouldn't? It is clear that Noll himself does not understand the projection of his own Aryan obsession though the character of Jung. Perhaps, one might suspect, Noll does not grasp the fact that Jung himself is an archetype, and his connect-the-dots method of observing himself as such was what gave him his objective/subjective analysis of reality.

Of course Jung is limited; he is limited as anyone is by the personality by which others record the physical presence. Yet Jung admits this himself - frequently he refers to psychology as a modern version of alchemy. Jung persists in acknowledging that psychology is the beginning and the end of grasping the human psyche and what comes after. Words after all are words, and where ever you go, there you are. I'm sure Noll twists his lip at Wilhelm Reich as well.
This is a good comedy.

Jung's Public Shadow.......2006-07-21

As you can see from the diversity of viewpoints expressed both here and in reviews of Noll's "The Jung Cult", this is a highly controversial history of Jung's work with an emphasis on aspects that Noll claims have been suppressed. When I was debating whether or not to buy this book, I found one seemingly scholarly review that called it "bad history" and, just now wondering whether I should say what I am about to write, I did further searches and found several other, seemingly reasonable reviews which take Noll to task for bad scholarship. So, as one should always, I will try to remain open to the possibility that I have been misled. But the diary extracts, letters, and other source material from which Noll's conclusions are drawn are carefully footnoted and mostly gleaned from libraries where anyone could easily show deception if that were the case. So, for the moment, Noll has convinced me that there is a dark side (both in the Jungian and conventional sense) to Jung.

I came to this book with a very high regard for Jung and seeing him as a guardian of truth in standing up to Freud's dogmatic insistence on the sexual basis of all neuroses. I still regard Jung as brilliant and having made extremely important contributions to humanity, but I now see a more balanced picture. Freud may have been too focused on sexuality, but apparently so was Jung, although in a much more personal way. Noll provides a convincing picture of Jung as being secretly dogmatic that a form of free love is essential to psychological health. Jung's sexual relationships with patients and coworkers, and his advice to patients to have extramarital affairs seem incontrovertible based on the evidence presented here.

I suspect that much of the criticism of Noll is based on his evidence that Jung was heavily into an Aryan world viewpoint, which immediately conjures up Nazi stereotypes in our minds. Noll repeatedly tries to counteract that understandable tendency, saying for example (last paragraph of the Introduction) "But the most troublesome part of this story comes from asking you, the reader, to do the morally impossible: to imagine a world - fin-de-siecle German Kultur - in which the words "Hitler" and "Nazi" and "Holocaust" do not exist."

Along these lines, it helps to remember that many intelligent, respectable, well-meaning Americans (e.g., Lindberg, Joseph Kennedy Sr.) were early Nazi supporters, just as many were early Communist supporters. The horrendous evils perpetrated in the names of Aryanism and Communism were not present in their early philosophies. It also helps to remember that anti-Semitism and racism in general were the cultural norm througout the world until well into the 1960's or 1970's. It was almost impossible NOT to be prejudiced in Jung's time. (A related book that touches on psychoanalysis and anti-Semitism and that I highly recommend is Bakan's "Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition.")

Another problem concerns Noll's evidence that Jung disparaged Christianity and secretly reverted to (as well as secretly proselytized for) an ancient, pagan, Aryan religion. Such a move will be seen through a highly distorting filter if viewed in the context of today's Christianity. Again, it is hard, but important, to view Jung's choices in terms of the dogmatic Swiss-German Christianity of the late nineteenth century.

As with most movements that believe they have the secret to saving the world, many Jungians idealize their prophet and make him into a kind of god. In contrast, the picture that emerges from "Aryan Christ" is of a brilliant man -- but a man not a god and therefore with all the attendant human frailties. The danger is in forgetting Jung's humanity.

Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung

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Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung
Richard Noll
Manufacturer: NY: Random House, [1997]. 2nd printing. xvi+334+[2]pp. Brown cloth-backed black boards with embossed front cover device. Corners bumped, else a fine, unused copy in lightly worn pictorial dust jacket. Small remainder mark to edge of text block. (OP). eng.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000T5QK3C

Book Description

Playing the Post presents the principles and practice drills that will improve your inside game. Highlights include

• 12 drills for high- and low-post scoring,

• 8 drills for rebounding,

• 7 drills for post passing,

• 24 techniques for defending the post, and

• 10 advanced high- and low-post moves.

Customer Reviews:

Playing the Post : Basketball Skills and Drills.......2001-02-06

I think first I ought to say something about myself. I live in England, so although I'm 24 and have been playing basketball for twelve years, I don't have the coaching/fundamentals a person my age in many other countries would have.

I found the book to be very informative, though it is probably aimed at people younger than myself and/or coaches of younger people.

As a player I found that the most useful sections were those devoted to individual offense and defense. Specifically when introducing a new move, the description is accompanied by clear diagrams describing where your feet should be and where they should be moving to.

I also enjoy coaching, and it is in this respect that I found the book most useful. Every section is accompanied by suggestions of drills which can be used to focus on particular weaknesses. From a coaches point of view, the section on strong and weak side rebounding, and the percentages with which shots taken from a certain area will fall into was of most use to me. This information I haven't found anywhere else.

The book also contains a very basic section on exercise and weight training. The depth in which it discusses this area supports my view that the book is aimed at 11-16 year olds (or even younger!). I would suggest that people older than this should look elsewhere for a more detailed training program

This is not a flaw and though I believe that I was rather older than the intended reader, I found the book to be very useful.

Average customer rating:

This is not just for youth or recreational teams..

For youth basketball fundamentals - this is the best!

Basics of basketball

BASKETBALL

Basketball Skills and Drills
Don Meyer , and Jerry Meyer
Manufacturer: Human Kinetics Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Physical Education | Education Theory | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Basketball | Sports | Subjects | Books
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Blackboard Strategies: Over 200 Favorite Plays From Successful Coaches For Nearly Every Possible Situation (Winning hoops)

Coaching Basketball

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More Five-Star Basketball Drills

ASIN: 0736001719

Book Description

Basketball Skills & Drills provides a perfect blueprint for building the foundation every well-rounded player needs. Each key skill is taught and illustrated, including • basic positioning, • moving without the ball, • ballhandling, • shooting, • passing, • perimeter moves, • post moves, • defense, • rebounding, and • setting and using screens.

The 59 drills serve to reinforce the skill instruction and make every practice session more fun and effective. Coaching tips sprinkled throughout the book emphasize key points and explain how to correct common errors.

Since individual skills are effective in games only when used within the team concept, the book also covers key team principles for both ends of the court. Tactics for offense, including special situations such as out-of-bounds plays, will improve spacing, ball and player movement, shot selection, and scoring. Defensive tactics emphasize positioning, pressure, and various systems to apply in each area or level of the court.

To be an all-star, a player must first master the basics. Basketball Skills & Drills is your guide to developing all the fundamentals of the game.

Customer Reviews:

This is not just for youth or recreational teams.........2006-11-07

I found this book to be an excellent tool for running youth practices. It explains every phase of the game and makes it easy for you to pass this knowledge on to your players.What is contained in this book are rules you will use for your entire basketball career. A great reference book.

For youth basketball fundamentals - this is the best!.......2005-11-29

Even the most experienced players will need to review basketball fundamentals if they decide to begin coaching. What is second nature for you is brand new to young players.

You will be doing a better job than 99.9% of youth league coaches if you teach your young players the solid fundamentals in this book. I have coached youth basketball for many years, and this book is the first place I look at the beginning of each season.

Some drills are too complex for very young players, but if you instill the basics found in the early chapters, your youthful players will reap the benefits for the rest of their basketball lives.

Highest recommendation!

Basics of basketball.......2002-11-28

This book is aimed at coaches who have had little or no expierence in the game of basketball. It includes all the basics of basketball and some players may benifit from it. The book is for the coach who is concerned about their players overall developement. This book will help the beginner but, it will be of very little use for the more advanced.

BASKETBALL.......1997-09-13

THE GAME AND ITS USEFULNESS

Drills and Skills for Youth Basketball (Art and Science of Coaching Series)

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Easy to understand and innovative teaching techniques.

Drills and Skills for Youth Basketball (Art and Science of Coaching Series)
Rich Grawer , and Sally Tippett Rains
Manufacturer: Coaches Choice Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Basketball | Sports | Subjects | Books

General | Sports | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1585182044

Customer Reviews:

Easy to understand and innovative teaching techniques........1999-10-16

This book is a must for all coaches and kids. It really helped my planning of practices for my 8th grade team. Coach Grawer's practice ideas are not only effective teaching methods that helped improve my players' skills, but also were fun drills that made the kids look forward to coming to practice. Many of my players now use his techniques on their own at home...away from the official practice time.

Average customer rating:

Youth Basketball Skills and Drills
Rich Grawer , and Sally Tippett Rains
Manufacturer: Coaches Choice Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Basketball | Sports | Subjects | Books

Children's Sports | Coaching | Sports | Subjects | Books

General | Sports | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1585188557

Basketball Skills & Drills Book & CD Package

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Basketball Skills & Drills Book & CD Package
Jerry V. Krause
Manufacturer: Human Kinetics Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 073607211X

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Basketball Skills : The Coach's Guide

Manufacturer: Angus Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Pedagogy | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1861606370

Drills and Skills for Youth Basketball (The Art & Science of Coaching Series)

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Drills and Skills for Youth Basketball (The Art & Science of Coaching Series)

Manufacturer: Sagamore Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HYRVBK

Interactive Basketball Skills & Drills Release 2.0

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Interactive Basketball Skills & Drills Release 2.0
Krause
Manufacturer: Human Kinetics (Trade)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM

General | Basketball | Sports | Subjects | Books

General | Sports | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0736051244

Prototype Player: Basketball Drills and Skills to Help Coaches Mold Winners

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Easy reading, good content.

Prototype Player: Basketball Drills and Skills to Help Coaches Mold Winners
Michael Podoll
Manufacturer: Lessiter Pubns
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Basketball | Sports | Subjects | Books

General | Sports | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0944079423

Book Description

Basketball Drills And Skills To Help Coaches Mold Winners. Coaches everywhere are searching for new and innovative ways to improve their players' all-around skill levels. "Prototype Player" is jam-packed with drills, action plans and valuable workouts that will immediately improve your players' individual skills. By stressing fundamentals and team concepts, you'll use this book as a day-by-day practice guide for the development of your players!

Its 128 pages are loaded with drills, easy-to-read diagrams and step-by-step instructions on the most time-tested, effective training methods to help you build a fundamentally sound dream team!

Great for all skill levels! Broken down into detailed chapters with drills ranging from fundamental to advanced skill levels.

Customer Reviews:

Easy reading, good content........2007-03-05

I originally thought this book was just ok.There are better developmental books that are more in depth but on a daily basis I resort constantly to this book. It has good explainations and quick and meaningful drills.

Skills, Drills & Strategies for Basketball (The Teach, Coach, Play Series)

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Skills, Drills & Strategies for Basketball (The Teach, Coach, Play Series)
Charlie Nix
Manufacturer: H. Hathaway
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Basketball | Sports | Subjects | Books

General | Sports | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1890871117

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Easy and interesting

No little diet salads here...

Good for rainy-day cooking, NOT for beginners

Salad extravanganza for many days!

Why go out for a fancy salad?

Salad Days: Main Course Salads for a First Class Meal
Marcel Desaulniers
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Baking | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
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Salads | Vegetables & Vegetarian | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 068482261X

Amazon.com

Anytime El Nino has the price of a head of lettuce breaking the $2 barrier, it's time to march to the cookbook shelf for inspiration. Reaching for Salad Days is well in order, for Marcel Desaulniers has produced an elegant little book that gives salad a refreshing spin.

A lovely chapter on greens leads the book, and Desaulniers follows right along with chapters on beans, grains, and fruits. But these are only the baseline ingredients, the bedrock on which a grand, dinner salad might be built. This book is all about building, about mixing and matching. One is tempted to believe that Desaulniers played with paper dolls as a child, for the same theory is at work: Once the outfits are cut out, it's simply a matter of assembling the final production according to one's taste.

Take, for example, the salad of sliced beets, curly endive, red bliss potato salad, honey mustard roasted walnuts, and meaux mustard vinaigrette. There are four separate recipes at work here, which might seem intimidating at first. But it's all really quite short and sweet. A minimum of muss and fuss, and then on to the assemblage.

But here's the kicker, having given you the recipe for the baseline assembled salad, Desaulniers gives the reader two ways to stretch, in this case with recipes for walnut-crusted stripped bass on the one hand, and honey duck stir-fry on the other. By adding either ingredient, what started as an elegant dinner salad changes into an entrée salad. A main course.

Desaulniers' primary and obvious point of concern is the home cook. He works up his recipes in a home kitchen, with home kitchen equipment and appliances. He writes clear and encouraging recipes, lists all the tools a cook will need, and slathers on the insider tips. The net effect of all this is to bring the home cook right into the heart of real cooking. And there's a whole world of difference between that and following a recipe. --Schuyler Ingle

Book Description

Marcel Desaulniers, the prizewinning, bestselling author of such classics as Death by Chocolate, The Burger Meisters, Desserts to Die For, and Death by Chocolate Cookies, has finally had his fill of sweets -- at least for a while -- and he's ready to get to the main course. In the same way that Marcel turned chocolate on its head, with Salad Days he expands our idea of what salads should be: not salad-bar fare, but full meals melding the flavors of such savories as grilled eggplant, scallions, and plum tomatoes with leaf spinach, herbed couscous, and roasted garlic dressing.

We are all now aware that to improve our diets and our health, we need to boost our vegetable, fruit, and complex carbohydrate intake. With Salad Days, Marcel makes that easier to do and more fun and delicious in the process. Organized into four main sections -- Greens, Beans, Grains, and Fruits -- each of the thirty salad recipes is accompanied by two variations. These variations, like the original salads themselves, show the real care Marcel has taken to tantalize even the most finicky eater. For example, he rounds out the Roasted Root Vegetable Slaw by adding either Spiced Pork Burger or Ale-Steamed Chicken Breast. Likewise, the Oven-Roasted Fruit with Belgian Endive is still deliciously light enough for a summer afternoon when accented by either Lamb with Jicama and Anaheim Peppers or Pan-Seared Maple-and-Ginger-Coated Sea Scallops.

Salad Days makes a great addition to any cookbook collection because there's something for everyone. Each element of the salads is so delicious and clearly detailed that you just might want to make the Grilled Skewer of Ginger Chicken, the Crispy Corn Biscuits, the Panfried Black Turtle Bean Cakes, or the Peppered Honey-Lime Dressing on its own and forget about adding the leafy greens. As in his previous award-winning cookbooks, Marcel tells you exactly what equipment to use and which pantry items to stock; in his Chef's Touch section following each recipe, he supplies additional cooking tips, shares personal anecdotes of a lifetime of food, and complements each meal with a wine or beverage selection.

Whether you need an impressive dish for special guests or simply a delicious indulgence for one, Salad Days provides the inspiration and instruction for a first-class meal.

Customer Reviews:

Easy and interesting.......2005-05-20

I love this cookbook. I have been using it for about 5 years and still find things of interest. I particularly like the fact that the book tells you how to prepare and present the whole meal, with each menu broken down into: the dressing, the salad itself, assembly of the dish and always two choices of meat or fish to accompany the meal. I often spice up a meal with just a part of a salad - ratatouille tonight and maybe saffron infused arborio rice cakes another day. The ingredients are easy to find and the methodology easy to follow. If you like salads and want something a little different, then this is the book.

No little diet salads here..........2004-05-06

These are main-dish salads. Each recipe has several components to it, and two variations on top of that to top things off. One of my favorite recipes in this book is "Sliced Beets with Curly Endive, Red Bliss Potato Salad, Honey Mustard Roasted Walnuts, and Meaux Mustard Vinaigrette." I'm not normally fond of beets, but they're fantastic in this recipe. The honey mustard roasted walnuts have the perfect blend of sharp and sweet tastes. There are a couple of ingredients you might have trouble finding, but they're generally things you can easily substitute for. The first variation for this recipe is the Walnut-Crusted Striped Bass, and there's also a Honey Duck Stir-Fry variation.

Each recipe has the same "Chef's Touch" section as in "Death by Chocolate," giving suggestions for substitution (the aforementioned mustard), storage, and so on, including even wine suggestions in some cases. My only negative comment on this recipe was that the vinaigrette was too oily for our taste, but it's easy enough to reduce the amount of oil. Each recipe serves four hungry people, and could easily be stretched to 6 or 8 as a side dish.

If you're familiar with Desaulniers' "Death by Chocolate" series, then you're already familiar with his cookbook style. He describes everything in detail, not because it's necessarily complex, but because he wants to make sure he doesn't leave anything out or confuse the reader. Also, while his recipes are usually calculated to be not overly difficult, they do tend to be time-consuming, and often involve a handful of different components that need to be put together. You don't need to be an expert to use his cookbooks, but you do need to be willing to spend time and effort in the kitchen.

But as always, he truly comes through in the flavor department. Peppered Honey Peaches with Warm Pecan Cakes, "Bitter" Salad Greens, and Sour Mash Vinaigrette. Variations: Turkey Scallopine with Basil and Zinfandel; Pecan-Crusted Soft-Shell Crab. Or maybe you'd prefer Mandarin Orange Basmati Rice with Sesame Stir-Fried Vegetables, Tangy Red Cabbage, and Szechuan Peppercorn Vinaigrette. Variations: Orange and Cilantro Barbecued Catfish; Charred Flank Steak. Truly, there's something in here to appeal to almost anyone.

Good for rainy-day cooking, NOT for beginners.......2003-04-12

Marcel Desaulniers, author of some of the most wickedly good dessert cookbooks in my cupboard, releases a cookbook full of more virtuous dishes, probably for those of us who've indulged one time too many in his myriad chocolate desserts.

One thing I particularly like about this book is the serving sizes. Unlike many cookbooks, where the number of servings listed is sometimes (or usually) optimistic, when a recipe in THIS book lists 4 servings, it means 4 VERY generous servings. Also, love or hate the ingredients that go into the salads, all of them turn out looking so delicious that it's (ironically) almost a shame to eat them.

Be warned, however - I would NOT recommend this cookbook to beginners. It can take several hours to prepare one of these salads. When I purchased it, I was expecting dozens of recipes for salads consisting of 6 or 7 ingredients, tops, which you can toss together and serve with a dressing. Wrong. Many of these salad recipes are actually 2 to 4 small recipes combined into one dish (even more if you decide to compliment the salad with the extra "variation" recipes), and the number of different ingredients required for these recipes easily goes from 12-15. Also, many of these ingredients are not things casual cooks will have lying around the house (I have no idea where to find Moutarde de Meaux Pommery mustard), so you have to specifically be in the mood to make a certain salad - you can't just whip one of them together right when you come home from work. Rainy weekends are ideal for many of these recipes.

One thing that I don't believe this book tells you (I may be mistaken), but which many people should guess anyway, is that all of the pasta recipes in this book can easily be substituted with the plain dry kind you buy in supermarkets. If the pasta is flavored (green onion fettucini, for example), you can simply add a bit of the herb/vegetable that was to go in the pasta directly into the salad.

One minor quibble with this book is that compared to other books by this author, there doesn't seem to be as many recipes, perhaps because due to the fact that each salad recipe is composed of several smaller recipes. Most of these are quite good, and the dressing recipes can obviously be made on their own for every day salads. Also, a grilled lemon chicken breast recipe accompanying one of the pasta salad recipes makes an outstanding ciabatta sandwich. In the end, the recipe(s) that make up one salad can often be made on their own for any number of occasions, which is a major plus.

Overall, the salad recipes as a whole are too difficult to make for me to recommend it to beginners, but cooking enthusiasts and/or people looking for substantial, nutritious meals should definitely give it a whirl!

Salad extravanganza for many days!.......2001-01-11

This is just a marvelous example of the chef who is inventive and researches the items and prep with the at-home type cook in mind. He presents very original, creative salad entrees with a huge array of ingredients, e.g. nuts, berries, fish, fowl, beef, etc. but then adds item options as well as prep and presentation advice along with two additions to the basic salad recipe if so inclined. The possibilities are endless! So good to those of us who enjoy just a great salad as the meal! Marcel is one of the best cookbook producers around .... from chocholate to burgers to salads.

Why go out for a fancy salad?.......2000-07-18

Do you love ordering meal-sized salads at restaurants but never make them at home? Then this is the book you need to buy. The salads in this book are scrumptious and colorful. The interesting thing to me about this book is that it presents a couple of variations on each salad. For example one of the recipes in this book is Penne Pasta and Spinach with Oven-Roasted Plum Tomatoes, Toasted Walnuts, Curly Endive, and Cracked Black Pepper Vinaigrette. It has two variations, the grilled chicken breast variation and the pan-seared salmon variation. I would consider this book appropriate for someone with intermediate cooking skills but if you are a novice cook the instructions are excellent and would help you build your skill set.

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