Cunningham Reviews

It's very sad that vital books have to be "updated" and "revised" to accomodate the writing careers of persons unable to create vital books themselves. See if you can get hold of the original Clement Woods instead.

Recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.

This is pretty easy to use, just sometimes it takes a while to be able to actually find the right words. And I think it works a lot better when writing poetry to either not use the word if you can't think of anythin that rhymes because most of the time when you add one of the words from the dictionary, it sounds artificial and out of place.

As a beginner at writing poems I have found this book provides a simple, straight forward, fast way to find a rhyming word. It's compact size is convent to carry with you. The title doesn't do the book justice as it is much more than a rhyming dictionary. It provides a guideline for effective rhymes, history, warnings and different types of rhymes.

This book was written in the 1950's and I suppose that these were different times because allot of the trial and error research Lilly does is disturbing. I have only read the first three chapters and i felt the need to talk about it on amazon. In his first experiments on the dolphins he is given five to test the brain patterns by directly simulating the brain. And instead of learning more about dolphins and carefully experimenting on anesthetic for the animail, he instead runs headlong into the operating room and kills two dolphins on the table before he realizes that somthing isnt working. He then is able to revive one after it has not breathed for 10 min and elects to put it back in the water half brain dead to "see if it was still able to swim" . It wasnt. So he then elects to scrach the whole experiment of studing the brain alive so he instead kills all five dolphins to get "good brain specimens". He then finishes the chapter talking about how its strange that dolphins have all the equipment to hurt man but never does even when provoked. Wow real good deductions Lilly. (sarcasim) So the only reason i gave it two stars is because the conclusions he finally (after needlessly killing) draws are well thought (even if his experiment are not) and the basic theisis is intriging.

The first serious look at the attempts by humans to communicate with dolphins. Lilly breaks new ground with his coverage of expirements to date.
Most work in this field has been only written up before in classified military projects. Reluctantly I had passed my copy on to a student majoring in marine biology.
This review is written from memory as I came here seeking to buy another copy. I liked it enough to buy it twice. My recommendation that you buy it once is happily tendered.

I had to read this book for a zoology course I am taking and It is really boring. This woman is crazy she has acutal conversations with a dolphins...Example...good boy peter...zzzzz.xxxxxxxccccc ---is the dolphin 'talking' crazy!

John Lilly who spent his life researching conciousness.Was the first Dolphin researcher and operated several research institutes on Dolphins even tought them to learn english and create different sounds for different words.When their vocabulary reached 50 words the dolphins taught themselves syntax. This is one of the earlier books.

Before I accepted anything a "professional" said about children, adults or anything to do with mental health or the "helping professions," I would do a thorough background check on any and all of the writers prior to believing whatever may be written or said by a certain group of people who, after all, profit from other people's trauma and grief. Has anyone ever interviewed any of the people these authors "helped?" Buyer beware!

I own this book. If you have a really troubled kid, you are a state or local leader, you are an agency person working with kids, your a poliician or someone who cares about the future. READ this book. Yes it's dry. Yes it's technical. So is reading about the new cancer medication that might save your life or the new HIV-vaccine research or or the new brain scan literature. Embedded insiide the methods of MST are strategies that really turn about the lives of kids, families and communities. What is inspiring is that the model presented REALLY works. What a concept! All across America-counselors, families, juvenile justice folks, school people are pulling their hair out on what to do about really difficult kids. Too, often the answer is: Throw 'em out, drug 'em out, and lock 'em up. Well, they get out eventially. MST can change all of that. It is cost effective. It has science. It has people who are doing it well all over the world.

The authors pack a lot into this one volume and the maps accompanying each trail description are detailed enough to hike from; the elevation loss and gain charts are useful when planning your trip, especially to those who like to hike, but not uphill. Covering Death Valley National Park, Mojave National Preserve, Joshua Tree National Park, and Anza Borrego Desert State Park the 111 trips vary from a short stroll to the demanding all-day Telescope Peak trip. The black and white photographs don't really add anything to the book but the trail descriptions are good.

I found this book at a used book store not knowing much about it. I've been studying Shotokan Karate for almost 5 years, and I'm trying to expand my library. This book has some interesting points, especially in the section about mental aspect of karate and some of the exercises. The style seems to be shotokan, although there's no mention of it. Lots of pictures and drawings. I really wonder though, who is A. Pfluger?

well, it was a great way to learn spanish.... but other than that, it was ok. I love mr. cunnigham's work, which is why i bought this.

This is a well produced hardcover book with many photos reproduced for the first time. The squadron histories and operational information has been reproduced in many previous publications but if this your only mosquito book it brings it together as a handy referance. The production information is inacurate and at times misleading. The photos of the fusilage being glued together does not show the actual production technique. The information on glues is muddled.The shown precedents of the mosquito need more convincing justification for their inclusion. for instance how the comet racer and the don had anything to do with mosquito production .Save that a few of the dh 94 engineers also worked on the dh 98 there can be no justification for its inclusion. Greater attention should have been paid to overseas operations and production particulary canadian and australian production .The high ball squadron sent to the pacific recievs scant attention. This is not the definitive mossie book

The book argues for the rejection of stock theoretical readings and proposes a revival of attentive close readings. While pointing to some of the useful contributions of "Theory," the author spends most of the book denouncing Theory's appropriative approaches to literature (the approach, for instance, of a feminist reading that finds gendered politics everywhere and in everything -- the book provides numerous examples of such readings).

The basis for this important argument is that while such discourses supposedly want to champion the Other, they frequently function by simply advocating the same (a particular political or conceptual agenda that is known in advance). The book ends by briefly pointing toward a "tactful" ethics of reading that treats the literary text with care and attentiveness. Indeed, if the book had treated "Theory" texts with the kind of care and attentiveness it recommends toward "Literature," it would have been a great deal more compelling. As it is, those who enjoy the popular genre of ham-fisted, hyperbolic critiques of Theory and Post-modernism will certainly like this book (though the book repeatedly insists that it doesn't want to get rid of Theory, it just wants to keep it in its place). On the other hand, those who are interested in working through the complexities of ethics, politics, and reading might want to give it a pass.

Volume three of the complete journals of Thomas Merton - A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life, edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham - follows on from where volume two ended with an entry dated July 25, 1952 and concludes in May 1960.

The title given to this volume does not reflect the turbulence Merton was experiencing in the years covered by this journal. "Searching for Solitude" and "Pursuing the Monk's True Life" were not easy tasks for Thomas Merton. In The Sign of Jonas Merton battles with his dual vocations of being a solitary and a writer and, by the end of the journal, having discovered solitude both through writing and through his work as Master of Scholastics, the impression Merton gives in his masterful epilogue to Jonas, "Fire Watch, July 4, 1952", is that his problems over his vocation have been resolved. As Michael Mott and William Shannon have made clear in their biographies of Merton this was certainly not true. As Shannon notes, "The Sign of Jonas ends when the struggle is just beginning to warm up" for Merton's "most serious crisis of stability yet" and this is where the third volume of journals begins.

Beginning with July 1952 this volume goes up to March 1953 where there is a break up until July 17, 1956 when the journal begins again. Cunningham provides no explanation for the missing years simply stating Merton "kept rather brief journal entries in the last months of 1952 and in 1953, with a hiatus in 1954-1955." (xiii) My major criticism of this volume is that no attempt at an explanation is provided for this hiatus. Patrick Hart, General Editor of these journals, has pointed out that the policy decision was made to publish Merton's journals in their entirety and that the publishers did not wish them to have more than the bare minimum in the way of footnotes to avoid them appearing like "a German doctoral dissertation." The lack of comment on Merton's hiatus of the mid fifties is taking this policy to an extreme and does not help the reader.

From biographies of Merton it is possible to fill in the events of these "missing years" and to find the reason for the hiatus. In early 1953 Merton agreed to a request of Gabriel Sortais, Abbot General of the Cistercian Order, that he cease keeping a journal and l the lack of journal writings from 1953 through to 1956 suggests that Merton was obeying Sortais's wishes.

In the fifties Merton experienced three major periods of instability, two of these, in 1953 and 1959 are covered in A Search for Solitude the other, from 1955 falls into the period when Merton was not keeping a journal but it can be traced in Mott's biography. These periods of instability show Merton's struggle with his vocation and with self doubt, struggles which are not found in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. The instability Merton writes of in his own life is an instability which has come to characterise the final decades of this century. Merton's writing in this journal serve as a witness to the qualities which sustained him through these profound periods of instability, especially a deep sense of obedience and a committment to his search for God and for truth.

In the late summer of 1952 Merton mentions three options he is considering as possibilities for greater solitude - the Carthusians, the Camaldolese or the possibility of a separate scholasticate. As Merton's crises in The Sign of Jonas had led to opportunities for greater solitude at Gethsemani so, in response to his 1952 crisis Dom James allowed Merton to use a disused toolshed in the Gethsemani woods for limited periods of time. Merton called the toolshed St. Anne's and writes that "St. Anne's is what I have been waiting for and looking for all my life" adding "everything that was ever real in me has come back to life in this doorway wide open to the sky!" (32.)

Merton's second major crisis of the fifties began in the early summer of 1955 and, though not covered in A Search for Solitude, it is worth mentioning briefly in this review as it highlights a pattern in Merton's life, a pattern very evident in this volume of Merton's journals. A visiting abbot had complained of a "hermit mentality" in the community and swept away some of the priviledges Dom James had arranged to provide Merton with more solitude. This led to Merton's application for a transitus to the Camaldolese in June 1955. Following on from this crisis of stability there followed a period of stability for Merton until in 1958 he began actively looking into opportunities once again to become a hermit and in November 1959 applied for an exclaustration to go to Mexico to become a hermit near the Benedictine monastery of Cuernavaca. When Merton's request was turned down he accepted the decision with relief and writes the next day of "a very great peace and gratitude at knowing that I have really, at last, found my definite place and that I have no further need to look, to seek, except in my own heart." (360) As with Merton's earlier crises of stability this crisis led to changes in this position at Gethsemani. In March 1960 Merton was given a quiet cell of his own in the monastery and plans were also begun for a cinder block building that would eventually become Merton's hermitage.

Merton's relentless "search for solitude" is central to this third volume of his journals. Other themes found in the earlier two volumes are present as well as many new themes. A good part of Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander was written in the period covered by A Search for Solitude and so the development of Merton's thought can be seen through comparing this journal with Conjectures. Events and themes which would later be worked up for inclusion in Conjectures are here in their raw state. In particular Merton's expanding horizons over the latter years of this journal are striking. As Merton searched for a solitary life he was also asking questions about the monk's relationship to the world, realising that his solitary vocation was not merely "cuddling in self-love" (298) but involved a "responsibility to be in all reality a peacemaker in the world." (149) These years also saw the great expansion in Merton's correspondence and the influence of his correspondents upon him is profound. Of particular note in this journal is Merton's reflections on his contact with Boris Pasternak and his correspondence with Latin American writers. Merton's correspondence has been published elsewhere but the shockwaves from it permeate the second half of this journal. Reflecting on the effect of this correspondence upon him Merton writes:
Like Dick Whittington turning again at the sound of Bow bells, because London was his life and vocation and fortune. I have "turned again" at the voice of the Andes and of the Sertao and of the Pampas and of Brazil. (169)

Merton concludes this journal saying "I know you are leading me, and therefore there is no conflict with anyone. Nor can there be" (394) and yet, having accompanied him on his search for solitude and his pursuit of the monk's true life through these pages, having shared with Merton his struggles and his solaces, we know all too well that his search will continue along with his struggles.