Social Services & Welfare Books - Page 4

Drinking: A Love Story

Caroline Knapp

List Price: $22.95 By: The Dial Press Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $0.01

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 154 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A powerful, brave, and moving memoir of one  woman's struggle with alcoholism, a disease that  affects fifteen million Americans each  year.



"It happened this way: I fell in love  and then, because love was destroying everything I  cared about, I had to fall out." So begins  Caroline Knapp's searing account of her twenty-year  love affair with alcohol, the "liquid armor"  she used to protect herself from life's painful  realities: family tension, social insecurity, fear of  intimacy, her parents' deaths. Though she was for  twenty years a functioning alcoholic, few would  have suspected that beneath her attractive, Ivy  League veneer, this successful professional was a  young woman who had to drink herself to sleep every  night. She thought alcohol gave her the courage to  face life. It took her twenty years to admit that  drinking only made it more difficult to  bear.



Written with warmth, candor, and wisdom, here  is one woman's story of addiction and recovery--a  story that begins in despair and loneliness, but  ends with the hope that within each of us lies the  strength to survive in the world without  anesthesia.

Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman)

MD, Nortin M. Hadler

Amazon Price: $18.48 List Price: $28.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: The University of North Carolina Press Amazon Marketplace: 25 new & used starting at $14.45

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

At a time when access to health care in the United States is being widely debated, Nortin Hadler argues that an even more important issue is being overlooked. Although necessary health care should be available to all who need it, he says, the current health-care debate assumes that everyone requires massive amounts of expensive care to stay healthy. Hadler urges that before we commit to paying for whatever pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment tell us we need, American consumers need to adopt an attitude of skepticism and arm themselves with enough information to make some of their own decisions about what care is truly necessary.

Each chapter of Worried Sick is an object lesson regarding the uses and abuses of a particular type of treatment, such as mammography, colorectal screening, statin drugs, or coronary stents. For consumers and medical professionals interested in understanding the scientific basis for Hadler's arguments, each topical chapter has an accompanying source chapter in which Hadler discusses the medical literature and studies that inform his critique.

According to Hadler, a major stumbling block to rational health-care policy in the United States is contention over the very concept of what constitutes good health. By learning to distinguish good medical advice from persuasive medical marketing, consumers can make better decisions about their personal health and use that wisdom to inform their perspectives on health-policy issues.

The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for Persons with Alzheimer Disease, Related Dementing Illnesses, and Memory Loss in Later Life (3rd Edition)

Nancy L. Mace, Peter V. Rabins

Amazon Price: $9.99 List Price: $9.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wellness Central Amazon Marketplace: 59 new & used starting at $4.85

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Disorders & Diseases -> Nervous System
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Mental Health -> Dementia

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 87 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

When someone in your family suffers from Alzheimer's disease or other related memory loss diseases, both you and your loved one face immense challenges. For over 20 years this book has been the trusted bible for families affected by dementia disorders. This authoritative guie provides all the practical and specific advice you need to make care easier, improve quality of life and lift the whole family's spirits. It features the latest medical research and news on current delivery of care, with new appendices including website and association listings. Comprehensive and compassionate, THE 36-HOUR DAY is the only guide you need to help your family through this difficult time. You'll learn: the basic facts about dementia; how to deal with problems arising in daily care - meals, exercise, personal hygiene and safety; how to cope with an impaired person's false ideas, suspicion, anger and other mood problems; how to get outside help from support groups, friends and agencies and personal and legal issues you must address.

Grant Writing for Dummies

Beverly A. Browning

List Price: $21.99 By: For Dummies Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $3.73

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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Philanthropy & Charity

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Grant writing skills are essential in gaining funding from government and foundation grants for a nonprofit organization. In the past, there were no college degrees in grant writing and very few, if any, books on how to write a grant. The process of learning how to write a grant was mostly trial and error, but times have changed. Today, grant writing is a science – a skill that reflects a precise application of facts or principles.

Grant Writing For Dummies can help anyone who has to seek and secure grant funds in order to keep an agency’s doors open for business or to fund a special project. This reference guide is also for people who want to make a career of freelance grant writing. The easy-to-use format, thorough approach, clear advice, and voice of experience will help anyone to:

• Get the scoop on government and foundation grants
• Go for the gold with multiple grant requests
• Make the case for your grant request
• Use words that make founders say “yes”

Figure out the rules of the grants game to put together your grant application. Reach your goal of receiving funding for your organization from a government or foundation grant. Grant Writing For Dummies also covers the following topics and more:

• Searching for government grants
• Conveying your needs for grant funds
• Fashioning the essentials such as cover letters and abstracts
• Presenting the budget
• Double-checking your grant proposal or application before you submit it
• Win or lose – how to play your next card

Every year, the federal government distributes billions of dollars in grant money to nonprofit organizations. Grant Writing For Dummies guides you along your quest for funding with all the essential information you need to achieve success.

Verbal Judo

George J. Thompson

List Price: $20.00 By: William Morrow & Co Amazon Marketplace: 13 new & used starting at $12.50

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Assumes the reader is a negative person 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I read this book to see what kind of material was being used to train police officers in effective communication, and to see if there was any material in the book that would be useful to participants in an anger management class I am teaching. There are some useful things in the book, such as the necessity of understanding a conflict from the other person's perspective, responding with what the situation calls for to create calmness rather than what your ego might want, and the time honored counseling technique of making sure that you understand what the other person is saying by paraphrasing it back to them and asking them if you have understood. It is also useful to point out that most of a message is in the tone of voice and the body language more than in the words themselves.

The book could have been shorter by about half if the authors would have spent less time hyping in the book how wonderful verbal judo is and how it is going to change things for the reader and more time just presenting the guts of what they have to say. This kind of self-congratulatory writing just seems feels like sales hype. I have already bought the book- quit the bs and get down to the substance of what you have to say. Additionally, I found it very concerning that the authors seem to feel that their readers will feel good by being negative, and that that is the reader's natural impulse. Let me share this quote in that context:

From a list of principles to keep in mind on page 220: "If it makes you feel good, no good. If you say the thing that makes you feel the best, nine times out of ten you are making a mistake. Sadly, it makes you feel good to stroke your own ego, to put somebody down, to tear into someone."

It does?

That isn't true about me, and I imagine it is also not true about about many people who will read this book. To make this assumption in a book that talks about communication skills seems like a pretty serious error.

Editorial Review:

A guide to improved communication shows readers how to avoid the most common conversational disasters, listen and speak more effectively, engage people through empathy, and use a simple, easily remembered strategy to communicate point of view. 75,000 first printing. $27,500 ad/promo.

Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

Terry Tempest Williams

Amazon Price: $11.16 List Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Vintage Amazon Marketplace: 243 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 41 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

This verse unlocks the heart. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Terry Tempest Williams is a national treasure. Her unvarnished verse carries one deep into the mystery of the Earth and sends us helplessly into the depths of our own hearts. The landscape of wildness breaths a spectacular wisdom under the watchful eyes of this keen observer of wind, rock, desert, sky, sage, along with the birds who soar and dance and play in a benediction to non-sentient life.

When I need to recapture my own mortality along with my own humility, I always return to the verse of this elder of silence and truth. Williams stands alone in the power to convey both outer and inner wildness. Her verse is poetic and healing. One does not read these words but are instead initiated into the heart beat of wild nature. Savor its beauty as you might a calming sunset or a wind swept sea shore calling you ever deeper into your own soul.

Read everything she writes and find peace deep within.

Editorial Review:

In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic.

Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages

Robin L. Smith

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hyperion Amazon Marketplace: 70 new & used starting at $2.95

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 93 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In her bestselling book, Dr. Robin L. Smith reveals how to turn vows made at the altar into realistic plans for a long and happy marriage

For those who are about to walk down the aisle, for those who are already married, and for those contemplating a deeper commitment, Dr. Robin Smith’s Lies at the Altar addresses the unspoken needs, unasked questions, outrageous expectations, and hidden agendas that damage relationships. By examining traditional, nondenominational wedding vows, Dr. Robin shows how to use them to build a happy, healthy, satisfying, and long-lasting marriage -- the kind of marriage many of us have never even imagined.

With moving stories and personal anecdotes, Dr. Robin reveals why it’s vital to keep one’s eyes wide open in a marriage; how to write rules to live by; and why it’s never too late to rewrite wedding vows. Especially useful are her 276 Questions to Ask Before You Marry, which will open new lines of communication and help couples to create their own Truth -- the secret ingredient to any great marriage.

My Friend Leonard

James Frey

By: John Murray Amazon Marketplace: 1 new & used starting at $34.20

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 380 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

nice a friend like this 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The book is very good written and read, and I also would have a friend like Leonard, he is very good.

Worst book I read this year 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

It took me 6 weeks to get through this and that's saying something seeing how thinly structured this book is. If you didn't read the fraudulent predecessor, you'd be lost--or maybe not since it's written on a third grade reading level. Frey pulled a fast one on me a few years ago. I dismissed the writing style then because I thought we were dealing with someone with a fragile state of mind. Here, there seems to be a lack of consistency. What happened to his love of reading from the first book? It changes to drawings and paintings in this book. I'm supposed to believe a struggling screenwriter turns down massive amount of money left to him from a friend that loved him like a father-and what about the strife between him and his parents? It just melts away? I just hated this book. I read it because I bought it before the scandal broke and it was the next book in my TBR pile. Trust me when I say Frey won't be getting another dime from me.

Paths to Recovery: Al-Anon's Steps, Traditions and Concepts

Al-Anon Family Group Head Inc

Amazon Price: $20.00 List Price: $20.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 42 new & used starting at $5.24

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Recovery -> Drug Dependency
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Recovery -> Twelve-Step Programs

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

You want recovery? Buy this book and work it! 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

You want recovery? Work the Steps and Traditions. This is the book that will help you do it if you have been affected by someone else's drinking, thinking and/or behavior. As one other reviewer has already stated, if I could have only one Al-Anon book, this would be it. This book is truly a blessing.

Paths To Recovery 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

If you are working the steps, this book is a great guide. It offers Insight on the steps, members Experience, Strength and Hope, and some guiding questions.

From the perspective of alcoholics, AA History, and Women Pioneers 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I'm an AA. My former wife was an Al-Anon though she is now deceased. I've devoted 19 years to researching the spiritual roots of Alcoholics Anonymous, the Twelve Steps, and the early program. Making Known the Biblical History and Roots of Alcoholics Anonymous: A Sixteen-Year Research, Writing, Publishing, and Fact Dissemination Project. One of the first books I was given by an A.A. oldtimer was Lois Remembers. And I hustled out and bought two Al-Anon books. I believe all of us in the recovery movement should have the perspective of both A.A. and of Al-Anon. My former wife and her sister (both married to alcoholics) believed they never could have made it without Al-Anon. And whether we recover, reconcile, or just make amends, we need to know this family program. I also think Al-Anons and AAs need to know how much the two programs were alike at the beginning. Early A.A. in Akron dealt with families--fathers, mothers, children.Real Twelve Step Fellowship History. They all attended. Dr. Bob's wife Anne Ripley Smith dealt with the wives, and actually counseled Lois Wilson with some frequency.Anne Smith's Journal, 1933-1939: A.A.'s Principles of Success. Henrietta Seiberling was prominent in early A.A. development, and so was Clarace Williams, wife of T. Henry Williams, at whose whom the family meetings were held.Henrietta B. Seiberling: Ohio's Lady with a Cause, Third Edition. Anne Smith started a woman's group a year after A.A. was founded. And Lois herself wrote that Al-Anon people should never forget the important role that Anne played. In one sense, we are all in this together. For those of us who are believers, God is the One with whom we relate and seek to establish a relationship.By the Power of God: A Guide To Early A.A. Groups and Forming Similar Groups Today . And the Biblical principles of early A.A. were applied alike to women and family members. The Good Book and the Big Book: A.A.'s Roots in the Bible (Bridge Builders Edition), and The Good Book-Big Book Guidebook. Excellent reading. Important!

A Second Opinion: Rescuing America's Health Care

Dr. Arnold Relman

Amazon Price: $16.32 List Price: $24.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: PublicAffairs Amazon Marketplace: 52 new & used starting at $9.44

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A world-renowned physician traces the rise of the medical-industrial complex that has made a disaster of our healthcare system--and tells us incisively what we need to do to change it.

The U.S. healthcare system is failing. It is run like a business, increasingly focused on generating income for insurers and providers rather than providing care for patients. It is supported by investors and private markets seeking to grow revenue and resist regulation, thus contributing to higher costs and lessened public accountability. Meanwhile, forty-six million Americans are without insurance. Health care expenditures are rising at a rate of 7 percent a year, three times the rate of inflation.

Dr. Arnold Relman is one of the most respected physicians and healthcare advocates in our country. This book, based on sixty years' experience in medicine, is a clarion call not just to politicans and patients but to the medical profession to evolve a new structure for healthcare, based on voluntary private contracts between individuals and not-for-profit, multi-specialty groups of physicians. Physicians would be paid mainly by salaries and would submit no bills for their services. All health care facilities would be not-for-profit. The savings from reduced administrative overhead and the elimination of billing fraud would be enormous. Healthcare may be our greatest national problem, but the provocative, sensible arguments in this book will provide a catalyst for change.