Cutting For Stone - A Novel by Abraham Verghese - Book Review

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Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese is a word short of being phenomenal. Being a practicing physician and an exquisite writer, he manages to pull together the two to create a magnificent first novel.

Marion and Shiva Stone, the two protagonists in the story couldn't be more interesting. Born from a mother who was a nun, they were orphaned at birth and conjoined at the skulls. They were separated immediately, and they grew apart more than two brothers ever could. Their father mysteriously disappears upon their birth, and the disappearance provides a constant back story for the novel, and which importance is later revealed in the story.

The story takes place in locations like Ethiopia and New York, the two travel the roads that further and further separate them physically and emotionally. However, they are still reunited later, because of both their passion for medicine and the puzzling disappearance of their father.

The novel cannot be possibly put down. It's gripping like a long lost love continuing to stay and linger on you. And it's definitely a powerful first novel for Abraham Verghese. Being compared, both positively and negatively, to authors like Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, John Irving, and Anne Tyler, he is a both a victim and a victor in his own right.

However one looks at it, it cannot be denied that something wonderful has been done with the novel. Verghese's expertise in both medicine and writing perhaps? One thing is sure though, that Abraham Verghese definitely has his own magic when it comes to writing novels.

For a more in-depth review of Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone, click on the link.

My name is Seymour and I'm a freelance writer for http://www.top40workoutmusic.com/

How to Understand Antigone

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One:

As human beings we all tend to hold on to and cherish memories of loved ones, sometimes so much that is seems to outweigh the importance of ones own life, just as Antigone did. The word "Cherishing" (L 986) is significant in one of the speeches done by Antigone in regards to the death of her brother. Antigone cherished the wishes of the God's and her family, by burring her brother, she cherished the idea of seeing her family together again in the afterlife, as well as cherishing closely the relationship she had with her brother.

Two:

To cherish, to adore, to protect, to hold something so dear that it becomes a part of ones own self. Antigone had just lost both of her brothers, her parents were dead, and her sister is to afraid to stand up to the king, their uncle. Her brother deserved the respect of having a proper burial so he could continue his life in the underworld, and be reunited with the rest of his family. There was no way, anyone, even the new king of Athens was going to tell her otherwise. Antigone "cherished" (L 986) much more the wished of the Gods than the new tiresome law put down by the king. If this was a man in which she didn't know, it would be a simple task to abide by the wishes of the king, but it wasn't, it was her own brother. If "A husband dead, there might have been another. A child by another too."( L 1002-1003) however no one could ever replace her own flesh and blood, her brother, and this is why she felt so strongly to honor him.

Three:

Her committed, cherished, and preserved memories of her family and beliefs of an honored burial may have cost Antigone her life but in the end kept her true to who she was. Everyone is afraid to die, therefore dying for someone or something higher than oneself seems like the most selfless and dignified ways to go.

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Wearing Chinese Glasses - How Not to Go Broke in Chinese Asia

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Wearing Chinese Glasses: How (Not) to Go Broke in Chinese Asia is a clever treatise on how to see the business world the way Chinese people do. It is apparent from author Greg Bissky's painfully funny stories that he learned this valuable lesson through much trial and error at the cultural school of hard knocks. His business culture book is part biography, part reflection, and part reference tool for cross-cultural communication.

Wearing Chinese Glasses presents Bissky's 20 years of experience in business as a Westerner immersed in the Asian culture beginning with his first disastrous forays into Asian society with his myopic Western glasses firmly in place. The culmination of his experiences and insights into this culture, so foreign from his own, is creatively presented in this his debut work.

Bissky wittily depicts the good, the bad, and the ugly American from the Chinese perspective. In each instructional segment of the work he manages to weave in some tidbits of wisdom and self-deprecating humor. It is easy to see oneself, so worried about how to use chopsticks or to know some other Chinese habit that we fail to even recognize we are completely ignorant of the customs of communication.

Fluency in the language and knowledge of an obscure dialect will never seal the deal! Grammar and vocabulary are not going to be the source of business problems in Chinese Asian business deals. Instead, the "way the language is used" will be the epicenter of ruin according to the author. The Western Rules of Communication are very different from the Chinese Rules. Violating these rules can mean the difference between the success and the failure of the Westerner in the Chinese business community.

Understanding the rules of Chinese communication comes from understanding Chinese culture and its origins. What makes Westerners uniquely different from our Chinese counterparts culturally is not our family values, our history, or even our Judeo-Christian religions it is our philosophy that keeps us apart. Bissky maintains our philosophical origins are so vastly different that it is like comparing an apple to an orange.

Western culture has a Hellenic philosophy, influenced by Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle based on learning and discovery. Chinese culture, heavily influenced by Confucius, has a philosophy based on relationships and rules. No wonder they think we are barbarians; we are the proverbial Venus and Mars when it comes to philosophy!

Wearing Chinese Glasses will be an important guidebook for anyone brave enough to venture into the complicated business world of Chinese Asia. Fear not! With this book in hand, you too can attempt to master the ways of the Good Westerner by educating yourself and embracing the fact that the Chinese do things in a different way. Success will come through study, practice, adapting and trying to be a good, sensitive barbarian.

Wearing Chinese Glasses: How Not to Go Broke in Chinese Asia

Author - Greg Bissky

Publisher - Trafford Publishing, 2007

ISBN: 142511186-6

Shannon Evans is recognized in the Puget Sound as an expert in how to make your business have a web presence rather than just a web page. Her conversational marketing techniques and practices outlined by Practical Local Search, LLC you will see your small business presence on the web increase: http://www.practicallocalsearch.com/ She is a consultant for social marketing campaigns that allow you to organize your marketing and sales efforts in an inexpensive delivery platform that is easy to set up and manage. The ability to send, deliver, and track any installed resource gives you the power to create a marketing program quickly and easily in a scalable format that can grow with your business.

Shannon is also a co-author of Get Found Now! Local Search Secrets Exposed: Learn How to Achieve High Rankings in Google, Yahoo and Bing and multiple business ebooks. Her books teach entrepreneurs how to leverage the internet to attract new clients.

Shannon has a wide and varied background in both the practical and the pragmatic aspects of the business world. Shannon loves nothing better than teaching local businesses how to think globally and to be searched locally.

Rhythm of Love, Peace and Harmony

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Mrs Shambana said that peace is the celebration of plurality. This insightful definition of peace was stated by that member of the Indian Parliament at the global forum "The Power of Peace through Information and Communication" hosted by UNESCO in association with the Indonesian Government (Bali, January 21st - 23rd 2007).

Voice of Indonesia is Anand Krishna's fourth book in English. The book presents three main ideas: My Nation, The World and Humanity. Anand believes that the resurgence of modern Indonesia automatically contributes to the building of Neo Humanity: One Earth-One Sky-One Humankind.

Prof. Sudjarwadi, the Rector of Gadjah Mada University Yogyakarta Indonesia shared that he has a habit of taking a morning walk with his beloved wife. One day they were passing by rice field near their home. They saw an old woman digging the ground. They were curious why she was digging the ground so early in the morning. Whether it would have been better if she kept on staying at home because it was still dark and the weather was very cold.

Sudjarwadi's wife asked her, "Excuse me, but may I know what you are doing?" The old woman straightened her back and answered, "Oh, I am making a way for water. This is for my neighbor's field. I am afraid her rice would not get enough water." What a humble woman, she dug the drainage to make a way so that the water could flow to the neighbor's filed. She left home very early to share with her neighbors. She is like a candle that sparks light in the midst of human greed that often sacrifices others.

This book also documented the interview between Michele Lee (American Journalist) and Anand Krishna (No Run-of-the-Mill Spiritual Guru), which has been published in The Jakarta Post (August 29, 2006). An interesting question appears - why is Love the only solution to solve our multidimensional problems?

Anand explained that Love is the deepest emotion of human beings. It is the deepest part of human's inner self. When the solution is deep enough, the result is also quite long term. Furthermore, this famous spiritual leader gave an analogy between love and a tree. If the roots grow deep into he earth, then we will have a big tree. So this is the same thing, we should have a solution that is deep enough within our being and then we can expect a result, which is long term result.

The language style of the book very simple, friendly and funky. Kerry B. Collison, an international best-selling author commented on it, "...renowned spiritualist Anand Krishna's compilation of his perspectives in English article released as Voice of Indonesia is a must read."

Each topic is different. Yet, the core message is love and spiritual self-empowerment. Voice of Indonesia is the rhythm of love, peace and harmony that resemble in our heart.

Voice of Indonesia by Anand Krishna, reviewed by Nugroho Angkasa
First Published by Anand Krishna Global Cooperative Society Bali Indonesia (2007)
Number of Pages: xxv + 260

Understanding Diversity Through Reading

Books are the gateway to learning. They let us explore opener, people, languages, foods, etc. "The things we learn from books are obvious, such as reading a recipe for chocolate chip cookies or a guide to your new iPhone, but oftentimes it's the lessons that are less obvious which includes.

Books help us understand different people and their cultures and the struggle of embracing yourself and your culture. If you read City of Bones by Cassandra Clare you l not have realized that you were learning about different people and races his coming, the importance of heritage, different ethnicities and gender orientations, and the importance of embracing yourself and your culture. Simply picking up a book shows you the world from a different person's point of view.

Everyone's understanding of Broadening people both similar and different from them can help us create a more positive society focusing on what makes the U.S. special: its diverse groups of people that gave it the nicknames "The Salad Bowl" and "The Melting Pot." I encourage you to broaden your understanding of other people and their cultures by simply picking up one of your favorite books. I can guarantee that at least one person in that book will be a little different from you and teach you new something.bak.

Creating a more diverse society through reading and writing is easy. You can either pick up one of your favorite books, explore a new book, or encourage others to write something.bak and read it. "There are many places and people out" to help you embrace diversity. You can go to your local library or bookstore and pick a book from ". Or you can go to websites like www.diversityinya.com that celebrate the differences in books and people.

Also encourage your friends to read with you. A great way to support diversity could be through reading books your friends recommend to you. Simply by reading the new you ' ll be something.bak opening your mind to a more diverse world. As you explore these new worlds, make sure to take notes on the things you learn. Just remember to read your book with an open mind and pick something.bak you enjoy. Just the simple action of reading a book can lead to broaden your mind and embracing yourself and the others around you. So go ahead, read and embrace our diverse something.bak new world.

I am a student interested in marketing and public and currently have with an internship with http://www.diversitypromotions.com/. Diversitypromotions.com is a company services to promoting positive messages about diversity, inclusion and Diversity Embrace multiculturalism through its product line (t-shirts, tote bags, temporary tattoos, volunteer or committee, or custom products gifts with your own message), educational endeavors (seminars, trainings, presentations, books, and articles), and special events such as establishing National Diversity Day. We have also written and published the book "Understanding Cultural Diversity in Today's Complex World" in its "fifth printing.

Multiculturalism Blinds Historians

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As we have traditionally been a culturist nation, the multiculturalist outlook strips us of our ability to appreciate or understand our past. Applying culturist insights to the book Translating Property by Maria E. Montoya provides examples in spades. This book discusses how we settled land disputes after our victory in the Mexican - American War. The importance of our relationship with Mexico makes it vital that historians and policy makers learn to address the history Montoya covers from a culturist perspective.

Mexico allowed government officials to make huge land grants to their cronies. In a quasi-feudal relationship, laborers were allowed to farm the land for payments in kind. The issue in Translating Property is how these land grants held up in United States Courts after the Mexican - American War resulted in our taking ownership of the current American Southwest. Montoya depicts in lively language and horror, the eviction of the laborers when the land is sold to Anglos. Montoya, as a multiculturalist, wants us to recognize Mexican property laws and relationships. But in Supreme Court case after Supreme Court case our government denies the validity of laborers' claims based on traditional Mexican relationships.

Rejecting Mexican property relationships was done on culturist premises. Americans were appalled by large land grants. These feudal relationships were repeatedly decried as antithetical to our ideals of individual self-sustenance, property rights and republican virtue. But Montoya depicts all differences and discrimination based upon our values as irrational, arbitrary and unfair. She would have had our legislatures and courts be multiculturalists and translate, appreciate and incorporate Mexican-style peonage relationships. She derides our predecessor's for not being "culturally neutral." (181) She then goes one step further. She derides all of those who made distinctions based on culture as racist. Her editorial decisions are natural outcomes of using the multiculturalist perspective while doing history.

When it came to ejection and letting people stay on the land, the post-land grant owners favored Anglos over "Hispanos." Montoya convinces us of this with lively writing style and great detail. A chart shows that Anglos have over thirty times the number of cattle that Hispanos had and four times the number of fenced area. Montoya calls this "racist" and the discrepancy gets attributed to Hispano's lack of access to capital. It is a painful irony that multiculturalists do not take cultural diversity seriously. Montoya decries many incidents of Anglos attributing the difference in productivity to cultural distinctions. She calls it, for example, "prejudiced" and "condescending" when a manager accounts for his discrimination in land distribution being due to the Mexicans "following their usual and indifferent ways." (143) To multiculturalists like Montoya it is inconceivable that culture could actually impact economic outcomes.

Montoya tries to follow the multicultural pattern of appreciating all cultures. As with other historians, this normative multiculturalist pattern is most jarring with her depictions of Native Americans. She tells us that the Jicarillas Apaches, who lived where the land grant she gives most attention to existed, viewed the land as a "spiritual home for themselves and their ancestors." (21) Though there was mutual raiding, these Apache lived in "relatively peaceful coexistence" with others. (22) This does not sit well with the fact that the first time they are documented they were dancing over the scalp of a white man whose pregnant companion they had murdered. Local tribes she tells us capture women and children in raids and sell them as slaves. As usual, both of these cultural behaviors get blamed on European incursion. We cannot depict all non-Anglo cultures as naturally angelic and have historic accuracy. Apache and those around them were violent and barely survived.

The good news is that multiculturalist history allows us to consider viewpoints other than our own. Apache warfare and Mexican peonage relationships did have their own cultural integrity and virtue. But when American culture does not get accorded parallel respect, our expansion only seems destructive and our decisions arbitrary. Our land patterns were designed to create "urban rectilinearity." (166) But our ways have also resulted in a much longer lifespan than achieved by either the Apaches or the Mexicans. Our ways have facilitated the greatest population boom in the history of mankind, democracy, sanitation, and electricity. Our Westward expansion was not just a bigoted tragedy. If one takes our perspective as seriously as multiculturalists take those of the Apaches and Mexicans, the expansion of the Western property arrangements and culture can be legitimately depicted as a successful culturist endeavor that resulted in creating an agreeable way of life.

Montoya does a service by showing that our legal decisions were "culturally contingent" and "turned as much on . . . [Supreme Court] perceptions of what constituted proper republican government as on the context of Mexican, Spanish or French Law." Only respecting land deeds on the basis of written documentation was "a problem of ideology." (176) But her take home message - that we are biased for not incorporating Mexican culture into our laws - asks for a neutrality that no self-respecting culture would accept. Montoya herself is biased. In a book that derides us for being ethnocentric, she never judges the fact that Mexican land grants are given with the stipulation that no land be sold to foreigners. Her feigned cultural neutrality ends up making Western expansionists who promote their own culture as abnormal and insensitive. But even Montoya's book has a point of view. To judge historical figures as to whether they were neutral to their own agendas can only distort our appreciation of our culturist past.

In the index of Translating Property "racial prejudice" notes seventeen entries. Most of these entries refer to multiple pages. No corresponding entry for "cultural" or "culturist prejudice" exists. That reflects the fact that culturist analysis is no longer widely considered. Multiculturalism has a near monopoly in academic discourse. Accepting the fact that cultural bias is natural and normal can help replace the condemnation of our historic predecessors with appreciation. Considering our forefather's culturist notion that cultures can have an economic and political impact will help us replace our depictions of them as wholly mean and irrational with portraits of them as somewhat reasonable and possibly farsighted. History thus taught can train our youth to consider the impact of their cultural choices on our collective destiny. And if culturist understandings once again gain credibility, perhaps our current politicians will also be able to consider the viability of American culture in policy without being seen as abnormally biased, callous and irrational.

John Press is the author of Culturism: A Word, A Value, Our Future. He is also an adjunct professor and doctorate student at New York University. http://www.culturism.us/ has more information about culturism.

Book Review for "Three Cups of Tea"

Did you ever set out on a journey and the client outcomes was a direction you hadn ' t planned on? In the book "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson and David written Oliver Relin, the story of a mountain climbing trip turned into my humanitarian unfolds after Greg took a wrong turn into unfamiliar territory. The results were life changing for him and the people he met.

Greg Mortenson had begun a mountain climbing trip in a foreign country. He took a wrong turn and was separated from his guide. After surviving the elements, he made his way to a small village that he didnt recall seeing on any map. It was in Islamic territory. The American people took him in and nursed him back to health. As they got to know him they stated that they were in desperate need of schools for their children. They did not have buildings, teachers or supplies.

As Greg grew to love the people, he committed himself to finding a way to help them. When he returned home, he set out to try to raise money. He sent out hundreds of letters with what seemed like no response at all. The first ones to respond with financial support were the other mountain climbers. Perhaps they are determined people who believe that anything is possible.

Much of the story has intense moments but "there was one incident that broke the humorous ice and allows us to laugh at ourselves. Greg had received a message from an elderly widow who stated that she wished to make a sizable donation but that he would have to come to her to receive it. He thought with her age it would be harmless so he went. When he arrived, she had three days of activities planned for the two of them. It started to look suspicious when one of the activities was a massage for both of them. He woke the next morning with the establishment of a woman in front of the couch wearing a transparent night gown. It turned out that she was just a lonely old lady wanting companionship. "There was no donation. He learned his lesson and used better judgement after that.

The intensity heightened on 203 with 11, 2001 bombing in New York. That morning he was to have a dedication ceremony for his newly funded school. The people woke him up stating what happened in his country. They expressed their sympathy and asked him not to judge them by the acts of horror that follows isn't done by others. When he went to the hotel, had broken out and chaos reporters United their story. Greg was thrust into political issues that he was not a "for. Because he was helping the village people, he was questioned by the as to why he was reflecting ".

When Greg was seeking help, no one gave him the time of day. Now, he was talking with politicians and the under. He decided to keeping all funding in the private form.

The schools were built and the people are a permanent part of his life. We can learn from his experiences not to judge others and that good things happen even through times of struggle.

Author, Laura Schroeder, enjoys building a community of encouragement. You can visit her website at http://www.lauramschroeder.com/. You may email her at Laura@lauramschroeder.com. Please make any comments family friendly.