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From my perspective, Marcella Hazen’s The Essentials of Italian Classic Cooking is one of the greatest cookbooks ever written.  Each and every one of the 100′s of recipes is clearly and accurately written and results in some of the most savory, uplifting food I’ve ever eaten.  I’ve cooked with this book at least a couple times a week for over a dozen years and still discover new things.  The amount of foodlore and sheer information that Marcella packed into nearly every recipe and section is like a university education in the art of preparing healthy, nutritious food that will be loved for its flavor, beauty and aroma.  I have learned more about cooking and about eating from Marcella than from any other single source.  Were I forced to take only 1 cookbook with me to a desert island (that magically had all the ingredients and kitchen equipment I’d need on it), I would take The Essentials of Italian Classic Cooking.  And I wouldn’t look back, ever.

Recommended without reservation.

This is one of the best, most enriching books I’ve read in years. Akenson has managed to produce an account of the creation of the Bible (and its recreation at various points) and the Talmuds that is at once loving, humorous, deeply considered and consumately scholarly. In short, he has given us a book that is truly worthy of its subject.

Further, what you will find in terms of a gathering of facts is nothing short of astonishing. Did you know, for instance, that the English translation of the New Testament of the King James Bible is 90% the work of a single man? I didn’t. And consider further: this same man (William Tyndale [1494-1536],who was ultimately strangled and burned as a heretic for his translation activity) “. . . taught all those who would hear, how to listen to words as music.”  He gave us the English language at its best, and taught us all to speak, influenced Shakespeare and Bacon along with the rest of us.

But that is far from the only thing that amazes in Surpassing Wonder. Akenson’s accounts of the editing and writing of the different parts of the Hebrew Bible, at different times and in answer to different historical/cultural needs and contexts, is marvelous in its descriptive portrayal of what I would term “the ongoing conversation of human beings with God and the earth.”

He moves into the intertestamental period, which I can remember professors characterizing as a time in which nothing much that was important happened in the way of religious development, and shows it to have been a period in which all manner of religious ideas were brought forth, discussed, argued and defended. It was truly a “free marketplace of ideas” and what it brought forth was nothing less than modern Rabbinic Judaism and its sister religion, Christianity. Of course, Akenson also covers the development of these two religions from their common source.

I could go on and on, because what I’ve mentioned here barely scratches the surface of what you’ll discover in this book. The title perfectly describes the feeling its contents evoke. Breathtaking!

Had I not seen this DVD, I would not have believed it possible to present the movement art of eurythmy so clearly and so deeply through the medium of  video recording.  It is nothing less than brilliant and wonderfully thorough. 

Herbert Hagens, owner of Hagens Recording Studio, has been involved with anthroposophy and Waldorf education for many years.  His video Waldorf Education, A Vision of Wholeness was in fact the first video that managed to effectively and beautifully capture the life of a Waldorf school on tape.  Eurythmy ~ Making Movement Human is, if anything, even better. 

By beginning quite literally at the beginning with the context of the world during Steiner’s lifetime, and then explaining not just with words but with example after example of eurythmy performance and pedgogy that illustrate what those words mean in reality, Hagens has done what no one else has yet accomplished: made eurythmy as an art form comprehensible to those outside of eurythmy schools.

In a slow, relaxed fashion, Hagens covers the history and types of eurythmy, as well as the pedagogical benefits of eurythmy as taught in Waldorf schools.  You will find yourself captivated by the performances recorded around the world, in love with what good eurythmy teaching can mean for students, grateful for the therapeutic effects of eurythmy, and, really, just so happy to have made the discovery of what eurythmy is really all about.

Plato Prehistorian unfolds like a great novel – interesting, captivating, with one historical ‘cliffhanger’ leading us to the next; amazing fact after amazing fact. Beginning with the premise that Plato’s accounts of the Atlantean Deluge and subsequent invasion of the Mediterranean regions deserve serious consideration, Mary Settegast embarks on a journey of discovery that takes us from the caves of Lascaux to the temples of Çatal Hüyük, demonstrating correspondences both to Plato’s tale and to the mystery religions of antiquity. She then traces the mid-seventh millennium impulse that revitalized the spiritual life of Çatal Hüyük and spread agriculture from Iran to the Greek Peninsula – at precisely the time given by Aristotle for the legendary Persian prophet Zarathustra, for whom the civilization of the earth was a religious imperative. Ultimately, her outstanding, rigorous scholarship offers us a new understanding of our spiritual and cultural history, a history that is still shaping the world we live in. Beautifully illustrated with hundreds of drawings by the author.

Highly readable, highly recommended.

In 1904, in the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis, Rudolf Steiner published some of his earliest articles on self-development, which became his classic How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation. Steiner continued his articles as “The Stages of Higher Development.” He wrote of his intention in 1914: “A second part [of How to Know Higher Worlds] is to be added to this first part, bringing further explanations of the frame of mind that can lead to the experience of higher worlds.” Though Steiner never found time to publish those articles as a book, they are collected in this volume.

The Stages of Higher Knowledge records some of Steiner’s early esoteric instructions, revealing how he became a pioneer of modern inner development and spiritual activity. He carefully guides the reader from an ordinary, sensory-based “material mode of cognition” through the higher levels of knowing he calls Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. This small handbook will help anyone who wishes to take a serious approach to Anthroposophy as a path of knowledge, especially those who have already studied and worked with How to Know Higher Worlds.

The adventures of Peter and Lotta continue!  Here, their three colorful aunts and Uncle Blue take the children for a picnic on an island.  While the adults are having a nap, Peter and Lotta decide to go and practise their rowing.  Disaster strikes when they become distracted adn accidentally lose the oars . . .

Ages 3-6

Far far away, the butterfly folk livein a kingdom of beautiful gardens.  The butterfly children play, dance and sing all day long with their little brothers and sisters, the caterpillars.

The children can’t wait until the first day of spring, when they will finally get their wings.  But first, they must learn about the many brightly-colored flowers in the kingdom, so they can take part in the flying procession of peacock, swallowtail, red admiral and many other butterflies.

A lovely spring tale for ages 3-6

A collection of essays and excerpts by master teachers, physicians, researchers and Rudolf Steiner.  This volume is exceptional in the breadth and depth of its approach to the subject of child development and education readiness and support.

Contents:

• Life’s Anxieties—Life’s Opportunities: Anxiety and Its Importance to Inner Development
  Two Essays by Pietro Archiati and Felicitas Vogt
• Sleep Disturbances and Healthy Sleep
  by Christa-Johanna Bub-Jachens
• Nutrition: Modern Food: Is It Really Future-Oriented?
  by Petra Kühne
• Food and Nutrition: What Nourishes Our Children?
  by Petra Kühne
• The Feet Reveal the Human Will
  by Norbert Glas
• Hearing: Door to the Soul and Spirit around Us, with a Look at Technological Media
  by Heinz Buddemeier
• The Unfolding of Sexuality
  by Mathias Wais
• Puberty and Its Crisis: Educational Help in Overcoming Difficulties
  by Dr. Johannes Bockemühl
• Drug Addiction: The Wake-up Call of Our Times
  by Felicitas Vogt
• Education Seen as a Problem Involving the Training of Teachers
  by Rudolf Steiner.

Here’s another out of print book we found lurking in a hidden box.  We have only 2 copies of Harwood’s classic portrait of the artist as prophetic voice of the age of the modern human being.  Any of you who love Shakespeare will find Harwood’s approach refreshing and thought-provoking.  It remains one of my warmest memories of my early encounters with the breadth of anthroposophy.

Donna Simmons was asked by the Youth Initiative High School in Viroqua, Wisconsin to teach a 4-week block on Comedy & Tragedy.  Her experience inspired her to share her notes with others – we are so very glad that she did.

In this little booklet is one of the most insightful and sensitive approaches to teaching adolescents about the world of drama that we’ve seen.  Donna’s approach is engaging, fascinating in it’s information, and designed to call forth in the student a discernment and love for the stories and wisdom that have appeared on the stage throughout history.  She begins with Greek Theater and closes with the modern play – throughout the block students learn about the structure of the play, the nature of characters and their creation, and discover the wonder of the seminal plays of Western theater. 

As I reviewed this little book, I found myself longing to go back and reread (or see again) many of the plays Donna teaches.  I can’t help but think that her block lesson will inspire the same enthusiasm in high school students.  This is a lively and invigorating block lesson!