Edward Gorey's first book in 25 years, The Haunted Tea-Cosy is a classic work from that magnificently morbid master. The plot of this "dispirited and distasteful diversion for Christmas" revolves around one Edmund Gravel, an Edwardian Scrooge whose attempt to slice a stale fruitcake unleashes an assortment of guilt-inducing ghosts. There's the Spectre of Christmas That Never Was, who directs our hero's attention to a cowering orphan in a graveyard (along with some other, lower-key bits of pathos: "In the high street of the village Reverend Flannel lost his tuning-fork.") The Spectre of Christmas That Isn't also chips in with a kidnapping, a domestic dispute, and a return to the aforementioned graveyard: "To the south, in the cemetery a wrong coffin in a newly dug grave was found to contain rolls of used wallpaper." Like the Dickensian miser upon whom he's based, Gravel is transformed by this ghoulish guided tour. He renounces his life of solitude and invites all of Lower Spigot to a party, featuring "a cake taller than anything else in the room, a conflation of Chartres Cathedral and the Stupa at Borobudur iced in dazzling white sugar" (not pictured, alas). Gorey's illustrations for The Haunted Tea-Cosy are looser and less elaborately cross-hatched than some of his earlier creations. But like the text, these oddly stilted and very Anglophiliac scenes remain a model of delicious, deadpan hilarity. --James Marcus

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Citation Details
Title: Building a better team: how one manager turned a dispirited and unmotivated staff into a proud and productive team.(Leading Edge)
Author: Dave Hudson
Publication: Security Management (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2005
Publisher: American Society for Industrial Security
Volume: 49 Issue: 5 Page: 32(2)

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Shaman Lawyer Vincent is an old spirit who has consistently been a major player throughout many historical periods, spanning the Ancient World to the Industrial Revolution. In his current incarnation, Shaman Lawyer Vincent has attended some of the world's most prestigious universities and has attained impeccable academic credentials. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate Johns Hopkins University where he received his BA in economics magna cum laude. He also attended Oriel College, Oxford University, where he read for an M.Litt in economics. He earned his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and has published numerous scholarly articles on international banking regulation. Shaman Lawyer Vincent practiced with leading national law firms in New York City and Silicon Valley California. He also is Professor of Entertainment Law at MCNY where he prepares graduate students for their media careers. Having been in contact with the Spirit World from an early age, Shaman Lawyer Vincent has always had unique intuitive gifts, especially with regard to past life recall for himself and friends. Throughout the evolution of his spiritual calling, Shaman Lawyer Vincent helped friends, acquaintances and all who asked for assistance in achieving their full potential in academic and professional pursuits. His vocational calling was presented to him in Big Sur, California, where he studied at the Esalen Institute with Shamanic Practitioners. Shaman Lawyer Vincent's spiritual gifts have been recognized in various national and local publications, including The New Yorker and TimeOut NY. He currently consults clients in-person, via phone and via Internet through his website www.shamanlawyer.com. He also conducts workshops and spiritual practice groups to help individuals shift consciousness from the temporal to the spiritual.

Here is a brilliant attempt to describe and interpret current cultural developments in Israel, as manifested in the literature, art and media produced by people now in their twenties and thirties. Taub analyzes the experiences which nourish these creative people, and shows the connections, e.g., between the fiction of Orly Castel-Bloom and a certain kind of Israeli television, between rock groups and the local press in the various towns, between Etgar Keret's stories and Quentin Tarantino's films. He seeks to comprehend the pessimism of these creative young people, the influence of American culture on them and their work, and to understand why they have not formed a fighting avant garde. Taub's analyses are set against the background of the current ideas in contemporary Western discourse, and he tackles postmodernism as ideology and moral argument, as well as the destruction of myths and panaceas for the illnesses of mankind. The book appeared after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and the traumatic event is seen here as a possible watershed in an entire generation's attitude to itself. About the Book Ha'aretz wrote: "With this book Taub emerges as the 'thinking mind' of his generation." Moznaim wrote "An excellent analysis of the postmodernist world in which the young culture functions....[He] is a profound observer with a sharp pen...."

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