November 6, 2005

Mary Conley Eggert, a sales and public relations executive in Oak Park, Ill., meets regularly with friends from church or from previous jobs to discuss career strategies and business opportunities. Usually their meetings start with prayer. In March, Ms. Eggert's position with a high-tech company ended. Over prayer with her networking friends, she determined that God wanted her to do some soul-searching rather than job-searching. ''I felt God didn't want me to rush,'' she said.

MARINA ABRAMOVIC really had her heart set on being crucified. It was supposed to be the showstopper, maybe literally, in seven nights of often harrowing performance art that she will stage next month in the rotunda at the Guggenheim Museum. The crucifixion would have been a re-enactment of a near-mythical event in the canon of performance art, when the artist Chris Burden, in the spring of 1973, had his hands nailed to the roof of a Volkswagen (the ''people's car'') and then had the car rolled out of a Venice, Calif., garage into the daylight while the engine screamed.

Answers to most important questions to ask when buying apartment in New York City are available online; Web sites offer wide range of information about specific neighborhoods; one Web site culls information by area from city's 311 line, providing meter of residents' complaints and concerns; Web sites listed; photo (M)

DIETER ZETSCHE is not just one of the half-dozen most powerful people in the auto industry. He's also a ham -- a wiry fellow with twinkling eyes and a walrus mustache who once pulverized a glass wall with an electric guitar to unveil a new model at a car show. When Mr. Zetsche returned to his native Germany this fall after nearly five years running the Chrysler Group in Auburn Hills, Mich., one might have thought that the time for such antics was past. After all, Mr. Zetsche, a 52-year-old engineer, had just been promoted to chairman of Chrysler's parent, DaimlerChrysler, arguably the most prestigious post in corporate Germany.

TEAM OF RIVALS The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. By Doris Kearns Goodwin. Illustrated. 916 pp. Simon & Schuster. $35.