May 2004, Issue #61

American Art Deco: An Illustrated Survey edited by R. L. Leonard & C. A. Glassgold (Dover Publications, Inc.) The decorative arts in the 1920s and 30s where dominated by the Art Deco style, one of the most popular forms of twentieth-century design. Championed by progres­sive architects and inspired by such diverse influences as the industrial age and Native American Art, it became a form of artistic self-expression for nearly three decades. American Art Deco includes over 200 black-and-white photographs and important articles that describe the aesthetics of this distinctive style.

American Art Deco is the unabridged Dover republication of Annual of American Design 1931 by the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen, originally published by Ives Washburn, New York , 1931. Edited by R. L. Leonard & C. A. Glassgold, the volume contains an introduction by architectural critic Lewis Mumford, which is followed by com­mentaries by such notables as Frank Lloyd Wright on design principles, the­atrical and industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes on outfitting business inte­riors, and Edward Steichen on commercial photography.

A fascinating glimpse at an exciting and innovative period in the history of American design, American Art Deco will appeal to a wide audience – from interior dec­orators and graphic artists to students of art and lovers of the Art Deco style.

Arts & Photography

Nashville's Lower Broad: The Street That Music Made by Bill Rouda, foreword by Lucinda Williams, introduction by David Eason (Smithsonian Books) is a gritty photoessay of a legendary wellspring of country music.  

This sensitive and intimate portrait of a vanishing way of life in America's ‘Music City’, Nashville's Lower Broad, captures a moment in the life of a legendary town. Like Beale Street in Memphis and Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Lower Broadway had been the heart of the music scene in Nashville during the heyday of the Grand Ole Opry, the place where locals could rub elbows with stars, where impromptu jam sessions could last late into the night. But after the Opry moved out of the Ryman Auditorium in the 1970s, Lower Broad began to deteriorate into a down-and-out skid row.

When people, especially tourists, began coming back to Lower Broad in the 1990s, lured by the Ryman's reopening and by urban gentrification, the locals bemoaned the slick, corporate nature of the revitalization and fought to retain some of the authenticity of the old days. For a brief time, the area was reborn with the true spirit of country music. In honky-tonks like Tootsie's Orchid Lounge and Robert's Western World, bands like the hip, retro BR549 played for tips while fans danced the night away, ignoring the shadows of the convention center and the glare of the Planet Hollywood down the street. And Bill Rouda was there with his camera, taking it all in. Rouda, a widely exhibited documentary art photographer, took a lot of pictures and made friends with street regulars and bar staff. Black and white and soft focused, Rouda’s pictures show, for example, Miss Pat’s etiquette instructions over the urinal which conclude, "Do not tear this sign off wall or I will kill you."

With Rouda's photographs, a heartfelt foreword from singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, and a moving essay by David Eason, Nashville's Lower Broad captures the heart and soul of country music, vibrantly alive on one city block, documenting an important moment in the evolution of Nashville's Lower Broadway.

Like the music produced there, Bill Rouda's pictures from Nashville's Lower Broad are intimate, gritty, and heartfelt.This beer-soaked family album offers us one last glimpse of a time and place on the cusp of change. – Birney Imes, author of juke joint: Photographs

These great pictures of Lower Broadway show the real heart of Nashville! – Willie Nelson

Maybe the most exciting time of my life was in the sixties and seventies when I was cutting my teeth as a Nashville songwriter. Much of that time every week was spent at the Opry, Tootsie's, and Linebaugh's.This book is a nice jog to the memory. – Kris Kristofferson

If you come to Nashville to visit Lower Broad, don't look for any famous writers or singers – they only go there now to make videos or have their pictures taken. If you want to visit Nashville's Lower Broad, better you buy this book. – Tom T. Hall

Biographies & Memoirs / Entertainment

Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life by Ray Harryhausen & Tony Dalton, with a foreword by Ray Bradbury (Billboard Books) Who among film fans and movie buffs cannot remember with fondness the marvelously realistic dinosaurs, fantastic aliens, and imaginative mythological creatures in 20 Millions Miles to Earth, Jason and the Argonauts, One Million Years B.C., and Clash of the Titans?

Who cannot recall the battling skeletons in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad or the chaos and destruction wrought from the skies over the capitol in Earth vs. The Flying Saucers? These and other classic movie moments represent the work of Ray Harryhausen, arguably the greatest stop-motion animator in the history of motion pictures.

Inspired by Willis O'Brien's King Kong and schooled by animation genius George Pal (The War of the Worlds, Time Machine, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm), Harryhausen blazed new trails in special effects from the 1950s to the 1980s. Now, in the animator's own words, accompanied by hundreds of previously unpublished photos, sketches, and storyboards from his personal archive, comes Ray Harryhausen.

Co-written with film historian Tony Dalton, the book takes readers through Harryhausen's entire career – film by film, triumph by triumph. In words and images, it explains the basics of special effects and stop-motion animation, along the way telling tales of working with the film stars of the day – Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, and Lionel Jeffries, to name a few – and revealing how Raquel Welch was picked up by a flying dinosaur in One Million Years B.C., why the octopus in Mysterious Island was really only a sixtopus, and what Madusa's blood was made from in Clash of the Titans.

The book explores in detail how the animation models were made. It also offers a film-by-film breakdown of the animation techniques used. And it includes never before seen concept sketches and movie production drawings from films such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans with frame-by-frame deconstructions of how ground-breaking effects were achieved.

Ray Harryhausen is a must for special effects fans, if for no other reason than Harryhausen, with his obsessive eye for detail, saved and now delivers previ­ously unpublished photographs, sketches, and storyboards from his personal achive as well as entertain­ing tales, in intimate detail, from his illus­trious 60-year career.

The king of stop-motion animation lays out his varied career.... A must for special-effects aficionados and geeky fantasy addicts everywhere. – Kirkus Reviews

Biographies & Memoirs

Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola by Gene D. Phillips, with a foreword by Walter Murch (University of Kentucky Press) The visionary force behind such popular and critically acclaimed films as Apocalypse Now and the Godfather trilogy, Francis Ford Coppola has imprinted a distinct style on each of his movies and has significantly influenced modern American cinema. In an era of inflated production budgets and complex studio systems, it is rare for a director to gain creative control over all aspects of the filmmaking process—from screenwriting to editing to the coveted "final cut"—that the auteur commands. Coppola is unarguably one of the few modern American exceptions.

Recipient of the Director’s Guild of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Coppola began his career at UCLA’s film school but was soon drawn to an apprenticeship under director Roger Corman, known as "king of the B movie." With Corman he gained practical experience in all aspects of the filmmaking process, particularly in how to manage a budget, a skill Coppola credits with being chosen to direct The Godfather even though Hollywood still considered him to be a young director.

Working as a screenwriter (crafting scripts for The Great Gatsby and Patton, for which he won an Academy Award), Coppola rejected the standard studio practice of hiring multiple writers to work on a single project. Accordingly, he formed his own production company, American Zoetrope, where he exercised complete control over the entire creative process. After founding the company, he began his directorial work in earnest, describing each film as a continuation of the previous one, despite the differences in subject matter.

Author Gene D. Phillips blends biography, studio history, and film criticism to provide the most comprehensive work available on Coppola. Phillips, a film historian and  Professor of English at Loyola, gained access to the reticent director and his colleagues and examined Coppola’s private production journals and screenplays. He reviewed rare copies of Coppola’s student films, his early excursions into soft-core pornography, and his less celebrated productions such as One from the Heart and Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

Not afraid to take risks in filmmaking, the thick-bearded Sicilian Coppola also created important pictures that did not receive critical attention. He notes, "The trouble with American filmmaking is that producers don't allow the risk of failure. If a good film can't risk being a failure, it won't be really good." Phillips illuminates the details of the production history of the harrowing shoot of Apocalypse Now. He was falsely accused of doing heavy drugs during the 238-day shooting and ridiculed for the film being a "financial boondoggle," although most of the finances came from Coppola's own pocket (he mortgaged his house to finish the picture). He also explains how The Godfather was almost cast without the now iconic Marlon Brando – during a casting meeting, Paramount emphatically refused to allow Coppola to cast Brando, and Coppola stood on the conference table in defense of his casting choice. When the president of Paramount still wouldn't grant Coppola's wish, the director "fainted" right on the table, convulsing until the executive agreed to Brando being a part of the film.

Coppola's early use of electronic methods of shooting film is unique in the scope of American cinema. Twenty years before others began using digital means of filming, Coppola was shooting his movies and able to watch them on the screen as soon as the cameras stopped rolling. In this intimate assessment of the director, Phillips discusses Coppola's "godfather" role in this aspect of film as well as his role as a godfather to a whole generation of filmmakers, including film school graduates such as Martin Scorcese and George Lucas. At that time film school was not considered a serious discipline and was viewed negatively by the anti-intellectual filmmakers of the day. But Coppola broke through, degree in hand, receiving studio time to make his masters thesis, You're a Big Boy Now, even though he had no experience in the studio. He became the "great white knight," rescuing and fathering film as an academic field to be studied and mastered.

Because Coppola was so open with the press during his career, revealing behind-the-camera squabbles and his own bankruptcy, he was labeled a reckless spendthrift by the media, earning a reputation that would remain with him for years. Phillips explains his aim behind the book: "I am interested in telling the truth. It's payback time for Francis." Phillips asserts he has proven Coppola is a "genuine cinematic artist who is also a popular entertainer."

Coppola just recently applauded as his daughter Sofia became the third generation (following her grandfather and her father) in her family to collect an Oscar. The definitive assessment of one of Hollywood ’s most enduring and misunderstood mavericks, Godfather argues that Coppola has centered his career around engaging films that reflect his own radically independent artistic vision. The book is the most comprehensive on Coppola to date, categorizing and analyzing every film Coppola ever made.

Biographies & Memoirs

West with the Night [UNABRIDGED] by Beryl Markham , read by Julie Harris (The Audio Partners Publishing Corp.) Audio CD: 8 compact disks, 9 hours 12 minutes.
West With the Night [LARGE PRINT] by Beryl Markham ( ISIS Publishing)
West with the Night [Paperback] by Beryl Markham (North Point Press)
West with the Night is the story of Beryl Markham – aviator, racehorse trainer, beauty – and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and 30s. Originally published in 1942 and then reissued in 1983, and now again in 2004, this is the unabridged best-selling autobiography of the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo from east to west. But it is much more than a story of aviation.

Born in England in 1902, Markham was taken by her father to East Africa in 1906. She spent her childhood playing with native Maruni children and apprenticing with her father as a trainer and breeder of racehorses. In the 1930s she became an African bush pilot, and in September 1936 she made her famous flight.

With the skill of someone who has filled long nights with stories, Markham recounts her adventures – discoveries, rescues, and narrow escapes, the glint of an airplane abandoned in the desert, the look of a lion about to pounce.... There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo. – excerpt from the book

...she has written so well, and marvellously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer...she can write rings around all of us...I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book. – Ernest Hemingway

West with the Night is an exceptional autobiography filled with a strong spirit, fascinating events, and beautiful words. Beryl Markham was raised by her father on a large farm in British East Africa in the early twentieth century; as a child she preferred spear hunting with the native Muranis to her school lessons. At seventeen, when her father lost their farm and went to Peru , she chose to stay in Africa and began a highly successful career as a race horse trainer. In her twenties she gave up horses and started flying airplanes, becoming the first woman in East Africa to be granted a commercial pilot's license, then the first woman to fly the Atlantic from east to west. Lyrically and philosophically, West with the Night covers each of these parts of her life. Beryl Markham writes hunting stories filled with danger and tension, then turns and discusses the different qualities of silence or what it is like to fly alone over water for forty hours: "Being alone in an aeroplane for even so short a time as a night and a day, irrevocably alone, with nothing to observe but your instruments and your own hands in the semi-darkness, nothing to contemplate but your own small courage....such an experience can be as startling as the first awareness of a stranger walking by your side at night. You are the stranger. " This is the story of an extraordinary woman – and that alone might be enough to recommend it. The fact that it is also extraordinarily well written makes it a gift. – Erica Bauermeister, 500 Great Books by Women

Much more than a pilot's memoir, West with the Night is a wise, funny, and inspiring exploration of a life well lived. The book reveals a poet's feeling for the land, an adventurer's engagement with life, and a philosopher's insights into the human condition.

Especially to be recommended is the audio version of the book, read by Julie Harris, one of America 's finest actresses on stage and screen. Her reading evokes the sights, sounds, and feelings of a remarkable life lived far outside the mainstream.

Biographies & Memoirs

Homesick: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Finding Hope by Jenny Lauren (Atria Books) With bravery, intimacy, and excruciating detail, author Jenny Lauren pours her years of struggle and recovery into the urgent prose of Homesick. Hoping to reach those suffering and seeking release from eating disorders and depression, as well as those living with undetected medical conditions, Lauren shares her thirteen-year battle with Anorexia Bulimia Nervosa, the resulting physical trauma and psychic triumphs.

With captivating blue eyes and dark hair, Jenny Lauren looked as though she'd stepped out of one of the glossy ads for which her uncle, Ralph Lauren, is famous. It was not long, however, before she found herself in a world where it was easy to see herself as less than perfect. As a young dancer, she felt insecure that her muscular frame did not seem to measure up to the slim figures of the other girls – she was ten years old when she first starved herself. Although there were brief periods of recovery, Lauren spent much of her teen and early twenties bingeing, purging, and com­pulsively exercising. In 1997, at 24, her body broke down after years of relentless ravaging; her small intestine herniated. She could barely walk. Although physician after physician told Lauren her ail­ments were in her head, eventually her condition was connected to her eating disorder and the resulting strain on her digestive system. But it was too late – irreparable damage had been done.

Although Homesick centers around Lauren’s struggle with an eating disorder, as well as the dramatic surgery she was forced to undergo as consequence, but there is a larger story that focuses on universal issues: the intricacies of family ties, the pressures of society, and the search for selfhood. From the New York fashion shows to the art galleries of Santa Fe, from the Mayo Pain Management Clinic in Minnesota to the healing sanctuaries in Brazil, Lauren takes the reader on a cinematic odyssey to self-discovery.

Lauren is intelligent, plainspoken, and unflinching. With flashes of wit (for example, she attends a Ralph Lauren fashion show and realizes, "The clothing is incredible as always, but who needs it?"), she evokes empathy. Writing for anyone fighting themselves, their family, or their doctors for the right to a healthy body and mind, Homesick is both a cautionary tale about illness and deterioration and a hopeful story of strength and restoration. This book also raises the question of whether contemporary fashion standards pressure young women into the destructive behaviors of anorexia and bulimia. And it speaks powerfully to a widespread failure by the med­ical community to understand eating disorders.

Biographies & Memoirs

Peter Jackson: From Prince of Splatter to Lord of the Rings by Ian Pryor (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin ’s Press) Peter Jackson is at the pinnacle of his career. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King claimed an Oscar in each of the eleven categories for which the film was nominated, tying with previous movie record holders Titanic and Ben Hur and gave Jackson a trip down the aisle to accept the award for Best Director.

The first biography of Jackson, Peter Jackson by New Zealand journalist Ian Pryor examines Jackson's personal and professional struggles and successes. He also details how the famous director convinced Hollywood to let a relative unknown helm The Lord of the Rings, one of the most ambitious film projects ever produced.

Peter Jackson exploded onto the popular scene with the release of The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, and his legend has grown with each successive release in the trilogy. Now the owner of one of the world's largest special effects companies, Jackson built WETA to rival George Lucas's ILM, in the process, hoping that the facility would attract international filmmakers to New Zealand. He has also become one of the highest paid directors in Hollywood, receiving a salary of $20 million for the upcoming King Kong remake. However, not much is known about the Kiwi filmmaker's previous accomplishments.

Capturing his career to date in Peter Jackson, Pryor traces the journey of a young movie fanatic inspired by Monty Python and Ray Harryhausen. From Sunday afternoons spent fooling around with a camera, through low-budget cult movies, Pryor delves into Jackson's earliest efforts. He tells of the inspiration that led to the making of the three world-famous Lord of the Rings films and the six other films that preceded them. Pryor looks at the story behind the Rings, explaining how Jackson got the rights and funding to make three films rather than collapsing the story into just one or two films. He also includes interviews and other behind-the-scenes material from the making of those landmark films.

Pryor categorizes Jackson's first six films into the ‘bloodfest trilogy’ of Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, and Dead Alive, which were followed by the ‘experimental trilogy’ of Heavenly Creatures, Forgotten Silver, and The Frighteners. Pryor also argues that the uniting theme of Jackson's pictures has been special effects, and that the early horror films aided in developing the director's eye.

Pryor's Peter Jackson is a comprehensive first look at the director's career to date, and a must-have for every fan who craves more insight about how the Prince of Splatter became the man behind The Lord of the Rings. This in-depth, unauthorized biography includes material never before seen in America, and Pryor's knowledge of Jackson from the start of his professional career brings a perspective that enables readers to understand how Jackson's cinematic talents were honed.

Biographies & Memoirs

Black Eye: Escaping a Marriage, Writing a Life by Judith Strasser (Terrace Books, University of Wisconsin Press) Having grown up in the 60s, she was part of a generation of women with strong anti-establishment political convictions but still dreaming of marrying Prince Charming and living happily ever after. Seventeen years after she married, Judith Strasser escaped her emotionally and physically abusive husband and sought a better way to live. In the process, Strasser, now a freelance writer who conducts poetry and memoir writing workshops for adults and children, rediscovered what she had suppressed through that long span of time: strength and a passion for writing.

Black Eye includes excerpts from a journal Strasser kept from 1985 to 1986 – the year she made the decision to leave her marriage – and present-day commentary on the journal passages and her family history with parents, children therapist, friends. She’s retelling and rethinking it, to help herself and readers like her, heal. Strasser, a former senior producer and interviewer for a national distributed public radio program (To the Best of Our Knowledge), works like a detective investigating her own life, drawing clarity and power from journal passages, dreams, and memories that originally emerged from confusion and despair.

Not coincidentally, the same year that Strasser found the courage to leave her husband, she reclaimed her creative voice. Newly empowered and energized by this enormous life change, Strasser began writing again after twenty-five silent years dominated by her mother's illness and death, her own cancer, and her painful, fearful marriage. Black Eye is one of the fruits of this creative reawakening. Take this passage, for example:

Stu and I stand in the laundry room in the basement of our first house in Madison . He raises his hand and slaps me, hard. Why? Are we arguing about the layer of lint on the dryer? Is he angry because there's laundry detergent caked around the rim of the washing machine? . . . Did I scream at him about something that had nothing to do with clothes? What I remember: my stinging cheek.

One feels one is peering into a life, in all its pure daily awfulness. – Heather Sellers, author of Georgia under Water

An unflinching, unsparing, un-put-down-able diary of a woman's slow tumble to health, freedom, and even joy, against terrifying odds. Black Eye is the kind of book we wish no one had to write, but which we are compelled to read. – Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean

Insightful and poetic, Strasser reveals the psychological and social circumstances that led a "strong" woman, an intelligent and politically active feminist, to become an emotionally dependent, abused wife. As Strasser tells it, “I still don’t really get it”, but she’s trying to get it. Mostly self-analysis, Black Eye is personal, triumphant, and inspiring to all who deal with the adversity that is part of human life.

Business & Investing

All Crises Are Global: Managing to Escape Chaos by Marion K. Pinsdorf ( Fordham University Press) From the Enron scandal to the Ebola virus scare, from oil spills to acts of terrorism, crises scar our age. And whether it's an expensive product recall or a deadly airplane crash, any crisis can turn into chaos unless there's an effective management response plan in place.

All Crises Are Global provides the basics of an effective organizational crisis-management plan. Marion Pinsdorf gives managers the tools and sensitivity to deal with the catastrophic effects of a crisis whether it touches on the organization itself, the media, competitors, partners, government, or victims. Filled with real-world examples of successes and failures from the Arthur Andersen meltdown to the at­tacks of September 11, Pinsdorf shows how to plan for, manage, monitor, and mitigate the effects of crises large and small.

Spread instantaneously to a litigious world by global media, crises can no longer be contained or con­trolled, only anticipated and managed. According to author Pinsdorf, former Vice President of Textron and INA (CIGNA) Corporations, and Hill and Knowlton, Inc., and Associate Professor and Senior Fellow in Communications at Fordham's Graduate School of Business Administration, executives can manage the impact of even large-scale events by quickly taking responsibility for the human and financial costs of the organization’s mistakes.

Marion Pinsdorf ... is able to counsel today's harried business leaders from perspectives no one else can offer. By combining what we can learn from the past with modern techniques and creative problem solving strategies, Dr. Pinsdorf shows how we can find new positive ways to take some of the 'hiss' out of the word crisis. – John W. Felton, President and CEO, Institute for Public Relations

Pinsdorf brings keen insight and intelligence to an assessment of crisis management in our global community, along with a dash of common sense and with ... this book is a winner! – Barie Carmichael, Partner, The Brunswick Group

Pinsdorf drills to discover the essence of what turns an issue or incident into a crisis and offers guidance to the even the most battle-hardened crisis communications expert. – Michael Morley, Edelman

In All Crises Are Global Pinsdorf provides techniques for building smart organizations that react quickly before problems es­calate into crises. Practical, tested, and wise, this book helps managers look for trouble spots and deal with them effectively.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership

Creativity in Virtual Teams: Key Components for Success by Jill E. Nemiro (Pfeiffer, Wiley) is a well-researched and practical resource that offers a new model for attaining high levels of creativity in virtual working arrangements.  

Written by Jill E. Nemiro, an expert in organization and virtual team building, Creativity in Virtual Teams provides a tool that takes readers beyond theory to foster creativity in virtual teams. Nemiro, assistant professor in the psychology and sociology department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and adjunct professor in the human resources design masters’ program at Claremont Graduate University, leads readers through a series of diagnostic tools, questions for reflection, checklists, and exercises that will help them assess and develop the five key components – design, climate, resources, norms and protocols, and continual assessment and learning. In addition, Creativity in Virtual Teams is filled with illustrative lessons learned from nine highly successful and innovative virtual teams.

Nemiro has done an impressive piece of research on this so far neglected area – creativity in virtual teams. If you manage or belong to a team that aspires to higher levels of creativity – and what team doesn’t – you’ll find this book invaluable, thought provoking, and highly readable. – Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps, authors of Virtual Teams

Having dealt with small to large virtual teams for over a decade, Dr. Nemiro’s book is the first book to provide a comprehensive, concise understanding of the dynamics and structure of virtual teams. A combination of theory and practical tools for all those either interested in establishing or bettering existing teams. – Patricia G. Flores, region account manager, Global Diversity Sourcing, Hewlett-Packard

This is the first serious study of creativity in virtual teams. It offers a comprehensive framework and valuable assessment tools for putting the book’s lessons into practice in any organization. – Vijay Sathe, The Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University ; author, Corporate Entrepreneurship

Creativity in Virtual Teams provides methods for continual assessment and learning in developing high levels of creativity in virtual teams and is an important resource for those working in virtual teams or transitioning into this new way of working.

Biographies / Outdoors & Nature / Sports

A View from a Tall Hill: Robert Ruark in Africa by Terry Wieland (Countrysport Press) is a reissue of the classic biography of Robert Ruark, telling of the renowned 20th-century safari writer's experiences of Africa during its early struggles for independence.  

Ruark was a nationally renowned columnist and author during his lifetime, and since his death in 1965 his writings have continued to inspire hunters who travel to Africa .  Millions of readers, who can only dream of going there, feel they know Africa intimately from reading his work.

Given his stature in the field, it is a shock to realize that Ruark’s career as a writer on Africa lasted less than 15 years. During that span, however, he lived life at a frantic pace, traveling the world, trying to see everything, do everything, report everything. Particularly, he came to know East Africa like a second home, and he watched its descent to independence with increasing apprehension. In his newspaper columns, he predicted the economic, social, and political chaos that has been daily news from African datelines ever since the colonial flags were lowered.

Ruark’s death in 1965, at the age of 49, was premature but not unexpected. Estranged from his childhood home in North Carolina , exiled from his adult haunts in New York , and finally barred from his adopted land of Kenya , Ruark found his only real home in the tiny Spanish town of Palamós , where he is buried in a quiet corner of the ancient walled cemetery.

In A View from a Tall Hill, Terry Wieland, shooting editor of Gray's Sporting Journal, has not written a biography in the strict sense, but has written about Ruark and his work, the times in which he lived, and the strange allure that Africa had for him – an irresistible fascination Ruark repaid by immortalizing Kenya as if it were a first, tender love.

Excerpt from the book:
From 1951 until the day [Ruark] died, Africa reached out to him with a promise that there he would find something that was worth having – something that did not exist in Manhattan . Even if he could never articulate exactly what that something was, it was solid and tangible to him.

Although many may disapprove of Ruark's views about big game hunting and the role of white settlers in Africa, no one can deny the truth of what Ruark reported in his columns and wrote about in his best-selling novels, detailing the upheavals and tragedy that took place in Africa starting in the early 60s and continuing today.

[A View from a Tall Hill] Sad, fascinating, and the finest tribute that Robert Chester Ruark will ever have. – David Petzal, Field & Stream

Business & Investing / Human Resources

Competency-Based Human Resource Management by David D. Dubois & William J. Rothwell, with Deborah Jo King Stern and Linda K. Kemp (Davies-Black Publishing) The traditional human resource (HR) emphasis on job descriptions shortchanges both the employee and the organization, according to authors David D. Dubois and William J. Rothwell. The more effective method is to fit employee talents to the work that must be accomplished.

Moving beyond industrial-age notions of work, Competency-Based Human Resource Management describes how to reinvent the HR department so that job competencies – rather than job descriptions – become the foundation for all HR efforts. By isolating and focusing on the key competencies that distinguish top performers, HR departments can unleash the power of exemplary performers across all job categories and see significant gains in productivity.

Dubois, internationally respected consultant, author, speaker, life-career counselor, coach, and workshop leader; and Rothwell, president of Rothwell & Associates, Inc., and professor of human resource development at The Pennsylvania State University, show HR professionals how to identify the key competencies that distinguish best-in-class performers – or "exemplars" – from average performers. Readers can then use the key competencies as the basis for all HR functions, including planning, recruiting and selecting, training, and performance development. According to Dubois and Rothwell, this new model of performance management unleashes the power of exemplary performers across all job categories, resulting in enhanced employee satisfaction and significant gains in productivity.

Competency-Based Human Resource Management provides a wide variety of planning tools, checklists, worksheets, and other practical aids to lead HR professionals through the process of making the transition from a work-based environment to a competency-based organization.

Children’s (12 and up)

Story Time by Edward Bloor (Harcourt, Inc) At a time when public debate over standardized testing is growing ever more heated, Edward Bloor's Story Time enters the fray with a biting satire on high-stakes testing.

George Melvil and Kate Peters are promised the finest education when they transfer to the Whittaker Magnet School, an experimental college-prep charter school. It boasts the highest test scores in the nation ... but at what price? Their new school's "Leave No High-Scoring Child Behind" curriculum is focused on beating standardized tests. Classes are held in dreary, windowless rooms, and students are force-fed noxious protein shakes to improve their test performance. Worst of all, there seems to be a demon loose in the building, one whose murderous work has only just begun.

According to Bloor, author of two acclaimed novels, a former middle and high school teacher, ”For my third novel, Story Time, I was eager to do something different, or at least to approach reality from a different direction. The result is a novel that is part ghost story, with lots of supernatural action, and part satire about public schools.

Story Time is set in the Whittaker Magnet School , a grades 6-8 experimental school that boasts the highest standardized-testing scores in the United States . Within this school's sterile, Orwellian environment arises a curious poltergeist – at times funny, at times malevolent – who turns everything upside down. This unfriendly ghost provokes incidents that, should the public catch wind of them, would wreak havoc on real estate values in the highly desirable Whittaker Magnet School district.

I was fortunate to teach in the public school system (nearly twenty years ago) in what now seems to be a golden age, unencumbered by state standards and high-stakes tests. Seventh ­graders could read aloud and talk about The Odyssey, Flowers for Algernon, and Lord of the Flies. They could put on a drama festival in which they wrote and acted in their own plays. They could write and illustrate poems to adorn the classroom walls.

I doubt that so many fanciful activities could occur with such frequency in seventh-grade classrooms in America today. The relentless pressure from above to succeed on standardized tests, pressure originating from the president of the United States himself, trickles down through descending levels of politicians until it pours onto the heads of local principals... "Test-Based Curriculum," the absurd pedagogy upon which Story Time's Whittaker Magnet School is founded, is already a reality in many American public schools. As a result, many children who learn to love reading today do so in spite of, not because of, what they experience in the classroom. In this topsy-turvy system, the politicians win, and the educators and students lose. I believe that, in the Latin words displayed in the Whittaker Magnet School, "We will pay for it" with a less literate society.”

Story Time is bitterly funny satire about the state of modern education aimed at everyone twelve and over.

A no-holds-barred, deeply subversive tale about modern education. – Publishers Weekly

Cooking, Food & Wine / Health, Mind & Body

Rawsome: Maximizing Health, Energy, and Culinary Delight With the Raw Foods Diet by Brigitte Mars (Basic Health Publications, Inc.)

A raw foods diet advocates exactly that: eating raw foods. No cooking, no grilling, no steaming, no application of high temperatures. Why?

Studies show raw foods are digested quickly and easily – in 24-36 hours instead of the 48-100 hours needed for cooked food.

Tackling head-on the skepticism likely to greet proponents of what the world sees as a "fad" diet, renowned nutritional consultant and raw foods adherent Brigitte Mars in Rawsome presents historical data and scientific evidence confirming the efficacy of raw foods diets in:

• Supporting emotional stability
• Increasing energy levels
• Clearing the skin
• Boosting immune-system function
• Improving digestive function
• Dispelling depression
• Sustaining overall good health.

Raw foods slow the aging process and help people reach their optimum weight. Raw food diets have been used to improve the health of those with arthritis, asthma, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, digestive disturbances, menstrual problems, allergies, obesity, skin conditions, and heart disease. The result, over time, is a feeling of buoyant, radiant health.

In addition, Mars points out the environmental benefits of the raw foods diet, making a case for eating raw foods as a means of reducing waste, making the most of agricultural practice, and reducing the human footprint on the earth. Whether readers want to jump right into an all-raw diet or just want to introduce more raw foods into the diet, Mars, who teaches herbal medicine through Esalen, the Boulder College of Massage Therapy, and the Naropa Institute, offers encouragement and practical instruction. Readers will find advice on planning a balanced diet to meet their nutritional needs, combining foods for best effect, preserving raw foods, equipping the raw kitchen, sprouting, juicing, and every other technique that makes the raw foods diet simple, delicious, and healthful.

Mars explains digestion and enzyme activity, and why raw foods can be particularly helpful when it comes to losing weight and increasing energy. She provides a "raw foods encyclopedia," identifying the nutritional content of fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, and wild edibles (like seaweeds and edible flowers), and explaining how the body converts each of them into energy.

Perhaps most important, Mars provides more than 200 kitchen-tested, real-people-approved raw foods recipes. There are dozens of raw food recipes for:

• Breakfast dishes
• Dairy replacements
• Beverages
• Salads and salad dressings
• Soups
• Sauces and condiments
• Dips and pates
• Entrees
• Alternatives to rice and baked bread
• Sandwiches and other take-it-with-you foods
• Desserts
• Holiday dishes
• Ethnic foods – Caribbean, French, German, Italian, Mexican, Indian, Middle Eastern, Asian, and Southern, among others

Mars also outlines the kitchen tools for making these – no more stoves, toasters, and pots. Instead, the raw food kitchen is stocked with a blender, citrus juicer, food dehydrator, and ice cream maker, and food preparation involves instructions for sprouting, juicing, dehydrating, and fermenting.

For people who want to give raw foods a try but don't want to give up the taste of good cooking, Rawsome provides a solid foundation.

Cooking, Food & Wine

Southern Living Ultimate Quick & Easy Cookbook edited by Jane E. Gentry (Oxmoor House) urges readers to imagine finding all of their childhood favorites in one source revised into simpler, more streamlined recipes.

Readers voted "Quick & Easy" their favorite feature in Southern Living. Now they can enjoy over 450 fast recipes in one cookbook.

Compiled by Jane E. Gentry, an editor at Southern Living, Southern Living Ultimate Quick & Easy Cookbook has these features: colorful banners beside titles identify features like 5 Ingredients or Less, Make Ahead, Ideas for Two, Freeze It, and No-Cook Creation. Hundreds of shortcuts and tips streamline cook time. Readers will find ideas for Two Meals in One, Gadget Magic, and Fix it Faster, which offers options for making a quick recipe even quicker. More than 100 photographs show just what the recipes look like. The staff at Southern Living share their best secrets for organizing the kitchen for speed, stocking up on quick-cooking staples, and breezing through the grocery store in record time. Starbursts indicate dishes that cook in 10, 20, and 30 minutes or less.

Here’s a sampling of some of Southern Living’s editors’ favorites:

• Bring back memories with creamy Corn Pudding – only has 5 ingredients.
• Prep fresh Crunchy Fried Okra in 6 minutes: batter up small, tender whole okra pods and skip the slicing.
• Dress up chicken breasts with three ingredients to make Pecan Chicken.
• Pan-Seared Steaks with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce offer unbelievable flavor with only five ingredients and 10 minutes start to finish.
• Chicken-Fried Steak 'n' Country Gravy is on the table in 30 minutes.

• Pop some fries in the oven when preparing Fried Catfish Sandwiches, and readers will have dinner finished in 25 minutes.
• Spiced Pecans are sure to disappear quickly – only takes 15 minutes.

• Five-ingredient German Chocolate Squares take only 8 minutes.

• New-fashioned Banana Pudding makes everybody happy – instant pudding mix with a little half-and-half to give it homemade flavor.
• Caramel-Nut Pull-Apart Bread is easy on the cook with just four ingredients.

A cross-referenced recipe index makes finding favorite recipes faster than ever.

With Southern Living Ultimate Quick & Easy Cookbook, readers will find a collection of editors’ best recipes with fewer steps and quicker times without sacrificing flavor. Whether it's the home cooking or the cozy feelings, it's good to have these simple versions of the foods we Southerns grew up with.

Culture / Computers / Privacy

How to Be Invisible, Revised Edition: The Essential Guide to Protecting Your Personal Privacy, Your Assets, and Your Life by J.J. Luna (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press)  

Fascinating...a regular field manual ... meticulously researched and very entertaining. – G. Gordon Liddy

There is a prevailing sense in our society that true privacy is a thing of the past. Sweeping changes since 9/11 have encroached upon personal privacy as never before. J.J. (Jack) Luna’s classic manual covers everything from driver's licenses and pizza deliveries to anonymous ownership of vehicles and real estate. Filled with vivid real life stories drawn from the headlines and from Luna's own consulting experience, How to Be Invisible is the perfect antidote. Luna reveals the shocking secrets private detectives and other seekers of personal information use to uncover information and then shows how to make a serious commitment to safeguarding oneself. Then Luna offers tested techniques to protect oneself from information predators as technology leaves ordinary citizens vulnerable to identity theft and lack of privacy. This revised edition includes sections on:

• Ensuring that pagers, cells phones and hand-held radios are secure.
• Protecting one’s laptop at home, at the office, and while traveling.
• Sending and receiving mail, taking deliveries, hiding one’s home address.
• Running an anonymous business from almost any location in the world.

Luna sold his outdoor advertising business in the Upper Midwest in 1959 and moved with his wife and small children to Spain 's Canary Islands (off the coast of West Africa ). Outwardly, he worked as a professional writer and photographer. Secretly, however, he dodged the Spanish Secret Police while working underground in an activity that was at that time illegal under the dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. In 1970 Franco, yielding to intense pressure from the western world, moderated Spain 's laws. Luna was now free to come in from the cold. By that time, however, privacy had become an ingrained habit. In the years that followed he started up various low-profile home-based businesses, built them up and then sold them. He is currently an international consultant specializing in personal privacy and security.

Read this meticulously researched and highly entertaining book, learn its techniques...then vanish in plain sight! – Lt. Patrick Picciarellie, NYPD (ret.), bestselling author of Jimmy the Wags: Street Stories of a Private Eye

How to Be Invisible gives the smartest, sanest, and most practical advice on just how to stay out of sight in the real world. Buy this book if you value your privacy. – Nod Beaumont, author of Beat the Border and The Policeman Is Your Friend and Other Lies

How to Be Invisible is a revolutionary approach to personal security. Luna shows readers how to protect themselves from information predators. Whether readers just want to shield themselves from casual scrutiny or take their life savings with them and disappear without a trace, the book provides the information required.

Education

The History of the International Learning Styles Network and Its Impact on Instructional Innovation by Laura Shea Doolan (Mellen Studies in Education Series, V. 90: The Edwin Mellen Press) We are witnessing an age when networks of various kinds spring into existence regularly on the Internet. Most of these networks experience a brief period of viability, and then disappear like the "dot-com" companies. However, the International Learning Styles Network (ILSN) has prevailed for almost 25 years and expanded from a predominantly educational Network, comprised of Centers located in colleges and universities within the United States, to a world-wide Network, encompassing businesses and consultation Centers on four continents. The major emphasis of The History of the International Learning Styles Network and Its Impact on Instructional Innovation is to document the historical development of the ILSN.

Written by Laura Shea Doolan, learning-style specialist and assistant professor at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, the book describes a historical analysis of the International Learning Styles Network (ILSN) and its impact on instructional innovation. The book describes:

• How the Network evolved.

• The impact of the ILSN on instructional innovation.

• The ILSN model and guidelines to assist in the formation of future networks.

Multiple forms of data were examined from primary sources, including the directors of the ILSN Centers in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America, and from secondary sources, including former representatives of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), an ILSN Board member; and school administrators, professors, teachers, and students directly involved with the Network Centers.

A qualitative design using historiography was the cornerstone of the study. Data revealed how the ILSN expanded into a Network after St. John's University's initial sponsorship and the subsequent cosponsorship of the NASSP. The main factor for the directors' involvement with learning styles and the ILSN was that they believed this perspective was crucial in the fostering of learners' academic and work performances. Findings supported that the basic factor contributing to the expansion of the ILSN was the positive impact that learning styles had on the attainment of students' achievement and teachers' instructional goals.

Guidelines for the development of future networks include:

• Developing a partnership with organizations in the area of interest.
• Establishing bylaws to insure that, during the growth process, there is adherence to established guidelines.
• Encouraging commitment to quality and a strong research base pertaining to the network's foci.
• Documenting and publishing the effects of the organization to foster continued expansion.

From the data revealed, Doolan also developed the Distracter Theory addressing the leadership essential to sustaining and expanding networks.  

The construct of individual learning styles emerged in the 1960s with the work of Frank Reisman, who suggested that styles were determined at birth and the role of educators was to help students discover their own learning styles. Researchers recognized the importance of investigating the relationship between instructional strategies and each student's learning-style characteristics. Today, the basic tenet of learning-style theory is: Accommodation of students' individual learning styles in the instructional/educational process significantly improves academic achievement and behavior and promotes more positive attitudes toward learning.

Doolan says in the introduction “... since the time of this study, there is continued interest by additional national and international groups seeking to become members of this Network. When speaking with students, teachers, and so forth, I also observed that, once individuals recognized the reason for why people learn differently, they became more tolerant of others' diversities. I believe this is a crucial factor in expanding a ‘peaceful acceptance’ of the individual.” Doolan hopes that, after reading about the work conducted by these networking pioneers and their subsequent colleagues, other education stakeholders will do their best to better assist all individuals.

The History of the International Learning Styles Network and Its Impact on Instructional Innovation represents a unique contribution to research and scholarship; it provides a scholarly, historical analysis of the development of the International Learning Styles Network, which was a vehicle for the broad dissemination of learning-style theory, practice, and research. As instructors and teachers read The History of the International Learning Styles Network and Its Impact on Instructional Innovation, they may be empowered to identify the learning-style preferences that are best for themselves and others, and they may use these preferences in the teaching and learning process. And the model, guidelines, and theory coming out of this work may be beneficial to those people who are developing networks and are seeking reform.

Education

Successful School Change: Creating Settings to Improve Teaching and Learning by Claude Goldenberg, with a foreword by Michael Fullan (Teachers College Press)  

This highly readable book [Successful School Change] brings to light a reformer's agenda: raising expectations and student achievement, being accountable, creating a community. Goldenberg shows how these abstractions can take on meaning and achieve long term results. The work described in this fine book helps solve the mystery of improving schools. – Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Drawing on 15 years of research and teaching in low-income schools, Claude Goldenberg provides a model of school change for those seeking to make reform happen in their school or classroom. Goldenberg, Professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Associate Dean of the College of Education at California State University, Long Beach, demonstrates the kinds of long-term planning and coordinated effort required to create lasting change. Offering a unique glimpse into the reform process, Successful School Change:

• Focuses on successful reform efforts in an elementary school in the metropolitan Los Angeles area serving a predominantly bilingual, Latino population.
• Details the partnership between school-based educators and university-based researchers working together over an extended period to improve academic achievement, primarily in language arts.
• Examines how to create a sustained, coherent, and focused school-wide effort aimed at improving identified student outcomes.
• Illustrates the everyday dynamics experienced by teachers, administrators, and students, including the many challenges involved in changing norms, beliefs, and practices and how those challenges were addressed to improve student learning.
• Concludes with a revealing but sobering chapter describing what happened after the project officially ended.

An accessible and moving story that carries the reader along with ever increasing interest and clarity, Successful School Change pushes the boundaries of what we know, and provides a powerful model for going to the next stage of reform.

Claude Goldenberg has done an extraordinary job of painting a complex and detailed picture of school improvement. For those of us concerned about making things better for children who are most at risk, this book is realistic, inspiring, and greatly needed by the educational community. – Guadalupe Valdes, Stanford University

Education / Women’s Studies

Roads Taken: Women in Student Affairs at Mid-Career edited by Kristen A. Renn & Carole Hughes, with a foreword by Margaret J. Barr (Stylus Publishing, LLC.) While much has been written about new graduate students, new professionals and senior administrators in student affairs, scant attention has been paid to the issues of mid-career, particularly as they impact women.

Presented in Roads Taken are the stories of over twenty women, from widely different backgrounds, reflecting on their lives at mid-career. Women in student affairs contributed to this volume, describing the choices they have made and sharing the lessons they have learned, particularly the ever-present concerns about reconciling the demands of work and responsibilities to family and partners.

The contributors cover issues as varied as education and self-development, the dilemmas faced by dual career couples, the care of children and of aging parents, mid-career decisions and alternatives to traditional, linear career progression in student affairs administration. This volume focuses on issues that have particular and significant meaning for women: planning for the future, deciding about education and professional development, exploring the decision to have or not have children and the implications of that decision, and a series of other issues such as dealing with aging parents, loss of a job, and the future. The co-editors, Carole Hughes and Kristen Renn, synthesize the diverse points of view presented by the various authors and identify directions and issues for the future. Renn is Assistant Professor of Higher, Adult, & Lifelong Education and Coordinator, Student Affairs Administration Program, Michigan State-University; and Hughes is Associate Dean for Student Development at Boston College.

An excerpt from the foreword by Margaret J. Barr, past president of ACPA and NASPA: This is a book that you should read, think about, and share with your col­leagues. It is thought provoking, touches on a number of important issues, and makes us think just a little differently about the relationship between our shared profession in student affairs and the rest of our lives.

The choices each of us makes as we travel through life shape our present circumstances, our future life, and our past. Most of us attempt to make the choice involved, regarding which road through life to follow, on the basis of our own knowledge, experience, and skills. We are also influenced in that choice of the road by the knowledge and experience that others have shared with us. That is why this book is so important. It is filled with stories about the choices made by women at mid-career in the profession of student affairs. Each of the authors shares her experience and the reasons for the decisions she has made. We can all learn from their stories and the lessons they have learned and choose to share with us. This makes this volume a particular gift to women currently in mid-career positions in student affairs, women embarking on their personal and professional journey in student affairs, the partners of such women, their colleagues, and the individuals who supervise them.

Roads Taken is a book for women in student affairs. both those just starting out and those in mid-career who can gain insight as they read about what has worked and not worked for other women and feel supported that they are not alone.

Entertainment / Movies

Shrek: Warts by John Hopkins (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers) is a light-hearted behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Academy Award-winning movie and its sequel.  

The offbeat animated feature Shrek turned the traditional fairy tale on its ear and helped to usher in a new era in computer animation. From casts of zombies, traumatized puppets, and murderous teenagers to deal-making in Hollywood, Shrek is about following one's visions wherever they might lead. Shrek the movie, of course, features a big green ogre, his chatty sidekick Donkey, and the feisty Pricess Fiona. Shrek the book features behind-the-scenes information and trivia, and is filled with illustrations – concept art and character sketches, storyboards, character models, set and prop designs, and stills. Author John Hopkins joins the producers, directors, animators, writers, and production designers as they work through the painstaking process of inventing and animating an imaginary CG world from scratch. Hopkins, a Los Angeles-based screenwriter, even manages to eavesdrop on the movies' main characters – Shrek, Donkey, and Princess Fiona, as well as newcomers such as Puss In Boots and Fairy Godmother – as they recount, in their own words, the trials and tribulations of a major production, cast and crew gossip, and the scenes that were left on the cutting room floor.

Shrek is a feel-good, entertaining book that chronicles the adventures in making the two movies. The book weaves all of the off-kilter humor and clever pop-culture references of the films into an enjoyable read for all ages. Crammed with information and terrific illustrations, it has enough Shrek lore to satisfy even the die-hard fan.

Health, Mind & Body / Religion

Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence: Christian Churches and the Global AIDS Crisis by Donald E. Messer (Fortress Press) is aimed to awaken Christian compassion in the coming years to the tragedy of the AIDS crisis.

More than twenty years into the global AIDS pandemic, the efforts of Christian congregations and denominations have been less than minimal. The worst health crisis in the world in 700 years, global HIV/AIDS epidemic is overwhelming in scale: 40 million people are infected worldwide (75% of them in Africa ); 7000 people die daily; each day 1600 persons are infected. Some 26 million people have already died.

''At this unprecedented kairos moment in human history,'' says author Donald E. Messer, ''God is calling the church to a new mission and ministry.'' Drawing on his own involvement in global AIDS education in Asia , Latin America , and Africa , Messer uses stories, basic factual information, and theological insights to motivate lay and clerical Christians to assume leadership and form partnerships with Christians around the world. Just as individuals must change their behavior to prevent and eliminate AIDS, so must congregations and church leaders. Compassion, not condemnation, is desperately needed, says Messer, Henry White Warren Professor of Practical Theology and Director of the Center for Global Pastoral Ministries at Iliff School of Theology, Denver . Financial resources for education and prevention programs are also urgently required from churches. Messer shows how churches can partner with ecumenical organizations, relief agencies, volunteer mission programs, healthcare programs, and other agencies to engage global AIDS directly and effectively.

Chapter 1 introduces the nature of the global emergency the church faces. Chapter 2 invites Christians to break out of thinking in "we-they" categories and to imagine oneself as HIV-positive. Chapter 3 notes that certain human realities, partic­ularly related to sex, are difficult for Christians to acknowledge, much less accept or tolerate; yet, understanding is required to address the AIDS pandemic. Chapter 4 struggles with stigmatization and discrimination as sins contrary to the will of God. Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 cite specific challenges facing Christians who seek to pro­mote awareness, education, prevention, care, and treatment of per­sons living with HIV/AIDS. The final chapter outlines a vision of how Christians can respond to this global emergency and become partners in the ministry of hope and healing in the twenty-first century. An appendix and bibliography of helpful docu­ments conclude the volume.

A passionate and well-articulated call to mission, Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence demands answers to questions such as, why has the church failed to respond to the worst health crisis in 700 years? Similarly, why are Christians 'curiously silent and tragically apathetic' in the face of more than 7,000 deaths per day? ...

Messer's hard-hitting, plainspoken account will be the subject of study as men and women confront the truth that this is neither a 'liberal' nor a 'conservative' cause – rather it is a Christian cause. Their response in prayer, mission, service, and advocacy cannot come soon enough. – Rev. Robert Edgar, General Secretary, National Council of Churches of Christ

Health, Mind & Body

No More Knee Pain: A Woman's Guide to Natural Prevention and Relief by George J. Kessler, with Colleen Kapklein (Berkley Books) describes how women's hormones can affect their knees and provides a natural, pain-free 12-week plan for relief.

Knee pain affects millions of Americans – and women make up the bulk of sufferers. But while it is a woman's anatomy, physiology, hormones, and habits that will likely determine when and how her knee will fail, many doctors still treat a woman's knee like a smaller version of a man's knee.

No More Knee Pain presents the first knee program designed especially for women. Written by George J. Kessler, who has helped hundreds of women heal their pain and reverse degenerative problems, this is the definitive book on female knee pain. Focusing on the structural and hormonal issues that bring about knee problems in women, No More Knee Pain is a groundbreaking new approach that shows women how they can find relief without drugs or surgery.

Offering treatments for prevention and healing, Kessler, clinical instructor in medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and clinical assistant professor at the New York College of Osteopathic medicine; assisted by Colleen Kapklein, a writer specializing in health. Include in the book are information on:

• The anatomy of the knee

• How unbalanced hormones can take a toll on the joints and what to do about it

• What mainstream medicine offers women with knee pain and what it doesn't

• The importance of good posture

• Nutritional supplements

• What to eat to ease joint pain

• Exercise dos and dont’s

• Mind-body factors

• Alternative approaches

• Body mechanics, posture corrections, and knee exercises that really work – in just a few minutes a day

Filled with case studies, simple exercises and time-tested wisdom, No More Knee Pain provides readers the information they need to walk comfortably again.The book promises to have readers feeling stronger, healthier and in less pain within six weeks and pain-free in 12 weeks – if readers follow the regimen outlined.

 Health, Mind & Body

From Boys to Men: A Woman's Guide to the Health of Husbands, Partners, Sons, Fathers, and Brothers by Emily Senay & Rob Waters (Scribner)  The first book on the health of boys and men designed for women – the unsung heroes who make most families' health-care decisions – From Boys to Men dispels the notion that women are the weaker sex.

There is a shocking gap in health and longevity between males and females. From age fifty on, men are more likely to die from every leading cause of death than women; on average, men die 5.5 years earlier than women.

In one survey, researches found that one man in three had no regular doctor. One­-fourth of men said they would wait as long as possible before seeing a doctor if they felt sick, were in pain, or were worried about their health.

Women make three-quarters of the health care decisions for their families, according to the US Department of Labor. Women also do nearly 80 percent of the shopping in chain drugstores.

Women on the average can expect to make it to 79, while men can expect to live to 74. This picture is even graver for African American men who have a life expectancy of 68.

Perhaps the answer lies in social forces that teach men not to care for themselves, says author, physician, and CBS medical correspondent Emily Senay. Men's poor health is due in part to the fact that they are socialized to "tough it out" and "be a man," ignoring their own health and putting themselves at risk for accident and disease. Even in this modem age, when many women have demanding jobs outside of the home, they are still the appointed caregivers of their families. They take charge when family members get sick, push their husbands to go to the doctor, and urge them to kick unhealthy habits. Women do this not only because they love the men in their lives and are born with nurturing instincts, but also because no one else will do it and they don't want their husbands to die earlier than they should.

But they’ve never had a resource to help them understand and cope with the health issues of men and boys. Until now.

Through her own experiences and from viewer feedback, Senay realized that women are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of health information they must process when dealing with men's health issues and the challenges they face in overcoming male socialization. In From Boys to Men, she empowers women with the resources they need to make the best health care decisions and the tools to help men transition from being passive to active participants in the battle to better their own health.

Senay offers pragmatic information and anecdotes that follow males from conception through the arc of life. Mothers of sons will learn about the unique issues boys face as they grow, including:

• Health issues unique to baby boys
• The major health threats to boys – accidents and injuries
• Understanding the higher risk of learning disabilities, including AD/HD and other developmental problems
• Weight issues and body image
• Knowing how and when to discuss sexuality
• Helping teenagers take healthy risks
• Understanding the new world of sports, including pressure for early specialization.

Regarding the issues grown men face, Dr. Senay covers such topics as:

• Helping him change – how to work as partners to lose weight, improve diet, or quit smoking
• Helping him overcome denial, one of the biggest threats to men's health
• Solving bedroom problems
• Helping him lower cholesterol and blood pressure
• Recognizing and treating depression and stress
• Essential medical tests every man should have
• Snoring and the promise of rest

Mother, wife, daughter, and doctor Senay shares her readers' concern for the men in their lives – and provides the answers women have been waiting for. From Boys to Men is a call to action and a much-needed resource for concerned mothers, wives, and daughters. The book is written in a highly accessible style. Most areas are well covered, with the exception of guidance in helping the homosexual or bisexual son, brother, or husband.

Health, Mind & Body / Families

Home Doctor by Michael Peters, with a foreword by Adriane Fugh-Berman (A Dorling Kindsersley Book) is a practical guide to treating common complaints at home.

A holistic approach to health is increasingly popular among doctors and patients, and Home Doctor helps readers by providing all the information available to treat many common conditions at home. Practical and easy-to-use, it includes over 150 common symptoms, illnesses, and injuries, with advice on when readers can threat them safely and effectively and when to call a doctor. Written by Michael Peters, Consulting Medical Editor to the British Medical Association and a physician in private general practice, the book is divided into three sections:

1. Common Conditions: This section covers common conditions from fever to food poisoning, as well as conditions specific to men, women, and children. Articles provide clear, thorough descriptions of the conditions, detailed self-help advice, and traditional and nontraditional treatments.
2. First Aid: Photographs and step-by-step descriptions guide readers through procedures for treating minor first-aid situations and medical emergencies.
3. A-Z Drugs and Natural Remedies: Detailed information about over-the-counter medications, herbal remedies, and common household substances to help readers treat common conditions.

Home Doctor contains hundreds of practical tips and techniques for treating – and preventing – common symptoms and illnesses. Each condition is introduced with a short description, and circumstances under which one should consult a doctor immediately are conveniently placed first. For illnesses that can be safely treated at home, effective nonprescription treatments are recommended, as well as non-drug treatments such as peppermint oil for irritable bowel syndrome, feverfew to prevent migraines, and relaxation exercises for stress.The illustrations are a complement to the text and are helpful for demonstrating, for example, the technique for steam inhalation, how to stop a nosebleed, or how to get out of bed when one has back pain. The techniques for calming a baby with sleep problems or colic will be valuable to new parents. First aid is also covered, and a glossary of nonprescription treatments mentioned in the book is included.

Home Doctor is a useful home medical reference that contains a wealth of practical, easy-to-follow advice to turn to when any family member is sick or needs medical advice.

Health, Mind & Body / Self-Help

Winning Every Time: How to Use the Skills of a Lawyer in the Trials of Your Life by Lis Wiehl (Ballantine Books) Too often we argue our conclusions with­out the benefit of a premise, react from anger instead of presenting hard facts, feel defensive when sensing resistance, or fail to make calm, irrefutable counter­arguments. Explaining exactly what trial lawyers do and how they do it, Lis Wiehl explains how to use the skills of a lawyer in everyday situations – whether readers are trying to get a partner to take out the trash, the kids to do their homework, or the boss to come up with that raise.

"Access to the law means access to the law's techniques – the strategies of making your case," says Wiehl. "In Winning Every Time, I demystify the jargon of the law and explain the truth behind its complexities so that people can relate to the law and use it. The strategies that lawyers employ are ultimately empowering. They help us organize our logic, assess our audience, compose our passions, measure our arguments, and keep our focus on our genuine goals."

Drawing on years of trial experience, Wiehl, a prominent trial lawyer and a visible and highly regarded legal commentator and a tenured professor of law at the University of Washington 's School of Law , explains how to approach any situation calmly, rationally, and logically. Winning Every Time offers eight specific steps that are adaptable to all different kinds of advocacy,­ from articulating the point of the argument and gathering and presenting evidence to buttress it to rebutting counter-arguments and clinching a case with an effective closing argument:

• Know What You Want: The Theory of the Case – Outline the premise clearly and establish the objective accordingly.
• Choose and Evaluate Your Audience: Voir Dire – Bring the case to the person who "calls the shots" and know the perfect time and place to do so.
• Marshall Your Evidence: Discovery – Assemble all the facts that support the cause, even information that may challenge the objective.
• Advocate with Confidence: Making the Case – Present the opening argument and offer the evidence calmly and methodically.
• Counter the Claims: Cross-examination – Challenge the opponent's allegations consistently, but gently, through a series of "yes or no" questions.
• Stay True to Your Case: Avoid the Seven Deadly Spins – Keep the argument authentic by avoiding false inferences, hearsay, and subjectivity.
• Advocate with Heart: Let Me Tell You a Story – Shape the facts into a story with which people can connect emotionally.
• Sum It Up: The Closing Argument – Deliver a fervent and succinct summation of the theory and evidence ... and close the deal.

Winning Every Time emphasizes the stories of real people who have transformed their lives by following these eight steps. Says Wiehl, "The law, after all, is based on cases about real people and their stories. I am passionate about making the law approachable, understandable, and usable for ordinary people. My book gives readers the tools they need to handle life's challenges, debates, and controversies rationally, and to win at work, at home, as consumers, as partners, even as parents. Everyone who learns these simple steps will be well equipped to win the trials of their lives."  

This practical and very entertaining book isn't really about law at all, but about how to even the playing field – about how everyone else can use legal thinking to have that edge in life. – Dan Abrams, chief legal correspondent for NBC

Finally – there is something Conservatives and Liberals can agree on! Lis Wiehl's book will make you a winner! – Sean Hannity, Fox News Channel anchor, Hannity & Colmes

Don't give this book to your friends, colleagues, [or] loved ones. If you do, then they'll know the special techniques necessary to continually win arguments and convince you they're right. – Alan Colmes, Fox News Channel anchor, Hannity & Colmes

From my heart and head I love this book. It's fun, practical, and very real. With intelligence and humor, Lis Wiehl shows us how everyone can tackle life's challenges. – Rikki Klieman, legal analyst for Today, NBC-TV

Winning Every Time can guide readers with truly practical advice about how to make that case effectively – and win it hands down. Accessible, user-friendly, with result-oriented strategies, the book can help readers stay in command whenever life makes them feel as though they are on trial.

Health, Mind & Body / Aging

The Red Hat Society: Fun and Friendship After Fifty by Sue Ellen Cooper (Warner Books)  

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me

– from the poem Warning, by Jenny Joseph

Inspired by the poem, Sue Ellen Cooper, graphic designer and artist, bought herself a red hat. Soon it became her signature gift for friends turning 50. In 2000, Cooper and her posse formed the Red Hat Society, whose only rule is no rules – it was a play group encouraging woman over 50 to have fun, support each other, and find kindred spirits.

Why? Cooper believes middle-aged women have gotten used to going unnoticed. Her book The Red Hat Society describes how she is changing that. Believing that a woman's fiftieth birthday should be a time for celebration, not a milestone to be feared, when Cooper and her friends started going out to tea in full regalia (wearing a red hat and some purple is a must), the first chapter of the Red Hat Society was born. In just three years, the concept has spread like wildfire: there are now over three hun­dred thousand Red Hatters across the U.S.A., Canada, and around the world, adding an average of 40-50 new chapters EACH DAY.

Cooper explains: "We believe silliness is the comedy relief of life, and since we are all in it together, we might as well join red-gloved hands and go for the gusto together. Underneath the frivolity, we share a bond of affection, forged by common life experiences and a genuine enthusiasm for wherever life takes us next."

The Red Hat Society details the genesis of the Society and includes stories from members across the country. The book also discusses topics near and dear to Society members: marriage and children, grand-parenting, careers and retirement, aging, friendship, mothers and daughters, sisterhood in hard times, clothes, rituals, and how readers can start their own local chapters. And it talks about Pink Hatters – those who haven't quite hit that 50-year mark yet, but who want to become Red Hatters. They are allowed to join, but must don pink hats, and wear muted lavender shades until they "reduate" upon their 50th birthday and switch to full-fledged red hat regalia.

Red Hat Society members turn heads everywhere they go... The Society and their events have been profiled by The New York Times, Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, and other publications, and Cooper has been a guest on the Today Show.

If these middle-age revelers are over the hill, they're in denial. The Red Hatters get together monthly to be frivolous, have fun, and paint the town, well, red. – The New York Times
All across America, the high-spirited members of the Red Hat Society are banding together – and refusing to fade away ... the society celebrates the wisdom and freedom that comes with age. – Good Housekeeping

The Red Hat Society will be an essential item on every Red Hatter's wish list, and anyone who enjoys reading terrific stories, lessons learned, and wonderful friends will also snap up a copy. This is also the story of a cultural phenomenon and how one creative woman can come up with an elegantly simple, great idea.

History / Military / Vietnam

A Gift of Barbed Wire: America 's Allies Abandoned in South Vietnam by Robert S. McKelvey ( University of Washington Press) is a penetrating look at the lives of South Vietnamese officials and their families left behind in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975. A former Marine who served in Vietnam, Robert McKelvey went on to practice psychiatry and, through his work in refugee camps and U.S. social service organizations, met South Vietnamese men from all walks of life who had been imprisoned in re-education camps immediately after the war. McKelvey's interviews with these former political prisoners, their wives, and their children reveal the devastating, long-term impact of their incarceration.

From the early years in French colonial Vietnam through the Vietnam War, from postwar ordeals of re-education camps, social ostracism, and poverty, to escape or emigration to the United States , this collection of narratives provides broad and highly personal accounts of individuals and families evolving against the backdrop of war and vast social change.

Most of the people interviewed for the book eventually reached the United States , some by the desperate route of the boat people fleeing Vietnam in unsafe vessels, others, after rigorous screening, through U.S. Government-sponsored programs. But even in the safety of the United States they had to begin anew, devoting all their remaining energies to survival.

Despite the horrors portrayed, these are tales of courage and successful survival in the broader human tragedy of war and its aftermath. McKelvey's skills as an interviewer and his knowledge of the Vietnamese community, especially the survivors, and their willingness to trust him with stories, which they usually hold closely, make A Gift of Barbed Wire both persuasive and cogent. They are also reasons why not many people in the world could undertake such a project. – Charles Holzer, University of Texas Medical Branch

A Gift of Barbed Wire is the only study of Vietnamese re-education camp experiences that includes in some detail the family members of those who were incarcerated and the effects – economic, social, and psychological – that imprisonment had on the whole family. – James Freeman, author of Hearts of Sorrow: Vietnamese American Lives

While crediting the courage and resilience of these families, McKelvey, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, holds a critical mirror up to our culture, exploring the nature of our responsibility to our allies as well as the attitudes that obscured the reality of war as "a grinding, brutal interplay of complex forces that often develops a sustaining energy and momentum of its own, driving us in directions that we neither anticipated nor desired.” A Gift of Barbed Wire may be seen as a searing indictment of our culture.

History / Middle East / Israel

Raid on the Sun: Inside Israel's Secret Campaign that Denied Saddam the Bomb by Rodger Claire (Broadway Books) is the first authorized inside account of one of the most daring – and successful – military operations in recent history.  

You must be successful – or we as a people are doomed. This is a pivotal point in the history of Israel... – General Eitan, Chief of Staff, Israel Defense Forces, addressing the mission pilots

In 1981 a small group of Israeli pilots pulled off a daring military operations ever set in motion: the destruction of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. Though the mission defied all odds, the air raid was a stunning success that crippled Saddam Hussein's ability to obliterate neighboring Israel.

The surprise attack shocked the world and changed history. Not only was the reactor decimated but, miraculously, all eight pilots returned home safely. For more than two decades details of the attack along with the identities of the pilots remained classified until journalist and it all in Raid on the Sun, the true story of one of the most remarkable military operations of all time.
Written with the full cooperation of the Israeli Air Force high command, General Ivry (ret.), and all eight mission pilots (including Ilan Ramon, who become Israel’s first astronaut and perished in the shuttle Columbia disaster), Raid on the Sun tells the extraordinary story of how Israel, defying its U.S. and European allies, eliminated Iraq’s nuclear threat. In the tradition of Black Hawk Down, Claire re-creates the tale of personal sacrifice and survival, of young pilots who trained in the United States on the then-new F-16 fighter bombers, then faced a nearly insurmountable challenge: how to fly the 1,000-plus-kilometer mission to Baghdad and back on one tank of fuel. He recounts Israeli intelligence’s black ops to sabotage construction on the French reactor and eliminate Iraqi nuclear scientists, and he gives the reader a pilot’s-eye view of the action on June 7, 1981 , when the planes roared off a runway on the Sinai Peninsula .

Raid on the Sun is an extraordinary look into the most secret, and perhaps the finest, air force on the planet. It is also a blistering indictment of the international arms industry that sell modern weapons to anyone with money. Raid on the Sun is required reading for everyone in the age of terror. – Stephen Coonts, author of Flight of the Intruder
A stunning eye-opener, shocking you with the realization of the enormous service the Israeli Air Force rendered the free world with its 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear facility. Claire went right to the source – the Israeli pilots who flew the mission – to tell in colorful detail the full story of this historic strike. – Walter Boyne, author of Operation Iraqi Freedom: What Went Right, What Went Wrong and Why

Like a suspense novel, Raid on the Sun chronicles the gripping details, from the tense political climate of the period and Saddam Hussein's rise to power to the disorienting G-force effects the pilots endured as they rocketed up and away from Osirak's exploding dome. Filled with behind-the-scenes arms deals, international political games, near disastrous pilot error, and heroic sacrifice, Claire's account is an action-packed story of courage in the face of risk.

History / Canada

Victory in the St. Lawrence: The Unknown U-Boat War by James W. Essex (The Boston Mills Press) Except for the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor , those of us living in North America think of the Second World War as being fought far away. Few know that German U-boats prowled largely unchallenged up and down the St. Lawrence River , sinking unwary Canadian military and Allied merchant vessels in an attempt to stop the flow of goods, troops and armaments to war-ravaged Britain . Fewer still know that prior to the war, Hitler tried to purchase Anticosti Island , located at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, from a wealthy French chocolate-bar manufacturer.

Although much of the Second World War is well documented, missing chapters still surface even now, a half century later – stories of chilling events that might have changed the course of history. This is one of those stories, shocking in that it has not come to be widely known until now.

Victory in the St. Lawrence tells the riveting true story of how shortsighted government priorities and advanced German submarine technology allowed the Nazis to stalk shipping in Allied home waters. The book was written by James W. Essex who served with the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. Essex saw action in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters aboard the HMCS Prince Robert and the HMCS Uganda. His most exciting war duty, however, was spent patrolling the St. Lawrence River in 1942. Essex wanted to write this book for a long time, but was prevented from doing so by a fight with cancer which began shortly after the war. But in 1979 he brought together sailors, airmen and soldiers from across the U.S. and Canada to acknowledge those who were lost. He begins the book with a preface describing that event.

The book is filled with photographs from the war. It outlines the 28 ships torpedoed in the gulf, St. Lawrence River , and along Canada ’s costal waters between May 11th of 1942 and April 16th of 1945.

Victory in the St. Lawrence reveals how courageous, independent-minded Canadian heroes defended North America deep within its defenses.

History / United States

Yellowcake Towns: Uranium Mining Communities in the American West by Michael A. Amundson (Mining the American West Series: University of Colorado Press ) provides the first detailed analysis of the four mining and milling communities at the center of the twentieth-century uranium booms: Moab , Utah ; Grants, New Mexico ; Uravan , Colorado ; and Jeffrey City, Wyoming.  

In Yellowcake Towns Michael Amundson brings boom towns to life with stories of local boosters who hit on uranium as their key to economic growth. Although many boasted of new refineries that provided hundreds of jobs or "Atomic Motels&