October 2004, Issue #66

Guide to Current Issue

Anthropology, Nineteenth Century Art, Lost in Tibet, The American Worker, Management, Tourism and Transition, Leadership Within, Web Development, Wine, Education, Italian Country Recipes, The Perfect Cocktail, Economic Development, Mental Retardation, Teaching Language Arts, Van Morrison: A New Biography, Transcaucasus Republics, Sex Addiction, Children with Neuro-developmental Disabilities, Self-Help Happiness, Yoga for Awareness, Vietnam Helicopter Pilot's War, Election Crisis of 1800, World War II, Who Invented the Steamboat? Christie's Rock and Pop Memorabilia, How to Create a Waterwise, Drought-Tolerant Garden, Homes in the Country, Antique Glass, Gay Mystery: Biceps Of Death, Radio Theatre Audio Production of Anne of Green Gables, Eliza Haywood's Female Spectators, Death of a Relationship, Disease Detectives, Talking Heads Story Songs, Chief Inspector Barnaby, U.S. National Parks, Duck-Hunting Clubs in Louisiana, Religious Odyssey of Orestes A. Brownson, Politics, Ethics, and Religion, Arguing About War, Japanese Media High Jinks, Congressional Quarterly Guide to Current American Government, Pathological Gambling, Architectural Pattern Book for Neighborhoods, Horticulture, Architecture Today, Story and Emotion Woven Around Saved Objects, Classic Tarot Deck and Kit, Spirituality of the Sword, Stories of Immortality, Ouspensky's Shadow, A Pilgrimage Tale, Christian Ethics, Buddhism Speech of Delight, Masterworks of Technology, Crime and Delinquency, Life of an Extraordinary Aboriginal Woman, Narratives of Memory, Body, Media, Language, and Protest, Father Edward Malloy Travel Tales, New Perspectives on Masculinity

Anthropology

Resistance in an Amazonian Community by Lawrence Ziegler-Otero (Berghahn Books)

Like many other indigenous groups, the Huaorani of eastern Ecuador are facing many challenges as they attempt to confront the globalization of capitalism in the 21st century. In 1991, they formed a political organization, Organización de las Nacionalidades Indígenas de la Amazonia Ecuatoriana (ONHAE) as a direct response to the growing threat to Huaorani territory posed by oil exploitation, colonization, and other pressures. Lawrence Ziegler-Otero explores the structures and practices of the organization, as well as the contradictions created by the imposition of an alien and hierarchical organizational form on a traditionally egalitarian society.

In Resistance in an Amazonian Community Ziegler-Otero, who teaches in the Department of Anthropology at SUNY Plattsburgh in Philadelphia, after having had a first career as a trade union organizer in the United States, tells of his study conducted among the group. Ziegler-Otero approached ONHAW officers explaining to them exactly what he wished to study, offering bring the office a computer, on which he would train them. This gave him access to the day-to-day workings of the organization. He rented and furnished an apartment directly below the office of OPIP/Amazanga in Puyo, and made that apartment a place where Huaorani leaders or those visiting town could drop in or stay. He worked with the leadership of ONHAE in their office in Shell-Mera and accompanied them on frequent visits to Huaorani communities in the forest, as well as to Quito. This permitted him to work alongside the organization's activists on a daily basis. He spent regular business days working in the office, socialized with the leaders in the evening, and frequently hosted the leaders and their relatives in his home in Puyo. He participated directly in the planning of events, and observed the interactions of the leaders with rank-and-file Huaorani, oil company representatives, environmentalists, tourists, and others. He was the only outside observer at the annual assembly of the organization, and he helped to organize a conference, at the leaders' behest, to discuss the international environmental movement. At the end of his fieldwork he conducted life history interviews with current and former leaders of the organization, as well as leaders of other indigenous organizations who have worked closely (or attempted to work closely) with ONHAE. These interviews are quoted extensively throughout this work.

Resistance in an Amazonian Community begins Chapter 1 by providing some background information about the region in which the Huaorani live, including a synthesis of the available geographical, environmental, and historical information based on secondary ethnographic and other works, as well as some of his own observations. The effects of contact with "outsiders" are discussed. The Huaorani have experienced several distinct periods of contact, marked by very different consequences. The rubber boom, of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the beginnings of oil exploration from the 1930s and, most significantly, the penetration of North American evangelical missionaries from the 1960s are discussed. The book focuses on the ongoing penetration of Huaorani territory, examining the political, theological, and personal motivations of the missionaries.

Chapter 2 provides an account of the fieldwork with ONHAE, examining it in detail. The organization's history, its founding, and the struggles of its first years are described, including the flawed but ultimately successful fight for legal recognition of Huaorani territorial rights, and the history of agreements between the organization and the oil companies. The individuals who have led the organization are introduced, and the characteristics of the principals are described, along with the practices of the organization and the nature of its activities. Finally the organization is placed within the framework of the progressive movements and the other interested actors.

"Power" can come from a myriad of sources. An organization like ONHAE, which does not wield institutionalized power, or power supported by the threat of coercion, depends on the continued acknowledgment of its role and legitimacy both by the Huaorani people and by the non-Huaorani actors it confronts. Chapter 3 looks at the structures and practices that reproduce not just the organization qua institution, but its legitimacy and authority. By examining two events in detail – one involving the organization's internal relationship with the Huaorani people and the other rooted in the relations of ONHAE with the broader Ecuadorian society – it is possible to glimpse how the structures developed by the organization have permitted it to maintain its apparent legitimacy in representing the Huaorani people. There is an account of the Biye, or annual assembly, of ONHAE in 1996. The Biye, a gathering of Huaorani from all of the scattered communities, is the prime source of ONHAE's legitimacy within Huaorani society and the group's highest governing body. The chapter also examines the Huaorani participation in the annual 12 May parade in Puyo, where Huaorani representations of themselves are juxtaposed with the very different participation and behavior of the ONHAE leadership.

Chapter 4 looks at the goals, successes and failures of ONHAE and attempts to provide the beginnings of an evaluation of the organization’s work. The chapter reviews the stated goals of the organization over time, and examines the compromises that have been made. The relationships of power and persuasion that exist between ONHAE and the oil companies, missionaries, environmental movement, and the state are explored. These elements have generated new challenges to Huaorani culture and society, fostering changes in gender relations and roles, community identity, and pan-Huaorani consciousness, all of which have been reflected in the organization's actions.

Finally, Ziegler-Otero presents his conclusions about ONHAE and begins looking for ways in which the experience of ONHAE can provide practical lessons for future generations of Huaorani leaders, as well as other indigenous organizations. The central theses of Resistance in an Amazonian Community are revisited, and the relationship and importance of the study to anthropology and anthropological theory are discussed.

... a good book ... clearly written ... that raises a number of important general issues relevant to the contemporary political, cultural and economic struggles of indigenous peoples of the Amazon and elsewhere. – Terence Turner, Cornell University

This study has broad implications for those who work toward "cultural survival" or try to "save the rainforest." The author states that anthropology has a historic relationship with indigenous peoples and a responsibility to them, but the unanswered question implicit in this work remains: What is the most effective way for indigenous people to organize in the face of capitalist penetration? More broadly, how is it possible for the dispossessed of the periphery (indigenous or non) to claim rights and develop a voice against oppression? Resistance in an Amazonian Community offers a case study, not a solution to the question.

Arts & Photography

19th-Century Art, Revised and Updated Edition by Robert Rosenblum & H. W. Janson (Pearson Prentice Hall)

Since it was first published in 1984, 19th-Century Art has been influential in cementing the reputations of many painters and sculptors, and this new edition adds more artists to the pantheon. This revised and updated edition remains true to the original, with its magisterial survey of painting and sculpture presented in four historical parts, beginning in 1776 and ending with the dawn of the new century at the Paris Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) of 1900. The text, with the “Painting” section written by Robert Rosenblum and the “Sculpture” section by H. W. Janson, draws on the historical documentation of the period, tracing the dynamics of the making and viewing of art, and examining the reciprocal influences of art and technology, art and politics, art and literature, art and music.

19th-Century Art also explores for the first time the work of photographers, who themselves provoked new ways of looking at nineteenthcentury painting. Historical perspective is enhanced in this edition with a selection of sparkling critical and artistic responses to many of the key works of art since their creation, such as Gericault on the public response to his famous Raft of the Medusa, John Ruskin on Turner, and poet Baudelaire on the sculpture of the day.

Two decades have passed since the first publication of 19th-Century Art, and in that time, our knowledge of nineteenth-century art has made countless quantum leaps. For one, there is the often overwhelming quantity of new information that monographs and exhibition catalogues have brought us, a bounty that is reflected in this new edition's updated bibliography. But there is also the constant changing of viewpoints from which the nineteenth century can be seen. Many issues began to loom large. Feminists made us aware of the hundreds of nineteenth-century women artists who seemed to be buried forever but who deserved resurrection. And feminists also made us look differently at how women fitted into the various social structures implied by the roles they play in nineteenth-century paintings. For a century that witnessed one dehumanizing crisis after another – slavery, factory life, slums, famine, desperate migrations of workers – it also became necessary to come to grips with the ways in which artists confronted or concealed these painful truths. There were, comparably, new questions about the issues of nationalism and imperialism, which required a new reading of the way in which Western artists generated patriotic fervor or confronted the problem of depicting people and cultures remote from their own. And a waning of modernism's inherited hostility to academic art opened yet another huge vista, demanding reconsideration of hundreds of painters who had been thrown into the dustbin of history. Moreover, the welling interest in photography similarly fostered new ways of looking at those nineteenth-century painters whose hyper-realism had once disqualified them from the category of respectable art.

Revising and republishing a historical survey now twenty years old entailed, among other things, a reconsideration of how old- or new-fashioned the text would be today. The answer, of course, should be left to the readers, young or old; but author Rosenblum, at least, has his own strong opinions. As for the section on sculpture, written by the late H. W. Janson, this was, in fact, the first survey that approached the subject in a democratic way, rejecting the earlier twentieth-century's exclusive focus on an under-populated pantheon of great sculptors, from Canova to Rodin, and exploring a multitude of lesser figures from both sides of the Atlantic and from all parts of Europe. Inherited standards of what was boring, silly, or ugly in nineteenth-century sculpture were swept away in favor of fresh readings of this vast, unstudied body of work. Pointing forward, not backwards, the survey of sculpture in 19th-Century Art laid many of the foundations of books and exhibitions to come. It now stands as a pioneering work for charting new maps in the ongoing explorations of nineteenth-century sculpture, and this revision benefits from the inclusion of additional illustrations to accompany Janson's original text.

As for the section on painting, in retrospect, this also seems futureoriented, not only in its interpretations but in its selection of works. There are, for instance, far more works by women than had ever before appeared in a comparable survey; and the social roles of women in the nineteenth century, whether as ideal mothers, adulteresses, prostitutes, or mythical temptresses, were emphasized. Grinding poverty, class structures, social reforms were also viewed as essential to understanding the period, much as the rapidly changing image of the ruler, whether king, empress, or president, was seen in its role as mirroring political history. Academic art, vilified by almost all earlier surveys, was for the first time given its due, looked at with an eye to integrating it with the acknowledged masters of modern painting instead of using it as a foil for the avant-garde. And for the first time in an international survey, American painting was treated together with its European counterparts, and an African-American painter made his textbook debut. This reach for less familiar material also extended far beyond the conventional Franco-centric confines. Not only were European artists from countries as far afield as Portugal, Russia, Denmark, and Hungary part of this new United Nations of painters, but even artists from Canada, Mexico, and Australia appeared for the first time in a general history of nineteenth-century art. In short, in 1984 this survey was a path-breaker, pointing to many new directions that have become ever more relevant to the early twenty-first century.

According to Rosenblum, publishing this revised edition has provided the possibility of correcting not only the kind of error that gives authors sleepless nights, but of offering new information about many of the works discussed. Moreover, this updated edition has allowed him not only to add several paintings by artists whose reputations have soared since 1984 but also many illustrated references to the history of photography, from Nadar to Strindberg, which clarify both the range and variety of this new medium as well as the ways in which it may now be seen as an essential part of the history of nineteenth-century painting.

A book that broke new ground when it was first published, 19th-Century Art today reads with the same authority and scholarly verve as it has for the past twenty years. This new edition of 19th-Century Art continues to offer an open-minded guide to the endless possibilities of seeing and interpreting nineteenth-century art.

Biographies & Memoirs / Travel / Adventure

Lost in Tibet: The Untold Story of Five American Airmen, a Doomed Plane, and the Will to Survive by Richard Starks & Miriam Murcutt (The Lyons Press) is the story of a doomed mission, which sets five young Americans in a forbidden and hostile land.

November 1943. Caught in a violent storm and blown far off their intended course, five American airmen – flying the dangerous Himalayan supply route known as “The Hump” – were forced to bail out just seconds before their plane ran out of fuel. To their astonishment, they found they had landed in the heart of Tibet.
Miraculously, all five survived the jump. But their ordeal was just beginning.
Authors Miriam Murcutt and Richard Starks, extensive travelers, tell the story of their harrowing trek in Lost in Tibet. After crossing some of Tibet’s most treacherous mountains, the five airmen rode on borrowed mules into the fabled city of Lhasa. Their arrival was not a matter of choice; instead they were escorted to Lhasa by a suspicious Tibetan government, trapped in a tightening vise between China and the West.
The five were among the first Americans ever to enter the Forbidden City (two years before Heinrich Harrer, author of Seven Years in Tibet), and among the last to see it before the Chinese launched their invasion.
While in Tibet, the five Americans had to confront what, to them, seemed a bizarre – even alien – people. At the same time, they had to extricate themselves from the political turmoil that even then was raging around Tibet’s right to be independent from China.
To avert an international incident – and to assure their own safety – the five men were forced to leave Lhasa in a hurry. They set out, in the middle of winter, on a perilous journey across the Tibetan plateau – only to find themselves caught in a desperate race against time.

A well-rendered story, with pleny of twists. For fans of Into Thin Air and other tales in the man-vs.-the-elements vein. – Kirkus Reviews

This book will be fascinating to anyone even casually interested in the politics of my country. – Losang Gyatso, Tibetan artist and actor in Martin Scorsese film, Kundun

A gripping, detailed account of a time and place that most Americans have never glimpsed. – Joint Forces Journal

This book tells about an incident that has been hidden for too many years. It's a fascinating adventure that stands out from all the other war-time experiences I have heard about. – Charles Martin, former ''Hump" pilot and Lt. Col., Air Force Reserves (retired)

This is a 'must read' for all mountaineers and history butts alike – a true adventure in high and unexplored lands... – Amanda Daflos, director, special projects, International Mountain Explorers Connection

Lost in Tibet is an extraordinary story of high adventure, cultural conflict, and political intrigue. It also sheds light on the remarkable Tibetan people, just at that moment when they were coming to terms with a hostile outside world. Murcutt and Starks relate the story of these five young men’s unwitting embroilment in an international incident and their journey home, of interest to historians and adventurers alike.

Business & Investing / Social Sciences

The Mind At Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker by Mike Rose (Viking)

In the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed and Studs Terkel’s Working, The Mind At Work is a reassessment of American labor – the conclusion: American blue-collar workers are undervalued.

Testimonials to physical work have always celebrated the dignity, the economic and moral value, even the nobility of blue-collar labor, but rarely the thought required to get the job done right. The lightning-fast organization and mental calculations of the waitress; the complex spatial mathematics of the carpenter; the aesthetic and intellectual dexterity of the hair stylist – our failure to acknowledge or respect these qualities has undermined a large portion of America’s working population. In The Mind At Work award-winning writer Mike Rose, faculty member of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, sets the record straight by taking a long hard look at the intellectual demands of common work. His powerful and affecting descriptions and analyses of the skills required to perform many blue collar and service jobs will challenge popular beliefs about the nature of the common worker and change – for the better – the reader's everyday interactions with those who work in the service industries, the construction trades and on the factory floors.

In The Mind At Work, Rose touches upon hot-button issues – such as the narrowness of our traditional IQ tests – and urges the reader to define intelligence in broader terms. He argues that if we continue to think that whole categories of people – identified simply by class and occupation – are not that bright, then we reinforce social separations and render true democracy impossible. We will also shut down possibilities not only for growth on the job, but for the effective education of vocational students.

This is an eloquent – as well as scholarly – tribute to our working men and women ... It knocked me out. – Studs Terkel

Mike Rose shows how a reductive idea of intelligence contracts the meaning of democracy. This book is brilliant, exciting – and essential. – Michael Katz, author of The Undeserving Poor

Mike Rose startles us by suggesting that most of us have a narrow, cramped view of intelligence – one that doesn't permit us to see the ordinary kinds of work. His book is a refreshing re-examination of what traditionally is meant by intelligence. Conventional assumptions are overturned. and we begin to see that he is saying something profound about democracy. – Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

The Mind At Work raises basic questions about the way we define intelligence, determine what counts as valid knowledge, and classify each other by the work we do – all of which have important implications for economic and educational policy and for the kind of society we create for ourselves. Integrating personal stories of his own working-class family with interviews, vivid snapshots of people on the job, and current research in social science and cognitive psychology, Rose draws a brilliantly original portrait of America at work.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership / Training

Learning Paths: Increase Profits by Reducing the Time It Takes Employees to Get Up-to-Speed by Steve Rosenbaum & Jim Williams (Pfeiffer, copublished with ASTD)

Using this indispensable resource, readers can map out and implement the revolutionary Learning Path training approach for their organization – a method claimed to reduce the start-up time for new employees by 30% and to guarantee measurable bottom-line results.

Written by Steve Rosenbaum and Jimmy Williams, consultants and training and development leaders, Learning Paths is a down-to-earth practical resource that is filled with illustrative examples, methods, techniques, strategies, processes, and tools for making company-wide, real-time training possible. Created to be feasible, the Learning Path approach is customizable to fit all organizations no matter what type or size. Learning Paths is divided into three sections:

The Learning Path Methodology: Walks the reader through the major steps and strategies needed for building Learning Paths.
Doing the Right Training: Offers a wide-range of strategies, methods, and techniques that can be targeted to the training within a Learning Path and tied to an organization’s particular business need.
Doing the Training Right: Shows how to ensure the training within a Learning Path is delivered in the most cost-effective manner and introduces methods for structuring training so that it transfers to the job easily and effectively.

In addition, Learning Paths answers frequently asked questions and contains a CD-ROM that includes a PowerPoint presentation of the Learning Paths process and the forms and templates needed to help readers build and implement Learning Paths and implement a 30/30 Plan, the plan to reduce Time to Proficiency by 30 percent in thirty days.

Co-published by the American Society for Training and Development, Learning Paths is for human resources professionals as well as business leaders. The book is comprehensive and practical. The measurement piece is critical; the applications are unlimited; and there is a good blending of strategy and tactics.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership

Tools for Team Leadership: Delivering the X-Factor in Team eXcellence by Gregory Huszczo (Davies-Black Publishing) urges readers to be the X-factor in their organization's effort to build excellent teams.

Collective action – not individual heroism – is what makes teams effective and creates sustainable change in organizations. In this much anticipated follow-on to his best-seller Tools For Team Excellence, Gregory Huszczo unlocks the secret of what separates great teams built on collaboration and partnership from the also-rans. Tools for Team Leadership introduces the critical "X-factor" in team success – leadership – and delivers an advanced set of tools and strategies to help anyone master the role of team leader.

Huszczo, award-winning teacher and researcher, industrial/organizational psychologist, consultant and trainer, professor of organizational behavior and development at Eastern Michigan University, covers team building for both new and existing teams, with special help for team building at the top, and includes a self-study assessment at the end of each chapter to help turn key learning concepts into a plan of action. Huszczo asserts that if readers are willing to give up their desire for perfectionism and control while steadfastly adhering to a desire to make a difference, they will benefit. Grounded in the author's practical frontline experience with hundreds of teams and backed by solid research and instruments, including the powerful Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment, Tools for Team Leadership explores the essence of leadership in a team environment. It identifies the chief responsibilities of every team leader and delivers a toolbox for use in analyzing a team's strengths and weaknesses, creatively brainstorming strategies and tactics, generating options and facilitating consensus, and implementing action plans that help teams help themselves. Readers learn how to help a team establish a clear sense of direction, improve communications, ensure systematic problem solving and decision making, resolve dysfunctional conflicts, motivate and coach team players, build diplomatic ties in the organization, and help teams get unstuck.

The main theme of chapter 1 – that team leaders must help others help themselves – is carried throughout all subsequent chapters.

This self-study training guide puts the power of participative leadership into the hands of every manager, trainer, consultant, and team member struggling to help teams succeed. Packed with more than eighty new and field-tested tools, Tools for Team Leadership solves the mystery of why some teams – regardless of talent – succeed while others fail and delivers everything you need to master the "X-factor" skills of team leadership.

A great fit with Toyota Way principles of developing internal leaders, teaching employees to become problem solvers, and continuous inmprovement. This book will join Huszczo's Tools for Team Excellence in my practical tool kit. – Scott Fenton, Senior Specialist, HR & OD, Toyota

The tools Huszczo describes can lead to better job design and content, new learning, and new skill development. His book is a vision of more democratic workplace that is both enabling and innovative. – Michael Schippani, International Representative, United Auto Workers

Uses actual experiences that can be directly related to the needs of industry going to lean and team environments. A great resource. – Patrick McDonnell, Production Manager, La-Z-Boy Canada Ltd.

Tools for Team Leadership was written for both the person attempting to provide leadership to a single team within an organization and the leader overseeing the development of multiple teams within a larger organization. While the text is generally addressed to the former, the lessons are equally applicable to the latter. Filled with more than 80 tools – all-new and field-tested diagnostic questionnaires, needs assessments, organizational surveys, sample training modules, and exercises – this guide puts the power of participative team leadership into the hands of every manager, trainer, consultant, and member struggling to help teams succeed.

Business & Investing

Tourism and Transition: Political, Economic and Social Issues edited by Derek Hall (CABI Publishing) presents current research on the roles and importance of tourism. The book discusses tourism’s interrelationships with governance and development in societies that are moving or have moved from authoritarian to liberal democratic economic and political models, and those adjusting to the accession requirements of an enlarged European Union. Although the geographical coverage ranges across Central and Eastern Europe, the Central and Eastern Mediterranean, Central Asia, China and South Africa, the identification of common themes and frameworks is a distinguishing characteristic of Tourism and Transition.

In this volume, edited by Derek Hall, Scottish Agricultural College, Auchincruive, UK, the discussion of tourism and transition focuses on Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Estonia, Romania and Central and Eastern Europe more generally, Malta, Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean, Kyrgyzstan, China and South Africa. It is therefore far from being a geographically comprehensive review of tourism within transforming countries, however defined. Rather, it attempts to articulate key themes and frameworks which may help readers understand the contemporary and simultaneous local and global variables, both influencing and influenced by the processes and structures of tourism development in transforming societies, during the first decade of the 21st century.

Chapter one comprises the introduction, and Chapter 2 outlines key themes and frameworks. The range of chapters (3-8), based on contemporary post-communist experience in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, can be seen to reflect, in turn, optimism, pessimism and paradox, in terms of trends, relationships and impacts. Drawing on research and consultancy experience from Central and Eastern Europe, in Chapter 3, Lesley Roberts introduces themes subsequently echoed in a number of chapters, by highlighting the importance of social capital for rural areas where the highly localized nature of tourism is most evident. Emphasizing that the locality – including local people – provides the services produced and delivered and the experiences created, an endogenous base for development is viewed as being most likely to provide a sustainable means of regional rural development. But as indicated subsequently from Estonia (Chapter 6) and Kyrgyzstan (Chapter 8), there can be substantial problems and paradoxes attached to this.

Chapter 4 sees Waclaw Kotlinski drawing out themes of under-investment and declining tourist numbers in Poland. Crucially, he identifies a growing gap between income derived from tourism to support state budgets and actual national expenditure for tourism infrastructure and development, and offers recommendations for state action to stimulate tourism and enhance the recognition of its economic role within the country. This would seem to be particularly important given the boost to tourism Poland's EU entry is likely to stimulate. In Chapter 5, Zsuzsanna Behringer and Kornelia Kiss detail and evaluate the apparently rising level and nature of foreign direct investment in Hungary's tourism industry in a national context where international tourist arrival numbers have been declining since 1995, and where per capita spending is still relatively low. Such a paradox would appear, superficially, difficult to reconcile. To what extent will this be ameliorated or exacerbated by Hungary's accession to the European Union? In the face of the disastrous collapse of Serbia's tourism industry after 1989, Jovan Popesku and Derek Hall argue in Chapter 7 that coordinated sustainable development based on natural resources with planned, limited growth, represents the only reasonable forward strategy for the reconstruction of an international tourism industry in landlocked Serbia, where any likely EU membership is still some way off.

The chapter (6) by Barry Worthington raises interesting paradoxes concerning the endogamous-exogenous dimension when addressing relationships between national heritage and tourism in the context of post-Soviet Estonia. Within the Soviet Union, the Estonians' ‘minority’ culture was commodified for passive consumption, yet Estonians themselves regarded their heritage as dynamic and participatory, and employed it subversively to recreate a civil society as an alternative to Soviet institutions. However, according to Worthington's analysis, regaining independence in 1991 removed this imperative, and the harnessing of heritage for tourism remained perceived in pejorative terms especially as (Western) tour companies continued to echo Soviet practice in the depiction of Estonian heritage. How will Estonia's EU accession change this? In the case of a second former Soviet territory with contrasting cultural, economic and environmental characteristics, Peter Schofield argues in Chapter 8 that Kyrgyzstan's tourism product has been poorly positioned and the development and projection of an appropriate image is critically required to address this. Although cultural icons are available to assist in raising awareness of identity and distinctiveness, Schofield points to a lack of capital resources and political instability as continuing constraints on an adequate response to this need.

Turning to the Mediterranean basin, Maria Attard and Derek Hall evaluate some of the impacts of transition towards EU accession for Malta's tourism and transport sectors in Chapter 9. New brand images and marketing programs, coupled with an emphasis on high value niche development, have been outward signs of a restructuring of the Maltese tourism. While physical replacement of ancient public service buses – regarded as a heritage attraction and experience in their own right – is part of the accession agenda, potentially negative images are reflected in growing traffic congestion and pollution and the long overdue need for a comprehensive upgrading of transport infrastructure. The interplay of these factors is underscored by an uncertain and divisive domestic political context.

Division is certainly a salient theme for Habib Alipour and Hasan Kilic's appraisal of the context in which tourism in northern Cyprus has been developed since that island's political partition in 1974 (Chapter 10). The focus of the chapter is inadequate tourism governance, the reasons for which vary – governments often lack the will to implement policies, tourism plans may be narrowly defined and implemented without reference to wider development strategy or the state may be incapable of implementing policy due to inefficiency and/or corruption – although the expansion of tourism activity may trigger government action. In the case of the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, Alipour and Kilic offer a number of reasons why institutions overseeing tourism development have failed to address, define and formulate clear policy, which has resulted in an absence of integrated development. They point to the need to restructure institutions and to establish an appropriate legislative framework supported by confidence-building measures to attract investment and increase the perpetually low numbers of tourists. Such measures will reflect the significance of both internal and external factors. The path of EU accession for Cyprus and Turkey may prove to be a significant political and economic catalyst in this respect.

Global tourism experienced exceptional years in 2000 and 2001. In 2000 international tourism grew by 45 million arrivals, while in the following year international arrivals declined by 0.6%, the first year of negative growth since 1982. Of course, the events of 11 September 2001 greatly influenced the year's final figures, particularly adversely affecting American destinations and certain sectors such as the ocean cruise market. A year later, in October 2002, bombings at tourist attractions in Bali helped to sustain some negative trends. Providing a strong methodological emphasis, in Chapter 11 Antonis Theocharous argues the need for assessment, evaluation and analysis of the interrelationships between such destabilizing events and the tourism industry, in relation to four eastern Mediterranean destination countries. His neural networks application provides a useful approach to tourism demand modeling and a spur to further research in this little-explored field.

In a relatively short time China has become the unrivalled leader of Asian tourism. Themes of economic liberalization within a still relatively rigid state political-bureaucratic framework permeate the two chapters looking at Chinese experience. Rong Huang in Chapter 12 identifies and evaluates the roles played by the Hunan provincial government in developing its international and domestic tourism development policies. Placed within the wider context of China's tourism development phases, Huang foresees new roles for the provincial government to play and makes a number of recommendations for responding to the challenges facing the development of Hunan tourism as it draws further away from strategy based on a centrally planned economy.

Issues relating to the tensions between the local and the global, and endogenous and exogenous development factors, are emphasized in the chapter (13) by Takayoshi Yamamura, who looks at the World Heritage Site of the old town of Lijiang, in an ethnic minority area of Yunnan Province. Until the later 1970s, when tourism was severely restricted, handicrafts and traditions of ethnic minorities were largely suppressed. An open-door policy from 1978 increasingly involved foreign capital, and allowed a revival of ethnic minority religions and traditions which were portrayed to tourists as examples of the diversity of Chinese culture. Previous research has emphasized how ethnic groups may be differentially placed to take advantage of their newly-discovered tourism roles in response to the Chinese government's commoditizing such ethnicity. Following an earthquake in 1996 and since designation by UNESCO as a WHS in 1997, there has been a dramatic increase in tourism businesses in Lijiang, largely driven by an influx of Chinese Han majority peoples from outside of the region selling goods largely devoid of local character. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that the local Naxi people tend to lack business and management know-how and cannot draw upon government support policies. Yamamura argues that there would appear to be a need for policies to promote local entrepreneurial endeavor through support for indigenous organizations and networks to help stimulate high added value goods and services which can draw upon and illuminate local culture and heritage.

Finally, in relation to a country in transformation following its own particular restructuring processes of the 1990s, in Chapter 14 Jenny Briedenhann and Steve Butts argue that a tourism boom, projected by government as a panacea for the country's economic ills, has not materialized in South Africa. The country is by far the most important international tourism destination in the whole of Africa, receiving a fifth of the continent's arrivals and one quarter of its international tourism receipts. Yet, the absence of a national funding strategy for tourism development has resulted in unilateral action by provinces, with negative consequences for national development coherence, public-private partnerships and industry integration. Crucially, the authors contend that a coherent national organizational structure, with a clear delineation of functions and responsibilities, continuously monitored, is urgently required.

The issues, problems, paradoxes and opportunities presented in these chapters are diverse and pursued from different perspectives, yet they share common themes of tourism within processes of transformation. They also emphasize the important influences of, and the need for tourism analysts to better appreciate underlying political cultures, their inheritances and influences – both formal and informal – on social, economic and environmental transformation. Such transformation is a key influence on, and component of, contemporary local and global tourism trajectories.

Tourism and Transition will be of significant interest to those working in the areas of tourism, development studies, geography, sociology and economics, identifying common themes across Europe, Asia and Africa.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership / Self-help

The Leader Within: Learning Enough About Yourself to Lead Others by Drea Zigarmi, Ken Blanchard, Michael O'Connor, & Carl Edeburn (Financial Times, Prentice Hall) helps readers understand themselves better... so they can change, grow, and become more effective.

The action of thought is excited by the irritation of doubt, and ceases when belief is attained. – Charles Saunders Pierce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear (1878)

Authored by four renowned leadership experts, including the legendary Ken Blanchard (co-author of The One Minute Manager), and Drea Zigarmi, (co-author of Leadership and The One Minute Manager), The Leader Within draws on seven years of research centered around how successful executives exert influence. The book tells readers they can become the leaders they have always wanted to be. They can develop an understanding of how they behave at their key "moments of influence," reinvent their approach for better results and happier people, and build more effective teams and organizations, without compromising their values.

The Leader Within gives readers new models for understanding leadership itself – what it means, how it works, and what it's for. It helps them find a leadership approach that works for them, that fits their personality and values, and generates commitment and success. The book helps readers:

See how they really look to their colleagues and team members.
Understand why many leaders never improve and overcome the barriers to change.
Redefine their leadership behaviors around their followers' needs.
Analyze their leadership disposition so they can change what they can change, and build on what they can't change.
Understand the four leadership styles, and when to use each.
Define a vision that's strong and motivating.

I found this book not only an excellent, comprehensive guide on leadership, but it was also very thought provoking. Our world needs a breakthrough in the improvement of our leadership – the kind of leadership this book teaches and inspires. In the meantime, you can learn from this book and make your world better for yourself and those around you. – Tom Cleveland, President, H.O. Penn Machinery Company, Inc.

If you truly want to succeed at the highest level, you owe it to yourself and those around you to read this incredible insight on leadership. – Nicolas de Segonzac, CEO, Debtco, Inc.

If there’s any one message in The Leader Within that is most crucial, it is that self-change is the most urgent leadership challenge; that values, beliefs, and personality drive success or failure whether leaders realize it or not. The authors have written a must-read book for present and future leaders who are focused on serving their organizations and staff.

Computers & Internet / Web Development

The Complete Idiot's Guide To Creating A Web Page And Blog, 6th edition by Paul McFedries (Complete Idiot's Guide to Series: Alpha Books)

The Internet is home to millions of sites, representing both commerce and the people who share their thoughts and experiences with anyone who visits. And although professional designers earn big bucks creating and maintaining websites, anyone can stake a claim of their own on the net.

More people are overcoming their digital fears and producing Internet content rather than just absorbing it. Whether their product is a collection of essays, stories, reviews, jokes, or shopping lists, they want to share it with everyone – from family and friends to strangers across the globe. How do they do it?

The Complete Idiot's Guide To Creating A Web Page And Blog by Paul McFredries helps readers build and maintain an Internet website or blog. In this sixth revision, McFedries, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Microsoft Windows XP, and the proprietor of Word Spy, a blog devoted to recently coined words and phrases, covers:

Step-by-step instructions for building a site from the ground up
Important HTML tags
Tips on using fonts, colors, and images
Incorporating tables, forms, style sheets, and JavaScripts
The new blog technology
Tips on how to choose the best web host or blogging platform.

A "Webmaster’s Toolkit" on a companion CD-ROM, provides the files used in the book. Other features include search features, chat rooms, or bulletin boards, forms for visitor feedback, posting pictures as hypertext links, animation, video, and audio.

The Complete Idiot's Guide To Creating A Web Page And Blog, is one of the few books around to help readers by translating HTML into a language they can understand and showing them how to start their own blog.

Cooking, Food & Wine

Planet Wine: A Grape by Grape Visual Guide to the Contemporary Wine World by Stuart Pigott (Mitchell Beazley)

Internationally renowned wine writer Stuart Pigott presents an original approach to understanding the new global diversity of wine – in Planet Wine readers learn about the world's top grape varieties by following a series of stories that are told through a selection of iconic images.

For hundreds of years, winemakers around the world have experimented with different grape varieties to create a vast range of styles, tastes, and textures in their wines. In recent years there has been nothing less than a global revolution in wine, and the world has experienced an explosion in the range of wines available. Today, this diversity has become even richer and more complex.

One of the major reasons for this growth lies in the humble grape. From Syrah to Sauvignon Blanc to Cabernet Sauvignon, Pigott offers a grape-by-grape tour. He explores the origins and natural flavor of the principal varieties and examines the role of the winemaker, the effect of winemaking techniques, and the impact of environmental factors on the taste and development of wines around the world. What emerges is an accessible explanation of why, for example, a single grape variety can make a soft, fruity wine in one wine-producing region and a robust, age-worthy wine in another. Each grape is described giving details of its origin and natural flavor. There is also information about external influences including where it is grown, the intervention of the winemaker, winemaking techniques, and environmental issues.

Piggott has traveled extensively in the world's wine regions. Born in London, he wandered into wine writing while studying painting at St. Martins School of Art and Cultural History. After tiring of the convention-ridden London wine scene, he left for Germany and settled in Berlin where he developed a new style of wine writing. Now a household name there, he writes a weekly column in the Sunday issue of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. He also contributes to Der Feinschmecker/WeinGourmet, Decanter (UK), and WINE (Australia).

In Planet Wine Pigott introduces his unique concept for understanding the incredible, new global diversity of wines. Using over 140 photographs, Planet Wine takes a visually evocative approach to describe how the major grape varieties taste – from Chardonnay to Merlot to Sangiovese. The book combines a provocative text with evocative images to describe the taste of the major grape varieties and to explain how and why each variety produces very distinct styles of wine depending on where in the world it grows. This radical, easy-to-read guide is the first chance for English readers to experience Pigott's outrageously original take on the pleasure of wine.

Education

Teaching and Learning through Inquiry: A Guidebook for Institutions and Instructors edited by Virginia S. Lee (Stylus Publishing, LLC)

Inquiry-guided learning (IGL) refers to an array of classroom practices that promote student learning through guided and increasingly independent investigation of complex questions and problems. Rather than teaching the results of others' investigations, which students learn passively, instructors assist students in mastering and learning through the process of active investigation itself. IGL develops critical thinking, independent inquiry students' responsibility for their own learning and intellectual growth and maturity.

North Carolina State University is at the forefront of the development of IGL both at the course level and as part of a faculty-led process of reform of undergraduate education.

Teaching and Learning through Inquiry, edited by Virginia S. Lee, the then Associate Director of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, North Carolina State University, documents and explores NCSU's IGL initiative from a variety of perspectives: how faculty arrived at their current understanding of inquiry-guided learning and how they have interpreted it at various levels – the individual course, the major, the college, the university-wide program, and the undergraduate curriculum as a whole. The contributors show how IGL has been dovetailed with efforts and programs, and how they have assessed its impact.

Teaching and Learning through Inquiry provides examples from disciplines as varied as ecology, engineering, foreign language learning, history, music, microbiology, physics and psychology. It also outlines the potential for even broader dissemination of inquiry-guided learning in the undergraduate curriculum as a whole, describing two IGL programs for first year students and the ways in which NCSI 's university-wide writing and speaking program, and growing service learning program, support inquiry-guided learning. The book documents how the institution has supported instructors as well as the methods used to assess the impact of inquiry-guided learning on students, faculty, and the institution as a whole.

Virginia Lee hits the mark with her book on inquiry based learning. Most books addressing pedagogical practices are either too theoretical or so practically oriented that they lack a theoretical grounding. Lee combines both in a way that is attractive to any reader. She moves us from the theoretical to the practical in thirteen different classroom situations across just as many disciplines. The reader can easily find his/her discipline among the chapters in this section. The final portion of the book brings the reader full circle when Lee addresses inquiry based learning in relation to critical thinking, writing, service learning, faculty development and assessment. – Devorah A. Lieberman, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Wagner College

Teaching and Learning through Inquiry was written with three audiences in mind: instructors who want to use inquiry-guided learning in their classrooms, faculty developers considering supporting comparable efforts on their campuses, and administrators interested in managing similar undergraduate reform efforts. It will also appeal to instructors of courses in the administration of higher education who are looking for relevant case studies of reform.

Cooking, Food & Wine

Trattoria: Italian Country Recipes for Home Cooks by Maxine Clark, with photography by Martin Brigdale (Ryland Peters & Small)

Traditional trattoria cooking is the essence of Italian food – honest, fresh, and satisfying dishes prepared by chefs who have great cooking in their blood. It's not expensive, it's not complicated, and it never goes out of fashion. In Trattoria, chef-teacher Maxine Clark has collected delicious trattoria recipes from all over Italy and adapted them for home kitchens:

Antipasti include a Parma Ham with Figs, as well as three ways with marinated vegetables.
Primi Piatti recipes include deliciously simple soups, pasta, risotto, gnocchi, pizza, and bread.
Secondi Piatti include Grilled Tuna with Peperonata, Marinated Chicken Grilled over Charcoal, and Beef on a Bed of Arugula.
Contorni include Roasted Tomatoes with Garlic, fennel simmered in olive oil, and Grilled Dark Mushrooms.
Sweet Things include Zabaglione, gelato and sorbet, frozen chocolate profiteroles, and more. Drinks include Negroni and Limoncello.
Trattoria Basics include Pesto, Tomato Sauce, and dough for tarts and pasta.

Clark, a leading food writer and a gifted cooking teacher for well-known schools such as Leith's in London and Alastair Little's "Tasting Places" in Sicily and Tuscany, with the help of Martin Brigdale, food photographer for twenty years, describes more than great food – this is a beautiful and practical book that will help readers create classic Italian small family restaurant fair in their own kitchens.

Cooking, Food & Wine

Michael Jackson's Bar And Cocktail Companion: The Connoisseur’s Handbook by Michael Jackson (Running Press)

The perfect drink is never far away with Michael Jackson's Bar And Cocktail Companion written by the world-renowned authority on spirits, Michael Jackson. Jackson's award-winning drink books have sold more than 3 million copies and have established him as the world's foremost expert on beer and whisky. Jackson is a five-time winner of the Glenfiddich Award. His Discovery Channel series has been shown on television in more than two dozen countries, and his articles have appeared in Esquire, GQ, Playboy, The Washington Post, Wine Spectator, and other leading publications throughout the world.

Jackson provides recipes for more than 250 cocktails, from the Aberdeen Angus to the Zombie, from the perfect Manhattan to the classic Pina Colada. Jackson describes the content, origin, and character of each drink and its ingredients, as well as the best way to serve it.

In the chapter, The A - Z of Drinks, Jackson covers major types of spirits as well as many lesser-known drinks. From Acquavite to Drambuie to Lillet, Jackson describes the origins and character of each drink, laced intermittently with his own humor, along with its ingredients and the best way to serve it. The chapter, Cocktails and Other Mixed Drinks, offers recipes for such delicious refreshments as the Acapulco, Bullshot, Daiquiri, El Presidente, Flying Scotsman, Ginger Highball, Mai-Tai, Moscow Mule, Pisco Punch, Road Runner, and The Stinger.

Other chapters include: Travel and Drink, that features different regions of the world and their most popular native drinks; and Serving Drinks which includes a list of useful glasses. Another essential chapter titled, The Hangover: How to Cure It, offers 11 tips to avoiding and dealing with the miserable hangover – such as drinking a glass of milk beforehand to a good supply of Vitamin C to help the liver detoxify the blood. Jackson also offers a long list of suggested further reading on drinks.

Jackson provides in Michael Jackson's Bar And Cocktail Companion the quintessential, handy guidebook with an extensive list of the world's greatest drinks, accompanied by color photos throughout. With complete descriptions of bartending equipment and its uses, it's the bar-side companion every cocktail aficionado needs.

Economics / Policy Studies / International Relations

Catching Up: The Limits Of Rapid Economic Development by Vladislav L. Inozemtsev (Transaction Publishers)

Disparities between the economic development of nations have widened throughout the twentieth century, and they show no sign of closing. In the nineteenth century, the economic potential of developed countries was three times that of the rest of the world. Today the gap is twenty times greater. And the trend is increasing.

Vladislav L. Inozemtsev, professor of economics at Moscow State University and director of the Moscow-based Centre for Post-Industrial Research, reviews the experience of the Soviet Union, as well as that of Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. He finds that those countries that have moved forward most rapidly have successfully adapted new technology to old processes. But even then, they face daunting odds, as they grapple with the need to change their population's ideas and behavior. And in the 1990s, their rates of development have noticeably declined. Catching Up assesses prospects for successful application of theories of accelerated development in the global economy. Inozemtsev's pessimistic conclusion is that rapid industrial progress is not achievable in the information society of the twenty-first century. He reaches this conclusion after reviewing theories of accelerated development thinking from the diverse viewpoints of the 1940s and 1950s, to the more intensive ideological polarization of the 1960s. Inozemtsev believes it will be impossible for non-Western nations to "catch up" with the West because of their inability to generate or control information and knowledge. Catching Up also says that the successes of the "catching up" development model are confined to the limits of the system of industrial production.

Inozemtsev sets the stage within the context of the new world economic order taking shape in the world today. By opting for the evolutionary way of development, the United States and the European Union countries have guaranteed their people a high standard of living, which prepared them for accepting post-materialistic values. Although they have largely lost their mobilizing capacity, these nations have proved equal to producing, on an ever larger scale, new knowledge and new technologies – the basic production asset of the twenty-first century. Other countries' attempts at accelerated modernization have, indeed, led to a rise in their industrial potential but failed to produce a sustainable socio-economic system. These countries continue to depend on the Western world as a source of knowledge and as a market for their products, and decades of importing new technologies have not led to scientific breakthroughs of their own. The above cannot but suggest the conclusion that it is impossible to "catch up with" post-industrial nations by industrial methods, while mobilization-based construction of material requisites sufficient for launching post-industrial transformation causes mutations of the public mind which take more time to rectify than promoting economic progress does. In the context of the present-day reality, the nations not belonging to post-industrial civilization at the moment may expect elements of the post-industrial system to crystallize out in their social order only given the immediate involvement of the leader nations in the process, the eastern lands of reunified Germany being the case in point.

This conclusion will hardly go down well with those who would like to see Russia the leader of world progress in the coming century. In Catching Up, therefore, Inozemtsev provides a rational explanation of why the "catching up" development doctrine – which, in various forms, has become one of the outgoing century's most popular social theories – no longer makes scientific and practical sense as we are approaching a new landmark in human history and ought, therefore, to be abandoned by Russia and the world at large.

Inozemtsev provides an intriguing look at the prospects for development in the industrializing countries.... Some of Inozemtsev's ideas will be controversial, to say the least, but he succeeds in raising interesting questions concerning why development is uneven and, in some cases. apparently unsustainable. Recommended. – Choice

In Catching Up, a provocative and thoughtful reexamination of theories of accelerated development, or "catching up," Inozemtsev traces the evolution of thinking about how countries lagging behind can most swiftly move forward, and assesses their prospects for success in this effort. While pessimistic and certainly not popular, this well reasoned discussion, by a noted Russian professor of economics, is important reading.

Education

Mental Retardation: Historical Perspectives: Current Practices, and Future Directions by Ronald L Taylor, Michael Brady & Stephen B Richards (Pearson Allyn & Bacon) provides thorough coverage of the causes and characteristics of mental retardation as well as detailed discussion of the validated instructional approaches in the field today.

Mental Retardation is an up-to-date introductory textbook. As they imply in the name of the book, authors Ronald L Taylor, Michael Brady, and Stephen B Richards have attempted to provide a comprehensive treatment of information related to individuals with mental retardation. Taylor and Richards, both from Florida Atlantic University, and Brady, University of Dayton, strongly believe that in order to understand all the issues related to the field of mental retardation, there must be appreciation of its rich history, knowledge of research-based information related to current practices, and informed predictions of future trends.

Mental Retardation is divided into five parts, each covering an important aspect of the field of mental retardation. Part 1, "Introduction to Mental Retardation," consists of three chapters. Chapter 1, "Historical Concepts and Perspectives," chronicles the history of mental retardation, from ancient times to the present. It focuses on changing philosophies, attitudes, and approaches to the treatment of individuals with mental retardation. Chapter 2, "Definition and Classification of Mental Retardation," looks at the evolution of the terminology, definitions, and classification systems used for individuals with mental retardation. Emphasis is placed on the various definitions and classification systems proposed by the American Association on Mental Retardation. Chapter 3, "Assessment for Identification," investigates the procedures used in the identification and diagnosis of mental retardation, including information on both intelligence testing and adaptive behavior assessment.

Part II, "Causes of Mental Retardation," includes two chapters. Chapter 4, "Genetic and Chromosomal Factors," focuses on the medical aspects that cause mental retardation. Although these causes represent a relatively small percentage of those individuals who have the condition, they are important to study because many are preventable or treatable. Chapter 5, "Environmental and Psychosocial Causes," identifies prenatal, peri-natal, and postnatal factors that cause mental retardation. Also included is a discussion of environmental correlates to mental retardation – factors that do not necessarily cause mental retardation but are highly associated with it.

There are three chapters in Part III, "Characteristics of Mental Retardation." Chapter 6, "Cognitive and Learning Characteristics," includes areas such as attention, language, meta-cognition, and memory. Chapter 7, "Educational, Psychological, and Behavioral Characteristics," focuses on skill deficits related to an individual's school performance as well as characteristics such as learned helplessness and poor interpersonal relationships that can affect overall functioning. Chapter 8, the last chapter in Part III, is called "Societal, Family, and Multicultural Characteristics." Too often the influence of an individual's environment is overlooked. This chapter provides an ecological approach to understanding the characteristics of individuals with mental retardation within an environmental context.

Part IV, "Instructional Considerations," consists of four chapters. Chapter 9, "Instructional Assessment," discusses primarily informal techniques that teachers can use to help develop instructional programs, make instructional decisions, and monitor progress. In addition, instruments used to measure important skills such as independent living, community living, and vocations are discussed. Chapter 10, "Instructional Content," includes information on content that all students need to know and information related to what individuals with mental retardation need to be taught. Principles for deciding appropriate instructional content are also discussed. Chapter 11, "Instructional Procedures," focuses on the various instructional techniques that have proved to be successful in teaching individuals with mental retardation. It highlights the guidance, organization, and delivery of instructional programs. Chapter 12, "Instructional Settings," looks at the very important issue of educational placement and the most appropriate educational environment to maximize learning. Also included is information on accommodating instruction that makes the instructional setting relevant.

The last part, "The Future of Mental Retardation," includes a chapter called "Future Perspectives." This comprehensive chapter includes information related to philosophical issues, legal issues, medical issues, and educational issues. Included in this chapter are interviews with experts in the field who share their perspectives on these important issues.

The book is filled with pedagogical features too numerous to list here. The E-Source list offers an annotated description of Web sites appropriate for the chapter's content. To further assist students and instructors, Mental Retardation has an accompanying companion Website for student use. This Web site serves as a study guide for students and includes overviews, activities, sample test items, and Web links. Also available is an Instructor's Manual that includes detailed chapter outlines, chapter objectives, activities, additional readings, and a test bank of almost 400 test items.

This will prove helpful to students who are training to be teachers as it will give them something concrete and meaningful to which to attach their own learning ... very useful is the bridge that is drawn between educational theory and the field of mental retardation. – Professor E. Amanda Boutot, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

It is clear, accurate, and presents the major issues in the field of mental retardation. They present current and historical events that make this book interesting and fresh. – Professor Harold C. Griffin, East Carolina University

Several features in Mental Retardation will be especially valuable to both students and instructors – one is the "Research That Made a Difference" feature throughout the text, which provide students with valuable insight into research-based practices that have had an impact on the field. Another is the unique Chapter 13, "Future Perspectives," which presents interviews with leading experts and with a young woman with mental retardation, exploring the legal, medical, educational, and personal issues people with mental retardation face. And Chapters 9 through 12 present the strongest coverage available in any introductory text on instructional issues and applications for teaching students with mental retardation.

Education

Teaching Language Arts: A Student- and Response-Centered Classroom (with Student Activities Planner) (5th Edition) by Carole Cox (Pearson Allyn & Bacon) is a popular text, honed and enhanced again, noteworthy for its focus on assessment, with heavy emphasis on second language learners.

Teaching Language Arts, Fifth Edition, is designed for use as a main text in undergraduate and graduate language arts methods courses. Like previous editions, this new one takes a consistent student- and response-centered approach to literature-based teaching in today's culturally and linguistically diverse classroom. Written by Carole Cox, field-based language arts methods courses teacher at California State University, Long Beach, where she won the Outstanding Professor Award in 2001, the book is firmly grounded in current social constructivist learning theory.

What continues to make this book a bestseller?

Heavy emphasis on English language learners (ELL) throughout:
- A full chapter on First- and Second-Language Development (Chapter 3).
- A full chapter on Emergent Literacy and Biliteracy (Chapter 4).
- Snapshots of real teachers in real classrooms with real students, many of whom are ELL. Some are illustrated with video clips online.
- ELL and Scaffolding marginal notes contain content-specific guidelines and resources for ELL students and others who need additional support.
- New Supporting boxes provide specific ideas for supporting the learning of ELL, students, struggling readers and writers, students with disabilities, and students who speak a nonstandard dialect of English.
Strong coverage of assessment:
- A new Chapter 2, Assessing Language Arts.
- New and updated Assessment Toolboxes.

This fifth edition of Teaching Language Arts has been substantially reorganized and updated to reflect current issues and developments in teaching language arts. It is divided into five parts.

Part I, Constructing a Classroom Foundation, contains Chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 1, Learning and Teaching Language Arts, begins by defining the language arts and identifying their role in integrating subjects across the curriculum. The Standards for the English Language Arts, written jointly by the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), are introduced here, and then referenced throughout the text. Chapter 1 also introduces the three theoretical perspectives that underlie the book’s approach – that learning language arts is an active, constructive process; a social interactive process; and a transactional process. The foundational elements of teaching language arts are also presented, including the nature of a student- and response-centered classroom, the sources available for planning curriculum content, the structure of the classroom environment, and approaches to scheduling and grouping.

New to this edition, Chapter 2, Assessing Language Arts, presents assessment in the context of the social constructivist theory of learning and recommends the authentic assessment of language and literacy on a day-to-day basis. Many types of assessment are discussed, and numerous examples of forms and checklists are provided as Assessment Toolboxes; a number of these tools are intended for use with English language learners. Chapter 2 also examines the current national debate about the use of standardized tests in so-called highstakes testing, as mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act.

Part II, Spoken Language and Emergent Literacy, includes Chapters 3 through 5. Chapters 3 and 4 have been extensively revised to consider the increasingly diverse nature of today's classroom. Chapter 3, First- and Second-Language Development, explains how learning a second language is both similar to and different from learning a first language. Strategies are offered for creating a suitable context for the instruction of students who are English language learners (ELL). Chapter 4, Emergent Literacy and Biliteracy, considers how views of children's developing literacy have changed over the years and how teachers can support the emergent literacy of both English-speaking and ELL students. Readers experience the teacher's role directly when they visit both a kindergarten and a first-grade classroom in which every child comes to school speaking only English and a bilingual kindergarten classroom in which students are learning to speak and write in both English and Spanish.

Chapter 5, Listening and Talking, looks at what can be considered the neglected and the suppressed language arts, respectively. Strategies are provided for teaching oral language, and special guidelines are provided for adapting these strategies for ELL students. Drama is now introduced in this chapter, as well. Dramatic activities provide countless ways to teach listening and talking and to develop literacy. The chapter ends with a discussion of the special concerns in assessing students' oral language skills.

Chapters 6 through 8 make up Part III, Literature and Reading. Chapter 6, Reading, identifies theoretical models that have been proposed to describe how meaning is constructed during reading and then focuses on what is called a balanced approach to teaching: one that includes phonemic awareness, phonics, direct instruction in reading, methods for using literature and writing, and specific suggestions for struggling readers and writers. Shared reading, guided reading, reading workshop, and writing to read are among the methods recommended in this approach. The ongoing controversy about phonics instruction is examined in a section on word study.

The use of children's literature is considered in detail in Chapter 7, Teaching with Literature. Basic theory is presented about how readers make meaning from their experiences with text and the range of responses, or stances, they may have. Guidelines for choosing children's books are provided along with strategies for teaching with literature. These concepts are extended in Chapter 8, Multicultural Education and Children's Books, which has been extensively revised for this edition. The chapter begins with a detailed discussion of current models of culturally sensitive teaching and how multicultural content can be integrated across the curriculum. The use of multicultural children's books is recommended for these purposes – in particular, the use of literature circles and literature focus units. Chapter 8 is rich with support materials, such as lists of quality multicultural children's literature and ideas for author, genre, and core book units.

Part IV, Written Language, includes Chapters 9 through 11. Chapter 9, The Writing Process, presents writing not as a product but as a recursive process, one that involves multiple starts. Writing workshop is discussed as both a collaborative and an individual approach to writing, in which students consult one another and the teacher to rethink, revise, and edit their work. Students write for real purposes and for real audiences, and writing conventions and skills are taught and assessed against this backdrop. The needs of students with cultural and language differences are considered in detail.

The conventions involved in written language are discussed in Chapters 10 and 11. Chapter 10, Spelling, opens with an explanation of the stages of spelling development and then uses these stages as a basis for assessing and teaching children of different developmental levels. The teaching strategies that are recommended all present spelling in the context of using language for meaningful purposes, not as an isolated skill. A similar approach is recommended in Chapter 11, Grammar, Punctuation, and Handwriting – that grammar and other language conventions should be taught and assessed as part of the writing process, especially the editing and revising stages. Writing workshop is revisited and other approaches are introduced, such as mini-lessons, teacher conferences, peer editing, and self-editing. Children's literature is presented as an excellent resource for teaching about the style, structure, and conventions of written language.

Chapters 12 through 14 comprise Part V, Integrated Teaching. Also new to this edition, Chapter 12, Viewing and Visually Representing, focuses on the two newest language arts in the IRA/NCTE standards. Viewing and visually representing have always been essential to teaching language arts across the curriculum, and media literacy has never been more important than in today's world of mass-mediated communication. This chapter provides strategies and examples across a range of experiences in viewing and visually representing, from film, video, and television to the visual and dramatic arts.

Chapter 13, Technology in the Classroom, begins with a discussion of the role of technology in the classroom and specifically in the language arts classroom. Technology is presented not as an end in itself but as another means by which teachers can help children learn. The writing process and writing workshop are both reconsidered in this chapter in a discussion of word processing. Other projects and activities include electronic messaging, Internet research, and hypermedia and multimedia projects.

Chapter 14, Language across the Curriculum, draws on the information provided in previous chapters to demonstrate how the language arts can be used to integrate teaching in the content areas. Thematic teaching, sometimes defined using terms such as units and cycles, has long been used for the purpose of integrating the various content areas. In fact, numerous examples of thematic teaching can be found throughout this text. Literary and informational texts are recommended not only for reading but also as models of writing. This chapter provides a wealth of support materials, including lists of literary and informational texts and numerous examples of student-created materials.

There are a number of special features. New to this edition, video clips and related materials on the Companion Website for the text are integrated throughout.

Chapter-opening questions raise basic issues about the chapter topic. Following these questions, readers are asked to write a Reflective Response, drawing on their own experiences and ideas in this area. Chapter-ending answers go back to the same questions, providing summaries of chapter content.

Looking Further, another end-of-chapter feature, suggests opportunities for exploring chapter content more deeply: discussion questions, group activities focused on understanding how language is used, suggestions for observing and interacting with children, and ideas for participation and teaching applications to try out in the classroom.

The section of Children's Books, Films, and Software found at the end of each chapter identifies publication information for the children's literature and other resources discussed in text. These resources are all included in a special Index of Children's Books, Films, and Software, found at the end of the book. All professional source materials have been compiled at the end of the book in the References section. Both the children's and professional resources have been substantially updated for this edition.

Visuals richly illustrate the book, showing samples of children's drawing and writing and photos of teachers and children actually discussed in the text. Many are new to this fifth edition.

Supplements include a companion resource to this textbook, Schoolyear Activities Planner provided free with every student text and a Companion Website for the text.

This text is also accompanied by an Instructor's Manual with additional resources for professors using the fifth edition of Teaching Language Arts.

The style with which this book is written distinguishes it from others in the field. In addition, the resources it offers make it more practical and less theoretical than other texts in the field. – Alicia Mendoza, Florida International University

As I read through Cox's text, I found it to be readable and quite comprehensive. It is clear that the author really knows what she is talking about. Excellent examples are given throughout the book, with actual excerpts of student work given as well. I believe that these are of the utmost value as they help pre-service teachers to visualize student work before going into the classroom. – Cecile Arquette, San Diego State University

Teaching Language Arts continues to emphasize a student- and response-centered approach to literature-based teaching in today's culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. With lesson plans, teaching ideas, and online video case studies that accompany each chapter, this practical text reinforces what instructors teach in class.

Cox brings this vision of a classroom to life not only through clear explanations of these guiding principles but also through examples of real teachers in real classrooms with real children, applying the ideas that have shaped the development of this fifth edition. In Teaching Language Arts, Fifth Edition, Cox has created a readable, student-friendly, engaging, and practical text built on a strong theoretical and research base. Written with an eloquent writing style and packed with practical information, Teaching Language Arts brings content to life for students.

Entertainment / Music / Biographies & Memoirs

Can You Feel The Silence?: Van Morrison: A New Biography by Clinton Heylin (Chicago Review Press)

Van Morrison is full of contradictions. He is a white, Irish singer, who cut his musical teeth on African American jazz and blues. A superstar who shuns fame and snarks at the media, he thrives on the adoration of the audiences and critics he scorns. Best known for his hit "Brown-eyed Girl," he refuses to perform it and has been know to curse at audience members requesting it.

Clinton Heylin flies in the face of Morrison's objections with Can You Feel The Silence? to create this portrait of the man, his life and his music. From his birth in working class Belfast in 1945 to his current musical endeavors, Heylin offers the complete and unabridged story of George Ivan Morrison. The book is based on more than 100 interviews, including an extensive, exclusive and unpublished interview with Morrison's ex-wife, Janet Planet, and with musicians Morrison has worked with throughout his career. Heylin, author of celebrity biographies of Bob Dylan and Sandy Denny, lets those who were there – the friends, musicians and industry execs – tell the story in their own words, extensively quoting his sources.

Can You Feel The Silence? explores Morrison's roots, including the influence of his mother's love of Irish folk music and his dad's impressive record collection of American jazz and blues. It recreates Morrisons's early struggles in Ulster, London, New York and Boston and his rapid succession of self-destructing bands. Heylin details Morrison's disastrous business arrangements, the breakdown of his marriage, his troubles with stage fright and his ongoing struggle with alcoholism. In addition, this biography attempts to explain Morrison's paranoia and misanthropy.

The book reports the details that Morrison would perhaps rather forget, but never forgets the music, offering insights into the creation of each of Morrison's albums, including little-known details about the recording sessions and gigs. Fans will find each of their favorites covered – the circumstances behind its creation, recording and subsequent performances. To help navigate the maze of Morrison's life, a detailed cast of characters as well as a Morrison sessionography spanning 1964-2001 is included in the appendixes.

A terrific, detailed look at Van Morrison’s life ... should prove indispensable for Morrisonites – and a must for anyone who enjoys tales of tortured stars behaving badly. – Entertainment Weekly

Heylin analyzes his every lyric . . . nobody can doubt his attention to the music. – Blender
It’s unlikely that we’ll see as detailed a biography of ‘Van the Man’ again in the near future. – Library Journal
A portrait of an artist who shuns intimacy . . . frozen in the emotional adolescence. – Shepherd Express
Provides page after page of examples of Morrison’s bad behavior. – Boston Herald
Fascinating, exhaustively researched. – Chicago Sun-Times

Can You Feel The Silence? is a groundbreaking biography of a brilliant but disturbed performer exploring the paradox of the man and the artist. This telling of the story is as painstakingly thorough as it is intelligent.

Europe / Young Adult

The Caucasian Republics: Nations in Transition by Margaret Kaeter, introduction by Justin Burke (Nations in Transition Series: Facts on File) examines the three republics of the Transcaucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia – which are situated in the area between Europe and Asia extending from the Greater Caucasus to the Turkish and Iranian borders, between the Black and Caspian Seas.

Although small and isolated by mountain chains, the region's location at a crossroads between major world cultures has historically enhanced its importance. Today, the region's oil and gas resources and its geopolitical importance have attracted the attention of both Western and Russian business interests.

The Caucasian Republics was written by Margaret Kaeter, a freelance writer whose work has appeared in magazines such as New Woman, Entrepreneur, and Training, and it contains an introduction by Justin Burke, managing editor of EurasiaNet. The book is an introduction to the current political and economic situation in the Caucasus region. Following is a section that explores the common history of the area up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The second part of the book discusses the geography, history, government, economy, culture, religion, daily life, and cities of each country, ending with a general assessment of the present problems of the three Caucasian republics and future solutions.

The Caucasian Republics is part of the Nations in Transition series, which explores the independent governments formed after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Central Asia. The series gives readers and researchers clear and thought-provoking portraits of each of these nations. Each volume surveys the history, culture, and political and social changes of the past few years and includes 25-35 photographs, a chronology of key events, easy-to-understand maps, and a further reading section.

The Caucasian Republics is a richly informative volume, an ideal starting point for students and general readers interested in the countries and peoples of this region.

Health, Mind & Body

The Sex Addiction Workbook: Proven Strategies to Help You Regain Control of Your Life by Tamara Penix Sbraga & William T. O'Donohue, with a foreword by John Bancroft (New Harbinger Self-Help Workbooks: New Harbinger Publications) presents the only scientifically supported treatment method for sex addicts.

It's a hunger never satisfied: the allure of singles' bars and strip clubs, party lines and X-rated Internet sites. An uncontrollable need for sexual gratification, just like an addiction to alcohol or drugs, can cause serious problems for anyone. Some people use sex to medicate their feelings and/or cope with stress much in the same way as others would use alcohol or drugs. Lack of sexual self-control can lead to multiple infidelities, risky sexual behavior, bankruptcy, or the loss of a job due to out of control behaviors. Rooted in shame and low self-esteem, there is little satisfaction gained from the sexual activities and rarely an interest in intimacy or emotional connection. The Sex Addiction Workbook addresses readers with a lack of sexual self-control where their behavior is interfering with their relationship, job, and reputation. Tamara Penix Sbraga and William T. O'Donohue, leading clinical psychologists specializing in the treatment of sexual self-control problems, offer the first workbook to use proven cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, strategies to help sexual addicts. Individuals who risk their finances, reputations, marriages and even their lives for a quick sexual fix learn easy, step-by-step strategies to help them overcome their addiction to sex and restore their relationships.

The Sex Addiction Workbook helps readers:

Explore the root causes of the addiction.
Reduce high-risk sexual behavior and the use of online porn, phone sex, strip bars
Put an end to affairs forever.
Rediscover a healthy attitude toward sex.
Learn skills to help increase motivation to change.
Improve intimate relationships.

Sbraga, assistant professor of clinical psychology at Central Michigan University and O'Donohue, licensed psychologist and adjunct professor of philosophy and psychiatry at the University of Nevada, Reno, guide readers as they assess their level of sexual-self control problems, teaching relapse prevention methods and helping readers increase motivation and commitment to change. Readers then set goals and assess their choices. The second section of the book delves into the cognitive restructuring necessary to produce change, helping readers examine their behaviors, decision-making process, cognitive distortions (need for immediate gratification, deviant sexual fantasizing). In the third section, readers deal with the impact of their emotions on their behaviors and lead them toward self-acceptance. Finally, readers learn to increase intimacy and live a more balanced life.

This is an excellent book. It speaks directly to individuals with sexual addiction problems in a down-to-earth and respectful manner. The quality of the psychological knowledge contained in the book is first rate and the book is beautifully written. It is obvious that Sbraga and O'Donohue have total mastery of their subject matter and are compassionate yet challenging therapists. This book would be an ideal adjunct to therapy or a valuable treatment resource for individuals wanting to work on sexual addiction problems on their own. I am sure it will become a classic. – Tony Ward, Ph.D., clinical director of the School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and coauthor of Sexual Deviance: Issues and Controversies and Remaking Relapse Prevention with Sex Offenders

The Sex Addiction Workbook is for readers who believe they are struggling with a serious sexual disorder or wish they could more easily manage sexual behaviors that interfere with their lives. Without taking a strong moral position on sexual behaviors, the scientifically based techniques in the book guide readers to making better sexual choices that are in line with their own values. By following the program they learn how to lead a sexually fulfilling life that promises security, stability, and peace of mind.

Health, Mind & Body / Psychology & Counseling

Caring for Children With Neuro-developmental Disabilities and Their Families: An Innovative Approach to Interdisciplinary Practice edited by Claudia Maria Vargas & Patricia Ann Prelock (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers)

Children with neuro-developmental disabilities such as mental retardation or autism present multiple challenges to their families, health care providers, and teachers. Professionals consulted by desperate parents often see the problems from their own angle only and diagnosis and intervention efforts wind up fragmented and ineffective. Caring for Children With Neuro-developmental Disabilities and Their Families presents a model multidisciplinary approach to care, family-centered and collaborative, that has proven effective in practice. A pillar of the approach is recognition of the importance of performing a competent assessment and adjusting service delivery so that it is responsive to cultural differences. Detailed case stories illuminate the ways in which the approach can help children with different backgrounds and different disabilities. Most chapters include, besides references, study questions, lists of resources, and glossaries to facilitate easy comprehension by professionals with different backgrounds – in special education, communication sciences and disorders, clinical and counseling psychology, neuro-psychology and psychiatry, social work, pediatrics – and program administrators as well as students, trainees and educated parents.

The annals of medicine, anthropology, and history are filled with horrific stories of the inhumane treatment of persons with disabilities. Even the most advanced societies have skeletons in the closet: maltreatment, abuse, even experimentation, as during the Holocaust. Although institutionalization was advanced to provide a safe place for persons with disabilities who, until then, were imprisoned in jails, this too, was recognized as cruel for children who were condemned to a life isolated from family and community. Yet, de-institutionalization is a recent phenomenon even in the state of Vermont, where editors Claudia Maria Vargas & Patricia Ann Prelock (University of Vermont) write, and institutionalization continues to be practiced in other states and in other countries. Nationally, parents of children with disabilities, inspired by the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, came to realize that their children were also victims of segregation.

The field of disabilities has evolved in leap and bounds in the last 30 years in the United States, and although much has been accomplished, more remains to be done in this country as well as internationally.

Caring for Children With Neuro-developmental Disabilities and Their Families demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary practice in addressing the needs of children with neuro-developmental disabilities and their families by sharing the experiences and lessons learned from the Vermont Interdisciplinary Leadership Education for Health Professionals (VT-ILEHP) Program, one of the 35 Leadership Education in Neuro-developmental Disabilities (LEND) programs throughout the country funded by the United States government through the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB).

The book was structured by real stories of the children and families with whom the editors and contributors have worked. Caring for Children With Neuro-developmental Disabilities and Their Families introduces each component of the clinical process through the story of a child with complex health needs. Thus, the contributors focus attention on the challenges, hopes, and dreams of these families and children. They interweave the perspective of child, family, and that of service providers as they struggle through the health care system maze to obtain specialized services for their child with disabilities.

The experience captured in the book has been profoundly touching for the editors and collaborators. It presents not only the clinical experience of each but also the personal histories of children with disabilities – sons, daughters, cousins, sisters, brothers, relatives, or friends. The book invites the readers to embark on a journey they have traveled together with the families who graciously allowed the contributors into their lives.

The model is anchored by five competencies: family-centered care, cultural competence, interdisciplinary practice, leadership, neuro-developmental disabilities, and policy and leadership. The program provides advanced graduate training for health professionals in 12 disciplines: pediatrics, speech and language pathology (SLP), nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, psychology, social work, nutrition, audiology, policy and public law, family support, and education. The interdisciplinary model is applied to practitioners serving infants to young adults. Each chapter illustrates how the program put into practice the five core competencies while working with individual families and systems of care. The chapters are designed to invite readers, as members of the interdisciplinary team, to put into practice each of the components of the program. Caring for Children With Neurodevelopmental Disabilities and Their Families begins with an introduction to the entire program, specifically, a definition of the five competencies, a description of each curricular and clinical component, and the frameworks that guide clinical and leadership practice. Although the program focuses on training, its goal is to change the systems in place by modeling directly not only to the trainees and fellows but also to the community and school teams that may already be in place.

Caring for Children With Neurodevelopmental Disabilities and Their Families constitutes a useful addition to current theory and research, and it provides a model clinicians, policymakers, and parents can apply to their own efforts. It is intended, above all, to help parents and professionals develop the potential of children with disabilities to live as normal lives as possible. The chapters are easily accessible yet clinically sound. The style is clear without compromising the substantive knowledge and evidence-based practice. A glossary of terms and diagnoses is provided to facilitate understanding. To help parents and professionals, a list of pertinent resources is provided at the end of each chapter. The book was written for undergraduate and graduate students, health care professionals, educators, administrators, policymakers, and leaders in the field of disabilities as well as for families with children with disabilities.

Health, Mind & Body

Shining Through: Switch on Your Life and Ground Yourself in Happiness by Hugh Prather (Conari Press)

Shining Through by Hugh Prather is an easy-does-it, 30-day course in finding peace and happiness. Prather encourages readers to take a few minutes every day to read his "Essays of Encouragement" and reflect on and practice the accompanying 30 "Affirmations and Guides." Prather shares his own pain, observations, and ways of coping with modern life to helps readers discover their own ways to be happy in a complicated, often frightening world.

To quote the man himself, in this book I attempt to present a few ways that our mind can begin to hear the song of our heart and experience a growing faith in a truth that exists beyond our tragedies and fears.... It is vital to find an approach that permits us to experience a reality greater and more reliable than the confusing and surprisingly short journey of our body. I will suggest ways this can be done.

Prather, author of 16 books, whom The New York Times dubbed "an American Kahlil Gibran," suggests, for reflection and practice, for example:

Let my first step be stillness.
I will make no effort to step ahead of God. My body is a means of communicating love.
Today I will not project.
I will not use my mind to build a case against freedom. Let me at least try.

The gifts of wisdom and the treasured insights of Hugh Prather flow to us once again from the generosity of his Spirit in this wonderful book. Here will be found blessings for the soul, comfort for the heart, and peace for the mind. One could scarcely ask for more. –Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God

Urgently needed! Hugh Prather's wisdom will lift your spirits, rejuvenate your soul and plant your feet on solid ground. – Judy Ford, author of Wonderful Ways to Love a Child and Single: The Art of Being Satisfied, Fulfilled and Independent

Wise words, important reminders, guided meditations from Hugh Prather that can set you free, open up your heart, and let love come Shining Through. – David Marell, author of Be Generous

Prather's books have provided readers with a new way of seeing, with comfort in hard times, the words to articulate sorrow and celebration, to find the heart of the matter in the self. Shining Through once again is an example of Prather's gentle teaching style. This is a book readers may return to again and again for inspiration as they continue their search for a deeper meaning and understanding in today's chaotic and complicated world.

Health, Mind & Body / Religion & Spirituality

Self-Awakening Yoga: The Expansion of Consciousness through the Body's Own Wisdom by Don Stapleton (Healing Arts Press)

When artist and professor Don Stapleton discovered yoga, it marked the beginning of a journey into the awakening powers of prana – the energy of yogic purification – and the natural spiritual and healing properties of his own body. After 30 years of extensive yoga training, an accident left him with a severe injury to the spine. Faced with the challenge of physical recovery, Stapleton, a teacher and the director of the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health for 19 years, drew upon his knowledge of yoga to create a series of exercises that allowed him to recover freedom of movement, release emotional blockages and unleash his spiritual and physical potential. Self-Awakening Yoga is the synthesis of Stapleton's practice. More than 100 exercises – from focusing on the breath to accessing primal sound – show how to unlock the wisdom and power of prana to engage the body's healing powers. Readers learn how to listen to what the body is saying before engaging in each specific yoga posture. The exercises and meditations focus on natural movements that encourage body awareness. The book shows

Simple techniques that enhance the free flow of prana to promote physical and emotional healing, self-discovery, and spiritual evolution.
How to release the body's inefficient, painful patterns and to access unknown potentials through kinesthetic inquiries.

Also included is a 60-minute audio CD of four guided meditation exercises.

What an awesome and inspiring book. It beautifully illustrates how an external teacher can lead a person to the lotus feet of his or her own inner authority. – Erich Schiffmann, author of Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness

Don is an adept, an amazing contemporary yogi who has gone beyond ordinary convention. His mastery of the spiritual inquiry and his brilliance radiates through every chapter of this book. – Todd Norian, certified Anusara Yoga teacher, former director of Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training

Self-Awakening Yoga takes yoga back to its roots as a creative learning process and an expansion of consciousness, not just a technique for health and fitness.

History / Military / Biographies & Memoirs

Rattler One-Seven: A Vietnam Helicopter Pilot's War Story by Chuck Gross (North Texas Military Biography and Memoir Series, No. 1: University of North Texas Press)

Here is a chance to see the war in Vietnam through the eyes of an inexperienced pilot as he transforms himself into a seasoned combat veteran.

Chuck Gross joined the army in November 1968 at age 18 to fly helicopters – he thought the Vietnam War would be over by the time he completed his flight training – it wasn’t. When Gross left for Vietnam in 1970, he was fresh out of flight school. He spent his entire Vietnam tour with the 71st Assault Helicopter Company flying UH-1 Huey helicopters, logging more than twelve hundred hours of combat flying and achieving Senior Aircraft Commander

SirReadaLot.org

We Review the Best of the Latest Books

October 2004, Issue #66

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