SirReadaLot.org

 April 2005, Issue #72

Guide to This Issue

Page Contents:  The Beauty of Craft, RetroGraphics, Achievements of Classical Architecture, Business & Investing / Management & Leadership: Corporate Trust? Strategic Planning for Small Business,  The Lie of Management Consultants, How to Learn on the Internet, Cooking, Food & Wine: Intimate Faire with Don Pintabona, Education: How to Teach in American Schools, Guide to College Reading, Entertainment: Jack Nicholson Lives, The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.  Music History of the West, Country Music Business, Automobile Fictions, Alternative Medicine: Natural Remedies, Families with Eating Disorders, Girl's Growing-Up, Body Wisdom, Remake Yourself, Tantric Sex for Women, Working with Learning Disabled Children,  A Positive View of the Human Condition, APA Pocket-Style Writing Guide, History: American Jewish Leadership and Israel, Warfare Weapons, A History of Germany 1815-1990, Robbing of Graves In America, The Farm Factory Home & Garden: Garden Design with Perennials, High Fiction: ‘the Pee-Wee Herman of Philip Marlowes' ,  Regan Reilly is Burned, Female Violence in Seventeenth Street Pamphlets,  Mahu's Laziness, A Shrewd New Crime Novel, Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man as read by William Dufris, Crime-Solving canines and Sly, Sleuthing Cats, Soap's Marcie Walsh's as Sleuth, Philosophy: Paranoia as Cultural Truth, Justice as the Bedrock of Social Thought, Law of the Sea, Science: Fred Hoyle's Life in Science, Social History: Polish and Polish-American Gender, Class, Ethnicity, and Religion in the lives of Women, Fieldwork Methodology, A Texas Folklore Sampler, Spectacle of Middle-class Cultural Life in Home Entertainment, Modern European Pornography, Last Vestiges of Cultural Past in Northern New Mexico, Sports: How to Play Winning Golf, Confessions of an All-Night Runner, Red Sox As Family History, Travel: Visiting North Carolina, Every place Daniel Boone Traveled

Arts & Photography

The Beauty of Craft: A Resurgence Anthology edited by Maya Kumar Mitchell & Sandy Brown (Green Books, distributed by Chelsea Green)

Craftspeople usually leave their work to speak for itself, so it is a rare privilege to have the thoughts, stories, experiences, observations, and feelings of such skilled people in a book that enables readers to share their insights on the nature of their work and the way they live.

Most of the contributors to The Beauty of Craft have been featured in Resurgence magazine, which regularly features crafts and their connection with spirituality, ecology, and sustainable, joyful living. According to editors Maya Kumar Mitchell and Sandy Brown, the work of these creators comes from their great dedication to their craft and the sincerity with which they integrate their philosophy into daily life – in much the same way that their bowls and baskets, chairs and tables, shoes and spoons are art for daily use.

The crafts tradition is long and rich and the editors have not attempted a historical overview. Mitchell, a writer and English teacher; and Brown, who writes a regular column for Resurgence, have divided The Beauty of Craft into chapters to show the different faces of craft, including the world of craft, ways of living, culture of community, caring for nature, enduring skills, and seekers of meaning.

The craftspeople themselves and their work, however, are by no means limited to these chapter headings. Mitchell and Brown have focused on living craftspeople, most of them still producing. Even so, this could not begin to be a comprehensive representation of the many craftspeople working today. All the creative people featured make work that is imaginative, playful, profound, honest and far-reaching. Artists and crafts include:

• Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg, glassblowing
• Clio Mitchell, weaving
• Louis Allison Cort, basket making
• Ianto Evans, cob
• Margot Coatts, silversmithing
• Roger Deakin, leather work
• Edmund De Waal, pottery

Resurgence has always supported the crafts. The wide-ranging essays in this splendid anthology testify to that commitment to both nature and culture. – Tanya Harrod, author of Craft in the 21st Century

The words in The Beauty of Craft inspire and the works delight. The essays in The Beauty of Craft, accompanied by beautiful color photographs, encourage us to have faith in the human spirit and in human endeavor.

Arts & Photography / Graphic Design

It Is Beautiful...Then Gone by Martin Venezky ( Princeton Architectural Press)

Martin Venezky, teacher at CalArts in Los Angeles and CCA in San Francisco , the mastermind behind Appetite Engineers, is not a typical point-and-click designer. We've heard of the Slow Food Movement; Venezky is a master of what could be called Slow Design. His passion lies in the transformation of raw materials, using the age-old design tools of cut-and-paste, photography, and collage, causing the work to change and decay over time. Venezky believes that there's a growing body of his peers whose disenchantment with the machine may return them to the tool as well.

While he is adept at operating a mouse, he is just as comfortable cutting and pasting type from old books or collaging found signs or making his own photographs. What results are the unique creations of a unique eye. And with this eye and his design firm, Venezky has created beautiful and influential work for Speak and Open magazines, the Sundance Film Festival, Reebok, and numerous publishers and institutions.

It Is Beautiful...Then Gone presents Venzky's commercial design work as well as new graphic work created for the book; details of the wall collage that define his office and his aesthetic; the singular photography, collections, and notebooks that define his personality; and text that explains – or at least questions – it all.

Venezky writes, "I take pleasure in making something whole out of unexpected parts. And if that pleasure can be transmitted to others, whether they are clients or viewers, then I feel that I have added something of value to the world. There is an inherent pleasure in making things that survive in the world, even if they survive only for a short while."

From the opening essay:

“… I decided to relocate. This was not a hasty decision, but one cold enough to rouse me from delusion. If I can pull up my own roots and take control, then maybe I can keep the devil of decay from doing it for me. …

“In 1965, during a family trip to Washington , a favorite uncle escorted me into the museum world. He guided me through the National Gallery's marble foyer and, for an eight-year-old boy, into the very heart of soulful contemplation. I felt like I was being initiated into a brotherhood. The paintings in these rooms – and he was particular about which ones I should admire – had been my uncle's close friends, and I was admonished to carry on the relationship. Those fantastic hours are renewed each time I return to find Rembrandt's The Mill (my uncle's favorite) still holding court in Gallery 58. I don't know if my uncle has seen the Rembrandt since restoration removed the sallow yellow varnish to reveal a beautiful blue-tinged sky. It is still the same painting, but made younger than it was when my uncle and I stood before it. The painting's preserved and revived surface puts our own decay into relief. But as we raise a toast to stability and preservation, aren't we silently counting our own remaining days? The art museum provides an institutional prayer that we might fight and win by simply staying put.

“I know I can't stall my own decline, but I can try to make things do it for me. It's not just the completed artifact, but the making itself that holds me still. My favorite processes are gradual and meticulous. They force me to build work up slowly, observing the whole as I place a single letter, then a line, then another. I coach my students against the pressures of efficiency – there is nothing intrinsic to design, neither its quality nor its value, that demands it. For me there is a relief in creating with a strategy but without a goal, knowing the next step, but not the destination. My collages are not jigsaw puzzles, but organisms that grow until their weight balances their energy. What should happen next? Which way does it seem to turn? I search for an internal logic within the work. That logic may become more complex or turn in on itself. But it is no more random than a twisting vine….

“Immediately after the World Trade Center collapse, before the ash had settled, New York witnessed a cathartic release of bottom-up design – photographs, T-shirts, and flowers and messages pinned to fences and posted in windows. Top-down design took longer. It was the schedule of events, the ceremonies, the plans and proposals for new construction and exhibitions of artifacts. Our culture respects the stability and authority of the top-down world and needs the rebellion and immediacy of the bottom-up. The edge between these two is a tense territory that is difficult to map, and whether eagerly or grudgingly, street and gallery often shake hands. The intersection of – and sometimes the clash between – the two cannot be predicted. Riots combust in architecturally satisfying streets. Raw music echoes down subway corridors. Corporate headquarters nestle into remote villages.

“The planned spectacle is fine, but I prefer the unofficial stuff that slops into the frame. That's where the veneer rubs off and happenings can happen. I like the shadowy world of before, the impending excitement of things on the verge, and the discarded world of after, where the cue cards are stored, the carpets vacuumed, the power cords bunched into knots. The suggestion of human ceremony is worth more to me than the ritual itself. It is as if the event is simply a pause between the greater worlds of unpacking and repacking. Here people sweat, practice, concentrate, arrange, plan, argue. Here, outside of the spectacle, the edges melt together….

“Visitors to my workspace might say that decay has set in long ago. But this is not true. What many people consider tidiness – where things remain where they belong – can have such an antiseptic air. In my studio everything has its place. But it is a fluid congregation, and I like to believe that the objects have offered their own suggestions. The most sensational example of this is also the hardest thing I have left to dismantle – the large wall collage that surrounds my room. Over seven hundred pieces are pinned to the wall, and each one must be carefully removed. I ask my friend Cesar to photograph the room before I begin. This, too, is a difficult job, since the space is narrow and he can't get much of a wide shot. Nevertheless he shoots a beautiful set of trans­parencies that I will use in It Is Beautiful...Then Gone….

 “So I am moving on. It is how I am staying alive, how I am attempting to fight time. San Francisco has been my home for eighteen years, and my habits there have etched a deep groove in me. Repetition can be exquisite and change disquieting. But I need both, even if it means riding a pendulum toward excess on either side. ‘Neither root nor dust’ – that's how I summed up this tension in one of my school projects. Not enough inertia to say, ‘This is the place,’ but not enough freedom to skip along the surface. My life tips between trying to leave and trying to remain. It is the charge of electricity between change and stasis, hope and resignation. And like everything else, it is beautiful . . . then gone.”

Venezky's philosophy, that life and design are a continuation of each other, permeates It Is Beautiful...Then Gone, an elegant book filled with hundreds of idiosyncratic, deeply wrought examples.

Audio / Mysteries & Thrillers

Burned: A Regan Reilly Mystery [ABRIDGED] by Carol Higgins Clark, read by the author, 3 audio cassettes, running time 4.5 hours (Regan Reilly Mysteries Series: Simon and Schuster Audio)

In the eighth in the Regan Reilly Mystery Series, Burned, written by bestselling author, Carol Higgins Clark, Regan Reilly and her best friend, Kit, do Honolulu .

In the last volume of the series, L.A.-based private detective Reilly became engaged. On the opening pages of Burned, she gets a call from Kit, urging her to come to Hawaii for one last girls' weekend before she ties the knot. The snowstorm of the century is blanketing the East Coast. Regan can't get to New York to visit her fiancé, Jack ‘no relation’ Reilly, and Kit can't get back home to Connecticut . So Regan packs a bag and is on her way.

At the Waikiki Waters Playground and Resort, where Kit has been staying, the body of Dorinda Dawes, who wrote the hotel newsletter, washes ashore. Around her neck is an exquisite and historically valuable shell lei that once belonged to a Hawaiian princess, a lei that had been stolen from the Seashell Museum in Honolulu thirty years before.

Will Brown, the manager of the resort, doesn't believe that it's an accidental drowning. In the three months Dorinda had worked in Hawaii , she had become a controversial character who had a reputation for pointing out the very worst in people. Will is afraid that she was murdered and that the murderer might still be in their midst, perhaps a guest at the resort.

Besides Dorinda's death, strange things have been happening at Waikiki Waters. Luggage has gone missing, food has been tainted, and tubes of suntan lotion are being dropped into the toilets. Could someone be trying to bring down the whole establishment?

Lucky for Will, he happens to meet Regan Reilly in the hotel lobby and convinces her to get on the case. Since Kit is infatuated with a new love interest – Steve, a fabulously wealthy thirty-five-year-old retiree living on Oahu who is eager to spend time with her – Regan is free to take the job. But once she starts digging, she comes across all sorts of suspicious characters. And the closer she gets to the truth, the more danger she's in.

Can Regan find out what really happened to Dorinda before it's too late for someone else? Before it's too late for her?

Is the culprit someone from the tour group visiting from Hudville, a town where it rains 89 percent of the time? Is it one of the employees at the hotel? Could it be Jazzy, a social climber who has a job house-sitting on the Big Island ? Just who had it in for Dorinda? Regan's investigation takes readers on a fast-paced ride from Waikiki to the Big Island of Hawaii and back again.

Clark 's trademark light touch, humor, and quirky characters make Burned yet another wonderfully unpredictable mystery, complete with a thoroughly satisfying denouement. As an extra treat, readers get to hear the book read by the author herself, an actress of no small skill.

Business & Investing

Corporations and the Public Interest: Guiding the Invisible Hand by Steven Lydenberg (Berrett Koehler Publishers, Inc)

During the last two decades of the 20th century, societies around the world have made a bet on free markets and the corporation. The communist nations of Eastern Europe dismantled their state-controlled economies. China integrated private ownership into its industries. The governments of Europe and the United Kingdom , Asia , Africa , and Latin America sold off nationally owned businesses to the private sector. The United States deregulated industry after industry. Global financial markets were freed from previous constraints. World trade barriers have been dismantled, bureaucracies have been downsized, social services rolled back, and taxes cut.

Societies have taken these radical steps believing that private enterprise is the road to prosperity for all. But, as we enter the 21st century, business scandals, callous shows of corporate greed, financial crises, environmental degradation, and societies mired in poverty are stark reminders that business alone, unregulated and unsupervised, will not solve the world problems.

If the bet on corporations and free markets is to pay off, if transferring assets and power from government to the private sector is to benefit society in the long-run, a clearer understanding of what public interests business can serve is needed and of how investors, consumers, and government can steer it in that direction.

In his new book, Corporations and the Public Interest, Steven Lydenberg attempts to answer three key questions: What is the public interest that we have set corporations free to serve? How can society know when corporations are in fact serving that interest? How can society reward those companies that are serving that interest and impose a cost on those that are not?

Lydenberg, who has spent 30 years in the social investment field, Chief Investment Officer for Domini Social Investments LLC, and formerly Director of Research with KLD Research & Analytics, argues that society now expects corporations to create a new form of long-term wealth. It is wealth that will survive the corporation if it should go out of business tomorrow. It is profits that corporations achieve without taking from society more than they return. This new definition of wealth requires that: corporations not externalize costs onto society; corporations not exhaust natural and societal resources that could otherwise be used by future generations; and corporations not divert their profits and assets for unproductive use, but invest them in creating value for stockowners and other stakeholders.

Using this definition, it is possible to create a system that will assess when corporations are acting in the public interest and to steer them in that direction. To do so, however, governments and the markets need to assure that at least three things happen:

• Data on the social and environmental records of corporations be broadly available.
• The capacity to analyze and interpret that data be created and a culture encouraged in which these interpretations can be widely debated.
• Investors and consumers have the means to reward those companies who are in fact creating long-term wealth and punish those who are not.

These are not small tasks. Without them, however, society cannot reasonably expect that corporations will be directed to act in the public's long-term interests. Only a systematic approach, encouraged and supported by government, can assure success in this endeavor.

Steve Lydenberg is a seasoned pro in the Corporate Social Responsibility information business, and one of the wisest minds out there. There is a lifetime of wisdom in this gem of a book. – Marjorie Kelly, co-founder and editor, Business Ethics magazine, and author of The Divine Right of Capital

In this era of rampant corporate greed, abuse of power, and dwindling governmental regulations of corporate practices, Lydenberg shows how government can use the marketplace itself to help make corporations act more responsibly. Using a unique market-based approach and a socially inclusive definition of wealth, Corporations and the Public Interest offers a refreshing new system for assessing corporations' real commitment to the public.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership

Strategic Planning for Small Business Made Easy by Fred L Fry, Charles R. Stoner, & Laurence G. Weinzimmer (Entrepreneur Made Easy Series: Entrepreneur Press)

What's the start-up secret that Bill Gates, Michael Dell, ‘Papa John’ Schnatter and other highly successful entrepreneurs share? A well conceived, strictly followed roadmap for growth. In Strategic Planning for Small Business Made Easy, the newest title in Entrepreneur's Made Easy series, three award-winning authors lay out the planning essentials that lead to business success. Readers learn how to:

• Critically assess markets and evaluate the competition.
• Create competitive advantage.
• Identify strengths and weaknesses – and use them to advantage.
• Think like a prospective customer.
• Develop and achieve target goals.

Fry, Stoner and Weinzimmer, award-winning professors of management at Bradley University , also detail how to recognize and exploit opportunities. With relevant real-life examples to illustrate the process and specific strategies readers can use, readers can immediately begin to develop a strategic plan and see their business grow. An overview of the strategies includes:

1. Focus strategies. Working with existing markets and products, a business can grow by focusing on what it does best. With this strategy, a business emphasizes a single product and a market niche, allowing managers to gear themselves toward a very central and streamlined set of issues, making them more likely to stay on top of important market changes.

2. Market development strategies. Businesses can expand their existing products into new markets by internal development, franchising, or forming strategic alliances with other businesses. Internally, businesses can expand geographically, by opening stores in new areas, or they can seek out new target markets for their regular products.

3. Product development strategies. Businesses can introduce a new product into an existing market, hoping that the success of other products will give customers confidence in the new offerings.

4. Diversification strategies. A business that is willing to try something new can diversify into new products and new markets. Diversification can be related, where the new business has some common link or tie to the existing business, or unrelated, where there is no strategic fit between the old business and the new.

Entrepreneurs can determine which of the four options is best by looking at the growth potential of their company's industry and their business' relative competitive strength. Focus strategies are best in industries with high growth potentials, whereas market development or product development strategies work well in industries with lower growth potential. Diversification is the answer for a business in a stagnant industry.

Strategic Planning for Small Business Made Easy is a great reference for new and potential entrepreneurs – no other book is as complete or as practical, with suggestions that any entrepreneur can immediately implement. Though everyone will benefit from the methods described, those who want to grow and expand their businesses will gain the most. In addition, businesses that can't afford to make any more spending cuts can learn to build their bottom line by growth instead of by cost cutting.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership

House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time by Martin Kihn (Warner Business Books)

Once upon a time in Corporate America there was a group of men and women who were paid huge fees to tell organizations how to improve themselves. These men and women promised everything and delivered nothing, said they were experts when they were not, sometimes ruined careers, and at best, only wasted time, energy, and huge sums of money. They called themselves Management Consultants....

You know you've seen them. . . young, black-suited MBAs with Ivy League credentials and brand-new Vuitton briefcases stuffed with pink slips and buzz-words, tying the board of directors into knots of obfuscatory jargon and half-baked ideas ... and leaving at the end of day with a sack-full of cash, having somehow told the board nothing more than what they already knew.

Welcome to the world of Martin Kihn, a former stand-up comic and Emmy Award-nominated television writer who decided to ‘go straight’ and earn his MBA at a prestigious Ivy League university. In House of Lies, he chronicles his first two years as a newly-minted management consultant in all its unadulterated glory – the erroneous advice, the absurd arrogance, the vicious backstabbing, and the bloody power struggles. Hey, it's all in a day's work...and it pays really well.

When Kihn joined a powerhouse New York consulting firm, he found that, in theory, the consultants' job was simply to tell organizations what they were doing wrong and how to improve themselves in exchange for huge fees. In reality, the consultants spent precious hours prowling the corporate heights for new clients, only to offer, once they snared their quarry, little or no useful information while pontificating on topics they knew nothing about. In the House of Lies, readers witness bloody boardroom battles where low-level managers bask in fake flattery from backbiting colleagues. And spend quality time with an actual client when consultants wing it on an air stream of pure panic leaving a debris field of pink slips, self-reproducing red tape, and lost profits in their wake. Witness senile senior partners bursting into tears . . . team dinners at which clients are reviled as ‘pigs’ and junior colleagues must remain mute . . . and hallucinatory riffs on helium-powered luggage brought on by a diet rich in Mountain Dew and Skittles.

Doing whatever it took to survive, Kihn survived round after round of blood on the walls, taking copious notes as his firm shrank by half and its glorious staterooms echoed with the hollow sounds of rage and betrayal. “To be a management consultant is to be always on the defensive,” confesses Kihn. “Clients attack your credentials – What do you know about my business? Competitors attack your experience – They're really just an IT implementation shop. Colleagues attack your analyses, your logic. But these besiegings are as nothing compared to the utter, irredeemable, unknowing cruelty of one's parents, siblings, and friends when they ask – as they always do – when they ask, quite coolly but not without a certain challenge to their tone: So what do you actually do?”

Like no non-fiction book before it, House of Lies answers this question.

Funny, lucid, and lacerating. Martin Kihn does for management consulting what Julia Phillips did for Hollywood . – Graydon Carter, Editor in Chief, Vanity Fair

How candid and merciless Martin Kihn is about big-time management consulting! What a pleasure to watch him burn so many bridges. Such a funny and disturbing cautionary tale! And how fortunate that all new MBAs can now read House of Lies and prophylactic ally disillusion themselves before they charge out into this particular circle of corporate hell. – Kurt Andersen, creator of Spy magazine and host of NPR’s Studio 360

Dilbert-philes everywhere will hail House of Lies as a revolutionary screed. Kihn uses his MBA-honed skills of analysis to dissect the very industry that purports to do its best... all with devastating wit and clear-headed insight into the secrets ‘they’ don't want you to know. – Tad Low, creator of Pop-up Video

In the bestselling tradition of Liar's Poker comes a devastatingly accurate and darkly hilarious, behind-the-scenes look at the world of management consulting. An incendiary and darkly funny true story of one young man's journey from MTV to Columbia Business School to the ranks of a famous international consulting firm, House of Lies is the first book to lay out the terrifying truth about management consulting. In the end, House of Lies is a roller-coaster ride to the depths of a profession in the grip of power-mad short men, dictionary-mangling plutocrats and a bunch of good-looking young men and women who hope you can't hear what they're really saying – nothing.

Business & Investing / Computers & Internet / Training

Lessons in Learning, e-Learning, and Training: Perspectives and Guidance for the Enlightened Trainer by Roger C. Schank (Pfeiffer) is a collection of stories, lessons to be learned from those stories, and tips, guidelines, do's and don'ts, and other practical advice that follow from those lessons.

From Roger C. Schank – a respected speaker in the training and e-learning community – comes a book of essays that explore the issues related to challenges faced by today's instructional designers and trainers. The essays offer a perspective on what trainers do, why they do it, and how they do it. Lessons in Learning, e-Learning, and Training provides a barometer to the issues that perplex trainers as it seeks to illuminate three main points: what can and cannot be taught; how people think and learn; and what technology can effectively provide. Each essay contains practical guidance and includes a summary of ideas, tips and techniques, things to think about, checklists, and other job aids.
The basic premise is that learning is an inductive process – learning occurs by experience, and the best instruction offers learners opportunities to distill their knowl­edge and skills from interactive stories in the form of goal-based scenarios, team projects, and stories from experts. It turns out that there are few universal rules for the ‘best’ path to learning. Much depends on the knowledge and skills to be gained as well as the background experience of the learners. At the very least, trainers need to sit back and think a while before tackling a new project – not blindly attempt to deliver what was asked for. Often those doing the asking do not know how to ask. Just telling trainees what some executive said they should know will not make for memorable training nor will any learning necessarily take place. Lessons in Learning, e-Learning, and Training is intended to supply trainers with ammunition to help them think about what is needed and confront those who ask for stuff that makes no sense.

Stories are the jewels of learning and Roger Schank is the prince of storytelling. This collection of training stories is a must read! – Elliott Masie, founder, e-Learning Consortium

Learning has become a strategic advantage in business over the last decade, but in trying to ‘optimize’ that advantage, we've sterilized the process. In this book, Roger reminds us that teaching and learning can be fun and effective. It's like having a long personal conversation with Roger – It's fun, interesting, and illuminating. – Tom Kelly, vice president, Cisco

Roger Schank is a genius; his ideas are insightful, and provocative. His latest book is a must read for those who want to stay at the leading edge. – Brandon Hall, lead researcher and CEO, Brandon-Hall.com

The compelling essays in Lessons in Learning, e-Learning, and Training offer a much-needed perspective on training, a virtual coaching session with a renowned educator/trainer. They give readers a chance to hear his provocative insights and to profit from his experience. Lessons in Learning, e-Learning, and Training is meant for anyone who is ever called upon to design or deliver training – for people in e-learning and those in stand-up training delivery, and for trainers and educators in general.

Cooking, Food & Wine

The Shared Table: Cooking with Spirit for Family and Friends by Don Pintabona, with Judith Choate, with photography by Steve Pool (Random House)

A labor of love from one of the most celebrated chefs in the business, Don Pintabona’s The Shared Table is a cookbook designed for casual dining with family and friends. Pintabona is one of the pioneers of contemporary American cuisine, the former executive chef of the award-winning Tribeca Grill. With its focus on cooking and community and with the able help of Judith Choate, an award-winning writer, and Steve Pool, a New York-based photographer with a special interest in documenting food in its natural setting, The Shared Table takes readers on a culinary adventure.
Recipes correspond to chapters of Pintabona’s life and are infused with his recollections, from his earliest days in the kitchen, frying meatballs with his Italian relatives; to his festive block parties in Brooklyn ; to his travels, whether to the front of the restaurant range or to a remote locale in search of new ideas and flavors. Using a memoir structure, Pintabona writes about the hospitality he’s received and about how food plays a vital role in bringing people together in harmony and friendship. For example, when he works in France , readers learn about Îles Flottantes; and when in Italy , recipes come forth like Sicilian Stuffed Calamari with Raisins and Pignoli. Pintabona says he pondered deeply while serving food to workers at the World Trade Center site in the aftermath of September 11, and in The Shared Table he shares those reflections of how a community can demonstrate the best of the human spirit.
Along the way, Pintabona invites us into the kitchen to create a stunning array of dishes, both simple and exotic. Among them are Thai Shrimp Toasts; Hearty Lentil and Tomato Soup; Grilled Asparagus with Basil-Orange Vinaigrette; Four-Cheese Mac and Cheez; Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Mushy Peas; and Turkey Meat Loaf with Cranberry Glaze. Pintabona also provides the secrets to a variety of sauces, including Nana’s Fresh Marinara Sauce, Ginger Plum Sauce, and Yellow Curry Sauce. His remarkable desserts include Tarte au Chocolat, Sweet Asian Plums, and Ricotta Cookies.

I am a big fan of Don Pintabona’s newest book The Shared Table (and of Dan Pintabona himself). The dishes are creative and original but not overwhelming to re-create at home, and the text is a veritable travelogue full of personal anecdotes. This book was definitely written from the heart, and the recipes will certainly gladden your stomach! – Daniel Boulud
Don Pintabona’s love of family, both his own and the world’s, is evident throughout this marvelous collection of stories and recipes. The Shared Table is great to read and even better to cook from. – Charlie Palmer
Don is a great chef and one of the warmest, most generous, most giving people I know. Don will make you feel like part of his family when you cook from his book. – Todd English

Brimming with striking food, ravel photographs and with family snapshots, The Shared Table is a heartfelt cookbook inspiring us to prepare meals for gatherings of those we love – and exemplifies the unshakable bonds forged when food is shared at the table.

Education

Teaching In America (4th Edition) by George S. Morrison (Allyn & Bacon) is an active learning text that provides pre-service teachers with comprehensive, current, and practical information about the profession of teaching and a realistic understanding of the foundations of education in America.

Teaching In America, Fourth Edition, embraces the evolving process of professional practice and provides prospective teachers with the professional tools necessary to be high-quality teachers. Teaching In America is an active learning text – readable, practical, and based on current ideas about teaching, but also laced with opportunities for readers to participate in their own learning. On almost every page, readers will find possibilities for reflecting on and writing about what they are learning and applying the content of the book to the real world of schools and classrooms. This revision was guided by advice from teacher educators, experienced teachers, and novice teachers. This text explores the knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and skills of effective teachers; it also provides a comprehensive background for the foundations of education, with links to actual classrooms and the role of the teacher. Readers hear the voices of real teachers, explore real programs, and are called on to think about real issues.

Readers will find several themes occurring frequently in this text:

• Meeting professional standards. Virtually all students will need to pass some kind of certification examination to become a teacher. More and more, they also will be asked to meet additional standards, as they move through their career. Correlation charts at the beginning of each part and marginal icons throughout the text show readers specific material that aligns to two important sets of standards for teachers – INTASC and NCATE.
• Understanding classroom diversity. The US is a nation of diversity, and readers will find this reflected in the classroom. Students from a variety of cultures, speaking a variety of languages, and with a variety of abilities populate the classroom. In addition to a separate chapter on diversity, Profiles and Education on the Move features throughout reflect the diversity of American education.
• Making decisions as a teacher. Every minute of every day, teachers make decisions large and small. Every chapter of Teaching In America models the professional, ethical, practical, and reality-based decision-making processes that are a critical part of the teaching profession.
• Understanding and using technology. More and more, technology is central to teaching. Technology means both the technologies of teaching and learning and the technologies of course management and assessment. In addition to a separate chapter on technology, teaching, and learning, Web icons identify references to useful Websites, and every chapter includes a resource list of Web Sites Worth Visiting.

The pedagogical emphasis of the text continues to be on providing practical information and making links to actual classroom teaching. These links are supported by the numerous features – almost all of which are new in this edition.

• New “You Decide” boxes explore controversial issues in American education today, provide Web-links to further information, and encourage students to think about these issues and form their own opinions.
• New “What Does This Means for You?” boxes connect complex concepts to the real world of schools and classrooms, helping students understand why and how this sometimes abstract information impacts the profession they are choosing.
• New “Guide to Preparing for Certification” offers useful strategies for students who are preparing to take the certification examinations now required in most states for prospective teachers.

Every chapter in Teaching In America has been meticulously updated to make sure that all information is the most current available. Chapter 1 has been entirely rewritten to provide a concise introduction to the book and to the profession of teaching. The chapters on teaching in diverse classrooms (Chapter 4), students with special needs (Chapter 5), parent and community involvement (Chapter 6), curricu­lum and instruction (Chapter 11), and technology (Chapter 12) have been extensively revised.

With real video footage of teachers and students in the classroom, an interactive system for collecting observations, and a seamlessly integrated suite of tools for lesson planning, portfolio development, and standards integration from TaskStream, readers will get a clear sense of what being in a real classroom is like.

A wide range of supplementary resources accompany Teaching In America, including:

• For instructors: A comprehensive Instructor's Manual with Test Bank, a Computerized Test Bank, and the Allyn and Bacon Transparency Package for Foundations of Education and Introduction to Teaching.
• For students: A Companion Web Site, with interactive bonus content and chapter review questions.

I feel that the text is a wonderful resource for beginning teachers. The format is interesting and reads well, the examples are thought provoking and I enjoy reading each section. – Eileen Mahoney, Hudson Valley Community College

I appreciate the author's ability to provide a good text with the basic information beginning teachers need to get a sense for the context of teaching. The text contains a wealth of information and is both affordable and accessible for students. – Barbara C. Jentleson, Duke University

Teaching In America is a core text for courses in Introduction to Teaching, Introduction to Education, and Foundations of Education taught within teacher education programs.

This book will help student teachers make the transition from thinking about becoming a teacher to understanding what that decision means – so that they can enter the profession of teaching as active, confident participants. Teaching In America builds in readers a firm knowledge of education as an institution and as a career, a knowledge of teaching competencies, and a knowledge of issues in education. Extensive revisions and updates to all chapters ensure that Teaching In America continues to provide the most current, comprehensive, and practical information available about the American educational system and American classrooms.

Entertainers / Biographies & Memoirs

Jack: The Great Seducer, The Life and Many Loves of Jack Nicholson [LARGE PRINT] by Edward Douglas (Thorndike Press Large Print Biography Series: Thorndike Press)

Jack: The Great Seducer by Edward Douglas (HarperEntertainment)

Jack Nicholson, one of the longest-lasting and most recognized sex symbols of our time, has already been the subject of nearly a dozen books.

Jack, written by ‘Edward Douglas’, updates the record established in Patrick McGilligan's standard-setting Jack's Life with a decade's worth of new films and gossip about a stormy relationship with actor Lara Flynn Boyle. Douglas , supposedly the pseudonym for a well-know biographer, celebrates Nicholson for being ‘ahead of his time’ in front of the camera while condemning his off-screen shortcomings. For the book, Douglas landed interviews with B-movie mogul Roger Corman and other members of Nicholson's earliest Hollywood circles that shed light on the actor's start in Hollywood .

The book focuses on the tales he accumulates from recent ex-lovers.

Readers can only marvel at Jack Nicholson's brilliant career, given the distractions, both self-induced and otherwise, described in Jack. Those self-induced include: great quantities of recreational drugs, serious partying, musical beds with unknown numbers of women, the several children he sired, and labyrinthine friendships with both men and women. Others were handed to him; for example, he learned, well into adulthood, that his ‘mother’ was his maternal grandmother, and his ‘sister’ was his mother.

Among the revelations in Jack:

• Jack's notorious penny-pinching, such as the time he came home from a movie set with a doggie bag of catered Mexican food.
• The woman Jack ‘shared’ with Robert Evans and Warren Beatty.
• The night Christina Onassis, who'd had a fling with Jack in Los Angeles , got mad at him for seducing a girl in her party at Xenon.
• The beauty queen who was still married to drug dealer Tom Sullivan when she was drawn to Jack.
• The beautiful, talented costar who showed up at Jack's house at 1 A.M. and what happened when live-in girlfriend Anjelica Huston answered the intercom.
• The night Steve Rubell ran around Studio 54 saying, "We got to keep Ryan O'Neal and Jack Nicholson away from each other. There's going to be a big fight."
• Why Rebecca Broussard refused him when Jack asked for her hand in marriage in 1993, even after having two children with him.
• Why Katharine Hepburn's goddaughter still loves Jack and has spent years looking for a man who can measure up to him.
• Diane Keaton's reaction to Jack passing gas during filming of a love scene for Something's Gotta Give.
• Jennifer Howard, who found Jack's lovemaking "very oomph! He knows what he's doing. You can kind of just let go. Let him le-e-e-ad the way!"

…This is a brazen appeal to the lust for sordid celebrity stories with just enough moralizing so that readers won't feel too cheap and dirty afterward. – Publishers Weekly

This book is tabloid stuff, but the author delivers a coherent, behind-the-scenes narrative of Nicholson's life and career and some fresh insights into the actor's work. "I like to play people that haven't existed yet," Nicholson is quoted as saying, "a future something, a cusp character. . . . Once it becomes part of the conventional wisdom, it doesn't seem particularly adventurous or weird or wild." – Alan Moores, Booklist

In Jack, Douglas offers us a provocative portrait of the man, the legend, the star: Jack Nicholson. This biography goes deep, relating exclusive interviews with past flames and flings, to shed light on the charisma and magnetism of one of America 's most respected movie stars. However, the judgmental tone, used especially when individual films come under discussion, distracts from the book.

Entertainment / Music / Biographies & Memoirs / African-American

In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr. by Wil Haygood, with a foreword by Denzel Washington (Billboard Books)

He was, for decades, one of the most recognizable figures in the cultural landscape, his image epitomizing a golden age of American show business. His career spanned a lifetime, but for years Sammy Davis, Jr. has remained hidden behind the persona he generated, and so fiercely protected.

Based on painstaking research and more than 250 interviews, Wil Haygood in In Black and White takes us back to the era of vaudeville, where it all began for four-year-old Sammy who ran out onstage one night and stole the show. Raised by his grandmother and vaudevillian father, Davis (1925-1990) never knew the world off the stage. His was a motherless childhood on the road, singing and dancing his way across a segregated America with his father and the formidable showman Will Mastin, struggling together to survive the Depression and the demise of vaudeville itself.
Davis never went to school. With an ambition honed by poverty and an obsessive need for applause, he drove his way into the nightclub circuit of the 1940s and 1950s and slowly began to make a name for himself, hustling his way to top billing and eventually to recording contracts. From there, he was to stake his claim on Broadway, in Hollywood , and, of course, in Las Vegas .
Davis made his living entertaining white people but was often denied service in the very venues he played. Drafted into a newly integrated U.S. Army in the 1940s, he saw up close the fierce tensions that seethed below the surface. Dragged into the civil rights movement, he witnessed a hatred that often erupted into violence. In his broad and varied friendships and alliances (with Frank Sinatra; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Richard Nixon; Sidney Poitier; Marilyn Monroe, to name just a few), not to mention his romances (his relationship with Kim Novak and his marriage to the Scandinavian blond beauty May Britt drew death threats), he forged uncharted paths across racial lines. Admired and reviled by both blacks and whites, he was tormented all his life by raging insecurities, and never quite came to terms with his own. Davis ’s only true sense of his identity was as a performer.

Reading this book is a very moving experience: because of the power of Wil Haygood’s prose; because of the compassion with which he writes about his complex and tortured subject; and because of the penetrating historical insight, indeed brilliance, with which he weaves Sammy Davis Jr.’s life and the poignant and fascinating story of black entertainment in America into the whole tragedy of race relations in our country. Mr. Haygood writes with great power and great compassion, and he has created a book that I couldn’t put down and that I will never forget. – Robert A. Caro
In this moving, exhaustive life of one of America ’s greatest entertainers, Haygood (King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell Jr.) casts Sammy Davis Jr. as a man shifting between identities, between the worlds of black people and white people. – Publishers Weekly, starred review
 In Black and White presents a full picture of one of the most recognizable entertainers of the last century – a picture with all the shades of gray. In reading In Black and White, it becomes clear why author Wil Haygood not only has won honors for his journalism, but also high praise for his work in biography. – Ebony
[Haygood] writes like a demon, with perspective, understanding and compassion to burn. It's a pleasure not to be missed. – Jan Herman, Chicago Sun-Times
One of the best showbiz biographies in a long while... In Black and White does splendid justice to its subject while brilliantly touching on the larger theme of race in 20th century America... a fascinating read. – Eric Monder, Weekly Variety

In Black and White, a surprising, illuminating, and compulsively readable biography; we are taken beyond the icon, into the singular life of Sammy Davis, Jr. While his psychosexual analysis of Davis ' life is unfailingly perceptive, it doesn't overwhelm the book. In scrupulous detail and with stunning powers of evocation, Haygood brings Sammy’s showbiz life into full relief against the backdrop of an America in the throes of racial change. Haygood brings us a vivid cultural history of the twentieth century, chronicling black entertainment from its beginnings and the birth of popular culture as we know it. In Black and White transcends simple biography to become an important record, both celebratory and elegiac, of a vanished America and one of its greatest entertainers.

Entertainment / Music / History

A History of Music in Western Culture (2nd Edition) by Mark Evan Bonds (Pearson Prentice Hall) rests on the premise that the best way to convey the history of Western music is to focus squarely on the music.

A History of Music in Western Culture is organized around a carefully selected repertory of works, integrating the requisite names, dates, and concepts around specific compositions. Once familiar with a representative body of music, students can better grasp the evolution of musical style and music's changing uses within the Western tradition. Even more importantly, they will have a sound basis from which to explore other musical works and repertories. The text builds its narrative around the core repertory represented in the accompanying Anthology of Scores and the corresponding set of compact discs. It is not an encyclopedia. Written by Mark Evan Bonds, music history teacher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , the goal is to help students gain a broad understanding of the nature of music, its role in society, and the ways in which these have changed over time.

A History of Music in Western Culture seeks to challenge students to think critically about its subject. The history of music is too often presented as one long series of indisputable facts. Bonds has tried to integrate into this text enough primary source documents – excerpts from composers' letters, contemporary reviews, theoretical treatises, and the like – to demonstrate the ways in which the raw materials of history can be open to conflicting interpretations. Indeed, the most interesting his­torical issues tend to be precisely those about which experts disagree.

Following a Prologue on the music of classical Antiquity, the text is divided into six parts, each corresponding to a major era in music history: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, 19th Century, and 20th Century. The text concludes with a brief Epilogue on music today. Each part begins with a prelude – with one or more maps – that summarizes the historical and social background of each era, and the first chapter in each part provides an overview of the major stylistic characteristics and theoretical concerns of the music of the era. The text also comes with a variety of supplementary print and multimedia materials for both instructors and students and offers a variety of features and pedagogical tools:

• The opening pages of each prelude include a comparative timeline that lists major musical events side-by-side with other significant historical events.
• An outline at the beginning of each chapter gives students an overview of the content of the chapter.
• A graphic summary of style differences in each part highlights the principal differences in musical style between each era and the one immediately preceding (Renaissance vs. Medieval; Baroque vs. Renaissance, etc.).
• Key terms are highlighted in each chapter and defined in a glossary at the end of the book.
• Significant composers are featured in extended Composer Profiles that include key biographical information and a survey of principal works.
• Primary Evidence boxes contain excerpts from relevant contemporary documents, exposing students to some of the raw materials of music history. A brief introduction places each selection in its context and challenge students to think about the interpretation of historical evidence.
• Focus boxes highlight important information that expands on aspects of the core narrative.
• Numerous examples, tables, and diagrams help students grasp key points and visualize musical structures.
• The last chapter in each part concludes with a set of discussion questions designed to stimulate reflection on broad issues in music history.

New Features of the Second Edition

The text has been expanded, corrected, and updated, with more Focus boxes, added primary sources, and improved graphics. Other key changes include:

• Full-color throughout the text. A History of Music in Western Culture is richly illustrated with carefully chosen images drawn from the period under discussion. Detailed captions reveal the wealth of information – about music, composers, and their role in society – embedded in these artworks. More than two dozen new illustrations have been added to the Second Edition.
• Performance Practice boxes. Within each historical era, alternative perfor­mances of at least one work are examined in detail. Students thereby have the opportunity to compare and discuss strikingly different ways of realizing the same work. In the Baroque era, for example, students can hear excerpts from Bach's ‘Goldberg’ Variations as performed by Blandine Verlet, playing on an 18th-century harpsichord, and as performed by Glenn Gould, playing on his 20th-century concert grand piano.
• Expanded repertory. New works in the Second Edition include excerpts from Paganini's Caprices and Liszt's Transcendental Etudes (integrated into an expanded discussion of instrumental virtuosity in the 19th century), the second movement of Dvoiřák's New World Symphony (integrated into an expanded discussion of nationalism in the 19th century), and W. C. Handy's St. Louis Blues (integrated into an expanded discussion of jazz forms and performance traditions in the 20th century).

Features of the Score Anthology

The works in the Anthology of Scores have been carefully selected to represent the developments in music history discussed in the text. Every selection in the Anthology of Scores is discussed in the text. Volume I covers Antiquity through the Baroque Era; Volume II covers music of the Classical Era to the present.

New to the Score Anthology

• New works. New selections illustrating 19th-century virtuosity, 19th-century nationalism, and 20th-century jazz have been added to the anthology of scores.
• Improved editions. New editions of selected works have been provided as needed. The excerpt from Lully's Armide, for example, now comes from the new (2003) edition of the composer's complete works. Selected elements of the plain-chant Mass ordinary, in turn, are presented in the modern chant notation of the Liber usualis, providing students with exposure to a different (but widely-used) notational system for this repertory.
• Integrated commentary. Excerpts from the text are now integrated into the score anthology at the end of each selection, providing students with basic information and a brief discussion of every work.
• Improved cross-referencing to text and recordings. Each selection in the anthology opens with a clear cross-reference to the recorded version of the work (disc and track number) and to the discussion of the work within the text (page number). In addition, the score and recordings in the anthology now correspond exactly within their chronological span (Volume One of each through the Baroque Era; Volume Two of each since the Classical Era).
• Internal trackings keyed to recordings. Longer works now have internal tracks on the recordings; these points are clearly indicated throughout the Anthology of Scores for ease of use by students and instructors alike.

Features of the Recorded Anthology

Fifteen compact discs complement the text and Anthology of Scores. Produced by Naxos of America, these recordings draw on the resources of many different recording labels and feature some of the most distinguished artists and ensembles of our time, such as the Gothic Voices, Anonymous 4, the Hilliard Ensemble, the Orlando Consort, Les Arts Florissants, the Concerto Italiano, the English Baroque Soloists, and the Quatuor Mosaiques. Representative soloists include Paul O'Dette, Louis Bagger, Emily van Evera, Malcolm Bilsson, and Jessye Norman. The discs are arranged chronologically and mirror the content and structure of the Anthology.

New to the Recorded Anthology

• New works. New selections illustrating 19th-century virtuosity, 19th-century nationalism, and 20th-century jazz have been added.
• Internal trackings. Trackings make it easier for students to follow complex notation and to skip to specific structural moments in any given work.
• Alternative performances. For each historical era, at least one work is provided with an alternative performance, available on the supplement compact disc.

A History of Music in Western Culture focuses squarely on the music, connecting names, dates, and concepts to the study of a carefully selected repertory of works. The text tells the story of Western music in a clear and compelling narrative to help students gain a broad understanding of the nature of music, its role in society, and the ways in which it has changed over time. And it challenges students to think critically about music, using primary sources to demonstrate that the raw materials of history can often be interpreted in different ways, and that these contrasting interpretations can open new perspectives.

Entertainment / Music

Off the Record: Country Music’s Top Label Executives Tell Their Stories by Jennifer Ember Pierce (Madison Books)

How does a record label function? How do you get to the top? How are key decisions made regarding artists and their music, finances, marketing, publicity, production, publishing, and videos?

For those readers have ever wondered how stars become stars, how records are really made, or what their chances are of becoming a major recording artist, this book is it. Questions are asked and answered regarding recording costs, studio selection, studio time, payment to session musicians and studio engineers, what percentages are paid to producers, how radio works with the labels, what type of personality one must have to be a recording artist in today's megamarkets, the most important personality traits necessary for continued success in the music industry, and how the various departments and divisions of the major labels function, including A&R (artists and repertoire), sales, promotion, publicity, and video.

Off the Record covers the inner workings of some of the major record labels in Nashville . Written by long-time Nashville author and songwriter Jennifer Ember Pierce, this firsthand account from record executive interviews gives readers a close-up look into one of the biggest industries in the world – the music industry. Interweaving personal memories with professional insights, Nashville greats tell their personal stories, including where they came from, how they made it in the music business, and how they pick the stars, create the songs, and market the magic that fuels the Music City . The executives are legendary: James Stroud, president of DreamWorks Records, a company owned by SKG (Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen): Luke Lewis, president of Mercury Records; Lynn Shults, who covers Atlantic, Capitol, and United Artists Records: Danny Kee, A&R executive at Warner/Reprise; Mike Curb, president of Curb Records: and Joe Galante, president of RLG (RCA Label Group), and each one has a fascinating story to tell.

Both foreign and domestic markets are included, as are those who really own the record companies – that is, the chain of ownership and the dis­tributors of the records on a worldwide basis. Each chapter also includes a brief history of the label under discussion.

This book is a must for anyone who wants to have an accurate knowledge of the major Nashville labels. – Susan Carol Davis, board member of the Nashville Film & Video Association

This book will be enjoyed by fans of the music industry as well as serious historians. – Connie Bradley, vice president, American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers

Jennifer Ember Pierce has represented the music industry and its boardrooms with panache and truth. Her book… is the perfect picture window into the ever-changing world of record label executives. – Cheryl E. Leclair, owner and CEO, Encore Plus Entertainment

This book is a wonderful book because it covers the inside stories and struggles of record label executives who have paid their dues. – Harold R. Bradley, president of the Nashville Association of Musicians Local 257

Off the Record tells a forthright tale, from the beginnings of certain artists' careers all the way to the completion of their first albums. Pierce is well respected in the major music industry for her loyalty, honesty, and sincerity as she continues to write about all facets of the Nashville music industry. The book provides an excellent overview and history of all sides of the recording industry, from the introduction of new artists to the pain of letting them go. No doubt will be left in readers’ minds as to how important record sales are to a label.

The extensive label histories combine to make Off the Record an invaluable resource for music historians and industry professionals and a fascinating read for fans. Off the Record should be on the desks or in the libraries of anyone who wants to really know ‘the true story’ of the major Nashville record labels.

Fiction / Contemporary

Drives Like a Dream: A Novel by Porter Shreve (Houghton Mifflin Company)

Out with the old, in with the new... Make this year's model just different enough so that last year's seems shabby and dull. Keep the wheels ever rolling... Lydia had little patience for that old comparison between cars and women and yet she couldn't help thinking, with increasing irritation, that her latest book mirrored her own life in uncanny ways.

Lydia Modine, an automobile historian who is writing a book about planned obsolescence, finds the subject of her current project hits a little too close to home in Porter Shreve’s new novel Drives Like a Dream. Sixty-one years old and about to come undone, Lydia is a woman who has poured her heart and soul into her family, only to feel utterly abandoned by them. Her ex-husband is about to marry a woman half his age. Her three grown children have all flown the coop, and she feels especially alienated from her only daughter Jessica. Her latest book about Detroit 's car industry has hit a dead end.

Following the motto that desperate times call for desperate measures, Lydia schemes to reassemble her fragmented family through a series of lies intended to lure her children home to Detroit , in the hope that they might stay for good. The secrets pile up, and all the while Lydia is attempting to solve a mystery about her own father, an esteemed car designer for General Motors who may have been hiding secrets of his own. As the drama (and hilarity) unfolds, Lydia is forced to refashion her whole notion of family, old and new.

The New York Times called Porter Shreve's first novel, The Obituary Writer, "an involving and sneakily touching story whose twists feel less like the conventions of a genre than the convolutions of a heart – any heart." Newsday hailed the book as "a substantial achievement," and Tim O'Brien described it as "taut, compelling, and moving, beautifully written, engrossing from start to finish."'

Heartbreaking, funny, deeply felt, Drives Like a Dream takes us on an old-fashioned motoring tour through the life of a remarkable family. At the center of this splendid novel is Lydia Modine, a stubborn, passionate, scheming matriarch — and unforgettable. For all of its beautifully crafted surfaces, make no mistake, Porter Shreve writes, as Chekhov said, ‘out of his characters' psychic wounds.’ He is a fine, fine writer indeed. – Howard Norman, author of The Haunting of L

Porter Shreve once again demonstrates his talent for creating richly complicated characters and then for giving them the kind of second chances that we all wish we could have in our own lives. Drives Like a Dream is impossible to put down. – Margot Livesey

Peppered with an assortment of memorable characters, this entertaining novel effectively combines a tale of loss and letting go with an examination of a large industry's past. – Library Journal

With heart and humor, Drives Like a Dream is a wry tale for any mother who has struggled with the empty nest blues, and for any daughter whose mother has driven her just a little bit crazy. And for anyone who is interested in the twilight of the age of the automobile and the conspiracy theories that surrounded it, this novel makes for the fun read.

Health, Mind & Body / Alternative Medicine

Dr. Earl Mindell's Natural Remedies for 150 Ailments by Earl Mindell (Basic Health Publications)

Now updated and expanded, Dr. Earl Mindell's Natural Remedies for 150 Ailments shows readers how to stop turning to potentially harmful prescription and over-the-counter medicines to ease their ailments – and to turn instead to Mother Nature for safe, natural, and effective remedies to relieve troublesome health conditions. World-renowned health expert Dr. Earl Mindell shows readers which nutritional and herbal supplements they can use to treat common ailments, both large and small. Mindell is an internationally recognized expert on nutrition, drugs, vitamins, and herbal remedies, a registered pharmacist, master herbalist, and a professor of nutrition at Pacific Western University in Los Angeles .

Natural treatments and preventative measures may be effective replacements for many of the most commonly used medications for many ailments. His remedies include supplements; herbs; therapies such as acupuncture, biofeedback, homeopathy, detoxification, Tai Chi, and yoga; foods and special diets; other things to try, and things to avoid and/or watch out for. He offers specific information on dosages, how often, and when to take vitamins and herbs.

Dr. Earl Mindell's Natural Remedies for 150 Ailments features the doctor's time-tested recipes for the treatment of various disorders, including: allergies, arthritis pain, backaches, colds and flu, dandruff, depression, diabetes, fatigue, fibromyalgia, heartburn, insomnia, jet lag, memory loss, nausea, PMS, psoriasis and eczema, sprains and strains, vertigo, weight loss, yeast infection, headaches, indigestion, osteoporosis, premature aging, prostate disorders, skin problems, cardiovascular disease, cholesterol…

Known for his simple basic guidelines combined with common sense, Mindell's natural remedies have successfully helped people to banish their chronic ailments. This newly updated and expanded version of his book (the first edition covered natural remedies for 101 ailments) continues his mission.

Readers will find themselves turning to Dr. Earl Mindell's Natural Remedies for 150 Ailments time after time to learn what they can do to live a healthy and pain-free life like Mother Nature intended.

Health, Mind & Body / Self-help

The Starving Family: Caregiving Mothers and Fathers Share Their Eating Disorder Wisdom by Cheryl Dellasega, with a foreword by Kitty Weston (Champion Press)

Eating disorders are not a new problem, but they are an increasing one.

Each day Americans spend an average of $109 million on dieting and diet related products. Although eating disorders are much more common in females, men are experiencing a rise in eating disorders also, through weight consciousness and body training for sports and athletic events. It is estimated that as much as 40 % of young girls, as early as grades 1, 2, and 3, are already experiencing stress and concern over body weight and body image. By the time they reach college, 10 percent of the female student population will have full fledged eating disorders, of which half of them will be suffering from bulimia nervosa, and another, smaller percent, from anorexia nervosa.

These statistics are more than alarming.

We’ve heard from experts, and we’ve heard from patients...now it’s time to hear from families. Author Cheryl Dellasega offers a guide for family caregivers of persons with eating disorders. Culled from the experiences of over a dozen diverse families who have ‘been there, done that,’ The Starving Family covers new territory on how to cope at home when anorexia, bulimia, or ED-NOS strikes a loved one. Internationally known scholar in family issues, Dellasega, professor at Penn State University College of Medicine, breaks new ground on coping with this increasing number of offspring, suffering their way through the world of food. Stories from mothers and fathers across the country, who have lived with a child stricken by anorexia or bulimia, were collected to illustrate the family-side of eating disorders. They talk about topics such as the process of discovery; finding professional help; the impact of eating disorders on siblings, marriages, and careers; how to cope with insurance companies; and what happens after recovery.

Using the wisdom gleaned from her studies, Dellasega offers support, insight, comfort and strategies that will appeal to both parents and professionals, when faced with EDs. Dellasega says that as more children develop anorexia or bulimia, more parents are expected to come forward and provide heroic levels of care. The day-to-day support needed by a daughter or son in the throes of an eating disorder can be likened to the unending ‘36 hour days’ confronted by caregivers of older individuals with Alzheimer's Disease. All too often, mothers must leave their jobs just to stay on top of the complex regimen of care required. At the same time, parents often feel disenfranchised by the health-care industry. Medical providers ignore their contributions and health insurers battle with them over reimbursement. This leaves families ‘starving:’ – starving for the healthy child they have lost to a potentially fatal disorder, starving for information and support from professionals, and starving for the reassurance that they are not the cause of the anorexia or bulimia.

This rich, deeply feeling book is a nourishment of connectedness: We are not alone. Thank you, Cheryl Dellasega. – Laura Collins, author of Eating with Your Anorexic
...stories of struggle and hope that can nurture every person touched by the crisis of eating disorders. – Joe Kelly, President, Dads and Daughters.org

In Dellasega’s latest, groundbreaking book, The Starving Family, care-giving mothers and fathers share their eating disorder wisdom. Dellasega offers ‘a first of its kind’ approach to the secretive world of families struggling with children who suffer from eating disorders – The Starving Family recognizes parents of children with eating disorders as caregivers with a vital role in the treatment program. The insight, support and strategies, which are presented, will appeal to both parents and professionals, and readers should find her book of tremendous value.

Health, Mind & Body / Self-help

Healing Trauma: A Pioneering Program for Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body by Peter A. Levine, book with CD (Sounds True)

Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering. But what is trauma – and how do we heal?

We often hold the tacit assumption that all of our suffering stems from events in the past. But, whatever the initial seed of trauma, the deeper truth is that our suffering is more closely a result of how we deal with the effect that these past events have on us in the present. – Peter A. Levine, Ph.D.

Researchers have shown that survivors of accidents, disaster, and childhood trauma often endure life-long symptoms ranging from anxiety and depression to unexplained physical pain, fatigue, illness, and harmful ‘acting out’ behaviors reflecting these painful events. As a young stress researcher at UC­ Berkeley, Levine found that all animals, including humans, are born with a natural ability to rebound from distressing situations. Today, millions in both the bodywork and the psychotherapeutic fields are turning to Peter A. Levine’s Somatic Experiencing methods to effectively overcome these challenges. In Healing Trauma, Levine gives readers the personal how-to-guide for using the theory he first introduced in his highly acclaimed work, Waking the Tiger.

Healing Trauma shows readers how to develop body awareness to ‘renegotiate’ and heal traumas – to ‘revisit’ rather than relive them; emergency ‘first-aid’ measures for times of distress; nature's lessons – the physiological roots of emotions, and more.

Trauma is a fact of life," teaches Levine, "but it doesn't have to be a life sentence." Now, with one fully integrated self-healing tool, he shares his essential methods to address unexplained symptoms of trauma at their source – the body – to return the body to the natural state.

His evocative ideas, so simple one wonders why they have never been grasped before, show how traumas should be addressed and healed. – International Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine

In Healing Trauma, Levine brings readers face to face with his new approach – not a ‘talking cure,’ but a physiological process for identifying and releasing past traumas, and cultivating an awareness of one’s body. With this book and the exercises on the included CD, readers learn Levine's Healing Trauma Program to find a pathway out of unnecessary suffering and ‘recapture the simple wonders of life.’

Health, Mind & Body / Self-help

You Can Have an Amazing Life in Just 60 Days by John F. Demartini (Hay House) contains the 60 universal laws and a structure to help readers apply them in their lives, learn to believe in themselves and live out their dreams.

Motivational speaker John Demartini says “I've dedicated my life … to the study and teaching of the universal laws of life, especially as they apply to personal growth and healing. The results have taken me from living as a surf bum and high school dropout, to living the life of my dreams – with abundant wealth in all areas of my life – spiritual, mental, career, finance, family, social, and physical.”

This is his story, taken from You Can Have an Amazing Life in Just 60 Days:

“What you're about to read is the result of more than three decades of research and 20-plus years of clinical experience as a chiropractor, healer, and teacher. My road to these professions has hardly been traditional, and it's certainly been bumpy. Born with several physical deformities, I was later told that I'd never read or write very well. By then, I'd overcome my body's limitations and fallen in love with sports, and I dreamed of being a world-class surfer.

“As an adolescent, I was moved to a new school when my family relocated from Houston to Richmond , Texas . Although I'd gained a reputation among my old classmates for being an athlete, at this new place I became known as a punching bag for the local bullies. Disheartened by my academic prospects and frightened by the violence at school, I sought the support of my parents to let me go to California to surf. At 14, I hitch-hiked west and stayed in beach towns up and down the coast, living hand to mouth and meeting other surfers who helped me get by.

“I rode some of the biggest waves in California before moving on to an island paradise on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii, where I surfed from sunrise to sunset, lived in a tent, and ate whatever hung low on the tropical trees. It was very ‘back to nature,’ and I was quite content, but there was one problem: Unknowingly, I consumed a poison in the form of the toxic seeds of the woodrose plant. In time, the strychnine accumu­lated in my system and caused me to become seriously ill. After I'd spent nearly four days unconscious in my tent, a woman from the jungle hap­pened by and helped me walk to the local health-food store. I was 17.

“Slowly, I began to recover. But one thing weighed on my mind: At the health-food store, I'd seen a poster for Dr. Paul C. Bragg, a naturopath, longevitist, physical therapist, and health consultant to movie stars, as well as Jack La Lanne's teacher. I became determined to see Dr. Bragg speak when he came to Hawaii just a couple weeks after my ordeal.

When the day arrived, I hitchhiked to the presentation. With great power and precision, then-93-year-old Dr. Bragg delivered a truly profound message. I was transfixed by how wise and physically vibrant he was – at one point, he even leaned over into a handstand and continued his presentation upside down without missing a beat. Near the end of his talk, he announced that it was time for everyone to determine their purpose and vision. What special mission would we dedicate the rest of our lives to?

“I was stunned. How was I supposed to know this? But Dr. Bragg helped by guiding us in something he called the Alpha Meditation. During this experience, I cemented my desires: I wanted to research the laws of the universe as they related to the body, mind, and soul, particularly as they could lead me to healing and traveling. I'd share my findings with people and get paid for it. At the end of the meditation, I was teary-eyed, inspired, and on fire – I would be a teacher, healer. And philosopher.

“Big dreams, right? They seemed especially grandiose for a high school dropout/surfer who'd just walked away from death's door and was still living in a tent, not to mention having some serious learning dis­abilities. So I approached Dr. Bragg later and shared my predicament. He told me that I could overcome all this if I just did one thing (which you'll discover on Day 6 of this book).

“His advice certainly bore fruit. At 18, I returned home to Texas , took and passed my high school equivalency exam, then attended college in pursuit of my dream of becoming a healer.

“Years later, it humbles me to reflect on my journey from the difficult classrooms of my youth, to the beaches of Oahu, to the crisp clinical office I ran for years, to the stages all over the world where I now deliver a message that still stirs my soul. What moved me then, and what keeps going me today, are the laws you'll be reading about and applying in You Can Have an Amazing Life in Just 60 Days.”

Demartini advises readers to read the laws of life in You Can Have an Amazing Life in Just 60 Days and let them sink in, allowing themselves to incorporate their essence into their daily actions; their wisdom will awaken their spirit to the power within. Demartini advises readers to then read the book again, law by law, so that they can integrate the individual principles more deeply. Examples of universal laws from Week 1:

• Love
• Inspiration
• Quality Questions
• Blessings
• Presence
• Genius
• Appreciation

You Can Have an Amazing Life in Just 60 Days is new age philosophy without the mystical, metaphysical trappings. This is a great book for readers who are on a downward jag and ready to rethink their lives or ‘turn over a new leaf’ as my grandma would have put it.

Health, Mind & Body / Self-help / Sex / Gender Studies

Tantric Sex for Women: A Guide for Lesbian, Bi, Hetero, and Solo Lovers by Christa Schulte (Hunter House Publishers)

Tantric sex refers to Eastern approaches for deepening sexual unity, prolonging sexual experiences, and enhancing connection with the Sacred. The history of tantra is ancient, as is women's practice of it – said to date back 3,000 years to the Zami cult of India . Yet, in the many centuries where literature has been produced on the subject — and despite the proliferation of contemporary women's sexuality books and the nearly 100 books on tantric sex – there has never been an English language book devoted to tantra for women – until now.

The approach in Tantric Sex for Women makes sense. Women often define themselves by their differences. Yet, all women – lesbian, bi, or heterosexual – share something primal and basic: the yoni. According to author Christa Schulte, "Yoni is the Sanskrit name for the female genitalia. However, yoni is much more than an anatomical term. It is the holy place of female desire, the lap that births new life, and the praiseworthy location of a woman's deepest power."

Tantric Sex for Women encourages women to explore their sexuality in an open, playful, personal way. Using an inclusive, empowering approach, Tantric Sex for Women explains how women – lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, or solo – can add relish to sexual encounters and increase their pleasure through tantric methods. Schulte, who lives in Germany & has a background in Gestalt therapy, explains the basics of tantric sex, including how to become more body-aware, how to cultivate pleasure using all five senses, and how to practice ‘Tara-tantra,’ a woman-centered tantric method of her own creation.

Tantric Sex for Women includes over 50 exercises – solo exercises, exercises for couples, transformation rituals, love games, meditations, and massage techniques, and covers numerous practical strategies for helping women enhance their sensitivity, remove barriers to fulfilling experiences, and explore the spiritual dimension of their sexuality. Not only does Tantric Sex for Women show readers how to expand and enhance sexual gratification, it promotes an attitude of remaining open to the many ecstasies of everyday life.

Tantra is about combining sexual energies, so male readers will learn about little-known facets of women's sexuality by familiarizing themselves with the concepts in the book. Chapters 1 and 2 set the stage by providing relevant context on tantra as it pertains to women. Schulte discusses:

• The essence of tantra and its meaning for women in the 21st century.
• The energy centers, or chakras, and women's erogenous zones.
• Yantric and Cherokee (Quodoushka) lore on the variety of women's orgasms.
• How tantra can activate the healing power of sexual energy.
• How to feel at home in one’s body.

Following Chapters 1 and 2 are the "fun" chapters (3-10) where readers will find 54 tantric exercises to help enhance their sensitivity, remove barriers to fulfilling experiences, and explore the spiritual dimension of their sexuality. Included are:

• 17 games and exercises for individuals.

• 17 games and exercises for pairs.

• 5 massage exercises for pairs.

• 6 rituals of transformation.

• 6 games for the expansion of love energy.

• 3 meditation exercises.

Designed to enrich and liberate the self, promote trust and intimacy, and lead to unimagined ecstatic heights, the exercises range widely in tone. Some are rapturous, others adventurous; some are edgy, still others are imbued with a sense of calm, safety, and healing. In addition, some exercises are tailored to personality types and moods.

Tantric Sex for Women closes with appendixes and a list of resources. Some of the resources are for further study, while others are meant to enhance tantric practice.

Of the nearly 100 books available on tantric sex, this appears to be the only one including lesbians and bisexual women... Her approach to tantra is women-centered rather than based on male female polarities.... – Library Journal

The book...is particularly brilliant because of its numerous exercises for women, whether for one or for two. If you want to indulge in the ecstasies of everyday life, you can't get around Tantric Sex for Women. Arrestingly, Christa Schulte shows how singular and special women's sexuality is, encouraging them to experiment and explore their appetites and sensations. – Gaypeople.de

Filling an important gap, the book addresses all women regardless of sexual preference. The book speaks to the unity of female experience, while addressing and celebrating multiplicity. Presented clearly, with just the right amount of detail, the exercises are easy to follow – and capture readers’ interest and imaginations.

While a few of the exercises seem silly, others use creative visualization with skill and inventiveness. Readers will undoubtedly find the book to be a life-enhancing aid – it received highly positive reviews in numerous German publications, and was recommended as worthwhile reading for male as well as female readers. Men who read Tantric Sex for Women and play with the exercises are likely to gain valuable insight into women and women's sexuality, making them more sensitive and skilled lovers. The book is also recommended for gender collections.

History / Jewish

An Uneasy Relationship: American Jewish Leadership and Israel, 1948-1957
by Zvi Ganin (Modern Jewish History: Syracuse University Press)

The rise of Israel was also bound to have an effect on American Jewish politics, whose arena was the Jewish organization, local as well as national, usually run by a small number of leaders. From World War I almost until Israel 's emergence, the struggle for supremacy within these organizations was most intense between two major groupings: the American Jewish Committee and the Zionists. The Zionists were the challengers not only in terms of the idea of a Jewish state but also in terms of the committee's historic claim as sole custodian and spokesman of American Jewry regarding overseas relief and as representative in Washington .

The establishment of Israel sharpened this historic struggle, specifically over two basic issues: who holds the purse strings for funds raised for Israel and who speaks for the Jews vis-à-vis the Jewish state. These problems were at the root of the deep conflict between the American Jewish Committee and the Zionists over an agreement drawn up between the World Jewish Congress and the Jewish Agency in 1951 and over the granting of a quasi-sovereign status to the World Zionist Organization-Jewish Agency. In addition, a new personality on the American Jewish scene – Nahum Goldmann, chairman of the American section of the Jewish Agency Executive – was to play an important role in these conflicts.

Set in the first decade of modern Israel 's existence, An Uneasy Relationship illuminates a pivotal chapter in American Zionist history. Zvi Ganin, who has written extensively on American Jewish and Israeli history, describes an evolving dynamic between American Jews and Israel . Ganin offers an insightful look at the changing relationship of American Jews and the reborn Jewish nation/state.

The state of Israel, as the great scholar of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem put it perceptively, “was born prematurely, under decisive historical circumstances which did not allow for any choice,” so that the three collaborators in the miracle of its birth on 14 May 1948 – the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine), the Zionist movement, and American Jewry – were not quite ready for the new reality of Jewish sovereignty. With the British se­curity umbrella gone, the Yishuv had to take on a life-and-death military struggle with the Palestinian Arabs, and subsequently with all the neighboring Arab states, single-handedly. The worldwide Zionist movement, for its part, had to redefine itself in light of the realization of its long-sought goal. The third element, American Jewry, found itself in a paradoxical situation arising out of the tension between myth and reality, with Israel viewed simultaneously as a solution and as a problem, and as both a unifying and a divisive symbol. On the one hand, the new state was a source of intensified Jewish self-identity and pride. On the other, there was a realization of Israel's vulnerable military and economic position; ideological conflicts over the nature of its national persona; disappointment with unfulfilled expectations of cherished images; a profound identity crisis within the ranks of American Zionists over the loss of their role as champions of a cause that had been realized so successfully; and concern that Israel's domestic and foreign policies might affect vital American Jewish sensibilities and interests adversely.

Israel , for its part, was to be greatly disappointed by the failure of America 's Jews, and of the Western Diaspora entirely – particularly the leaders of the Zionist movement – to participate in the Zionist goal of the ingathering of the exiles as new immigrants once the gates of the homeland had opened.

An Uneasy Relationship focuses on leaders, for the inherent divergences among the three elements that collaborate in the miracle of Israel ’s birth were personified in the political, ideological, diplomatic, and personal struggles of a small group of dynamic leaders who shaped policies.

The first and second parts of the study are devoted mainly to the Jewish arena and constitute an examination of the interplay between the Israeli and the American Jewish leadership. They describe and explain the solutions adopted by these leaders to the new problems that arose in Israel , in the Zionist movement, and in the American Jewish community during the formative first years of Israel 's existence. The third part of An Uneasy Relationship deals with the advocacy role played by pro-Israeli leaders in relation to the executive branch in Washington in trying to impress policy makers that Israel was sui generis in the international community, and that it must not be treated solely on the basis of strategic interests. The effect these advocates had on the political relationship between the United States and Israel during the cold war era is examined, along with the assertion that the non-Zionists had become somewhat more effective than the Zionists in this effort.

Israel , poor in natural resources, small in size, and surrounded by hostile Arab states, could not maintain itself and absorb millions of Jewish refugees from all parts of the world without outside help. Such help could come mainly from one source: the United States . But from the period of President Truman's involvement in the creation of Israel and onward, most U.S. foreign and defense policy makers regarded the Zionist enterprise as a heavy burden that complicated America 's relations with the strategically located and oil-rich Arab states. This is where American Jewry's role became crucially important. The deep concern for Israel 's survival on the part of this community, and the political pressure it applied, occasionally helped overcome governmental ambivalence toward the vital needs of the struggling young Jewish state.

Nevertheless, with the creation of Israel in May 1948 and with Truman's upset victory at the end of that year, American Jewish political activity on behalf of Israel underwent significant changes. The Zionist ranks were in disarray, and the American Zionist movement as a potent political force declined. This development, however, was offset by the rise in influence of the non-Zionists, epitomized in early 1949 by the ousting of Abba Hillel Silver and Emanuel Neumann from their leadership positions (although not from con­tinued personal initiative on behalf of Israel) and by the emergence of Jacob Blaustein, the new president of the American Jewish Committee, as an inter­mediary between Washington and Jerusalem.

While all these personalities were deeply moved by the drama of Israel's emergence and were conscious of the vital need to assist it, their activities on behalf of the Jewish state were highly individualistic, reflecting not only the disparate nature of their characters and the way they viewed their roles, but, more broadly, the pluralistic and decentralized nature of American society and, accordingly, of the American Jewish community. These leaders sometimes had divergent views on Israeli policies and on possible solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Tension between the State of Israel, the Zionist movement, and American Jewry developed immediately with the emergence of the new state. The problematic role of the Zionist movement aside, it was only natural that two dis­parate Jewish societies – Israeli and American Jewish – could not always comprehend the different directions followed by one another. Hence a danger arose, as the British Zionist Federation aptly warned soon after the founding of the state:

The State of Israel has solved the problem of Jewish homelessness.... On the other hand, instead of uniting and consolidating the Jewish people all over the world, there is real danger that the existence of the State may split them into two camps – Israeli and Diaspora Jews – each speaking a different language, thinking along different lines, living in a different atmosphere and absorbing a different culture.

Despite this tension, and the potential danger stemming from divergent realities, interests, and ideologies and from the clash of personalities, no unbridgeable gap developed by which Zionism would then have created the Jewish state but lost the Jewish people. In the final analysis, this danger was averted because a small group of leaders (and a few Israeli diplomats), notably Blaustein and Ben-Gurion, were keenly aware of both Israel 's precariousness and the mutual dependence of the American Jewish and Israeli communities, and eventually worked out a viable and creative modus vivendi.

An Uneasy Relationship is one of the first in-depth analyses of the subject during this key period. Tapping into private correspondence, diaries, oral history, scholarly literature, and other materials, Ganin, in An Uneasy Relationship, provides an insightful and richly detailed look at the motivations, passions, and attitudes of Jewish and Israeli leaders on numerous issues – none more affecting than in the stormy debate over dual loyalty.

History / Military / Weapons & Warfare

50 Weapons That Changed Warfare by William Weir (New Page Books)

War has been a constant in our lives since prehistoric times. Unlike many fields of human endeavor, progress in the techniques of slaughter has been quite steady. Mankind has constantly sought to find better, faster, and more efficient ways to kill, and each new wave of human initiative has brought with it a new wave of weaponry. From barbarism to civilization, from the sword and the bow and arrow to the nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile, each new era brought with it new arms that radically changed both the art of warfare and society as a whole.

New weapons have made war different, but not necessarily more horrible. Genghis Khan in the course of a few years, managed to kill 20 million people, which in the 13th century was quite a chunk of humanity. And he did this primarily with bows, arrows, and swords.

Many inventors of weapons, such as Hiram Maxim, with his machine gun, and Alfred Nobel, with dynamite, thought their inventions were so powerful, they would make war too horrible, and the world would try to settle disputes in a more peaceful way.

William Weir, former Army combat correspondent and photographer in the Korean war, author of 50 Battles That Changed the World, in 50 Weapons That Changed Warfare takes another look at the history of warfare, focusing on the hardware that served those famous battles, as well as others not as glorious.

Included are:

• Individual weapons – from spears to the submachine gun.
• Crew-served weapons – from battering rams to ‘Big Bertha’.
• Unmanned weapons – from punji stakes to ‘Bouncing Betty’ landmines and trap guns.

50 Weapons That Changed Warfare even includes devices that, strictly speaking, are weapons carriers, such as tanks and bombers, but which have had enormous effects on the conduct of war. Weir describes the effects of the weapons and how and why they changed warfare – from the bloody carnage produced by hand weapons throughout history to the never used but universally feared fusion bomb, whose sole purpose is to destroy millions of people while leaving buildings intact. Each weapon is not only described, but also illustrated to give a clearer picture of its usage and effects. These weapons have changed not only how we fight, but also why and when we fight. 50 Weapons That Changed Warfare shows us how we got to this day and age, and what had to be done to reach it.

Weir concludes with a chapter on the future of warfare and the words, “…to fight guerrillas, the major powers are going to have to concentrate on drying up the ‘sea’ in which the guerrilla ‘fish’ swim – convincing the populations of enemy countries that it’s in their interest to join us.”

History