SirReadaLot.org

June 2007, Issue #99

Guide to this Issue's Contents 

• The Art of Pastel Painting by Alan Flattmann
• Illustration for Fashion Design: Twelve Steps to the Fashion Figure by Gustavo R. Fernandez
• The Art of People Photography: Inspiring Techniques for Creative Results by Bambi Cantrell & Skip Cohen
• L S Lowry: A Life by Shelley Rohde
• The Anthropology of Art: Histories, Themes, Perspectives by Maruška Svašek
• Your Body Speaks Your Mind: Decoding the Emotional, Psychological, and Spiritual Messages That Underlie Illness by Deb Shapiro
• China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World by Ted C. Fishman
• Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success by Sylvia Ann Hewlett
• The Anti-Inflammation Diet and Recipe Book: Protect Yourself and Your Family from Heart Disease, Arthritis, Diabetes, Allergies – and More by Jessica K. Black
• The Web's Awake: An Introduction to the Field of Web Science and the Concept of Web Life by Philip D. Tetlow
• Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas edited by Louise Stoll & Karen Seashore Louis
• Assessing Teacher Competency: Five Standards-Based Steps to Valid Measurement Using the CAATS Model by Judy R. Wilkerson & William Steve Lang
• Jimmy Page: Magus, Musician, Man: An Unauthorized Biography by George Case
• The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia by John Kenneth Muir
• Other People's Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America by Jason Tanz
• Just Play Ball by Joe Garagiola
• The Foundations of Shiatsu by Chris Jarmey
• This Old Spouse: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Restoring, Renovating, and Rebuilding Your Relationship by Sharyn Wolf
• Ruling Pine Ridge: Oglala Lakota Politics from the IRA to Wounded Knee by Akim D. Reinhardt
• The Fall of Constantinople: The Ottoman Conquest of Byzantium by David Nicolle, John Haldon, & Stephen Turnbull
• Russia's Revolution: Essays 1989-2006 by Leon Aron
• The Wine Lover's Guide to Auctions: The Art & Science of Buying and Selling Wines by Ursula Hermacinski
• Felt It! Stitch It! Fabulous!: Creative Wearables from Flea Market Finds by Katheryn Tidwell Bieber
• Super-Simple Creative Costumes: Mix & Match Your Way to Make Believe by Sue Astroth
• Color Your Life: How to Design Your Home with Colors from Your Heart by Elaine Ryan
• A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity by William Coperthwaite, with photographs by Peter Forbes
• Luncheon of the Boating Party: A Novel by Susan Vreeland
• The Second Objective by Mark Frost
• A Dead Question by Gerald Hammond
• The First Stone by Judith Kelman
• In Secret Service: A Novel by Mitch Silver
• The Faith of Condoleezza Rice by Leslie Montgomery
• Religious Education in the African American Tradition: A Comprehensive Introduction by Kenneth H. Hill
• Human Sexuality in the Catholic Tradition edited by Kieran Scott & Harold Daly Horell
• Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice: Navigating a Path to Peace by Daniel G. Groody
• Ascension Magick: Ritual, Myth & Healing for the New Aeon by Christopher Penczak
• Alien Worlds: Social and Religious Dimensions of Extraterrestrial Contact edited by Diana G. Tumminia
• Render Unto Darwin: Philosophical Aspects of the Christian Right's Crusade against Science by James H. Fetzer
• Women of Vision: Their Psychology, Circumstances and Success edited by Eileen A. Gavin, Aphrodite Clamar & Mary Anne Siderits
• Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door 2007: The Travel Skills Handbook by Rick Steves
• Lonely Planet Turkey by Verity Campbell, Jean-Bernard Carillet

Arts & Photography / Drawing / How-to

The Art of Pastel Painting by Alan Flattmann (Pelican Publishing Company)

In Flattmann's art, everything evolves from an emotional reaction to the subject. He wants people to sense the excitement he has about the imagery that appears in his mind's eye long before he commits paint to canvas or pastel to paper. – from Alan Flattmann's French Quarter Impressions, by John R. Kemp

For more than forty years, world-renowned expert and impressionist artist Alan Flattmann has used pastels to capture the world around him in vibrant hues. In The Art of Pastel Painting Flattmann teaches the art and technique of modern pastel. Traditionally a leading textbook on pastels in art institutions, the book has been revised from its original 1987 version to include updated technical information, demonstrations, and new paintings from the artist.

Flattmann’s works reflect what he refers to as the modern pastel renaissance, an era that deviates from the traditionally perceived seventeenth-century use of pastels. Veering away from the conventional practice of using light tints and delicate touches to produce powdery coiffures, the pastel renaissance approaches its subjects with passion and color, attracting new audiences to the craft. Flattmann's masterpieces illustrate The Art of Pastel Painting, which has served as a standard textbook for pastel techniques. New paintings and photographs display methods involving lighting, palette, pigments, grounds, and preservation.
Impressionist painter Flattmann was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1946. Showing an early aptitude for art, he studied at the McCrady Art School on a New Orleans Art Association scholarship in his senior year of high school. The internationally known artist is the recipient of many major awards and honors, including his 2006 induction into the Pastel Society Hall of Fame. He also received the 1996 American Artist Art Masters Award for pastels. In 1991, he was awarded the Master Pastelist distinction by the Pastel Society of America, and he has been listed in Who's Who in American Art since 1981. Because of his decades of success painting the historic French Quarter, September 28 is celebrated as Alan Flattmann Day in New Orleans.

Flattmann’s work has been featured in Alan Flattmann's French Quarter Impressions written by John R. Kemp, The Poetic Realism of Alan Flattmann by Joyce Kelley, and articles in numerous magazines. He was awarded first place for landscape and third place for portrait in the inaugural Pastel Artist International Magazine Awards for World-Wide Excellence. Flattmann's work may be found in hundreds of private and corporate collections, including the collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Oklahoma Art Center, Mississippi Museum of Art, and Lauren Rogers Museum of Art. Bryant Galleries, located in New Orleans and Jackson, Mississippi, are the exclusive agents for his work. The artist continues to teach painting workshops for art groups around the United States and abroad.
As an art medium, pastels are convenient and easy to use due to their solid composition. The purity and intensity of dry color produce an extraordinary range of effects on a variety of surfaces. Their flexibility makes them popular for beginners, while advanced students continually challenge traditional boundaries.

Flattmann's passionate instruction in the use of this delicate yet enduring art remains the voice coaxing potential until students capture the essence of the subject. With the skill of a master, Flattmann carries readers from basic concept to advanced practices, all the while capturing the essence of the craft in The Art of Pastel Painting. Flattmann seamlessly advances through the process of creation while offering invaluable advice on every as­pect. Considerations such as surface texture, studio lighting, basic painting concepts, systematic procedure, fram­ing, and preservation are handled in a logical progression. Beginners and serious students alike will find Flattmann's knowledgeable instruction and advice indispensable.

Arts & Photography / Graphic Design / Commercial Illustration / Fashion

Illustration for Fashion Design: Twelve Steps to the Fashion Figure by Gustavo R. Fernandez (Prentice Hall)

The ability to draw has been the subject of debate for as long as people have been able to do so. Most people accept the theory that it is an innate ability – either you have it or you do not. As an ed­ucator, I do not subscribe to this school of thought, because I have had the opportunity to help stu­dents intimidated by the thought of taking a draw­ing class. I have also had countless students who put off their dreams of designing because of this very fear. – from the book

Written by Gustavo Fernandez, teacher at Design and Architecture Senior High School in Miami, Illustration for Fashion Design merges the age-old artistry of design with the latest styles in the fashion world and brings it to students to make drawing fun and easy. One of the main objectives of the book is to give precise, reliable instruction to promote con­fidence and creativity.

This text provides instruction and guidance from the basic poses used in fashion to advanced composition and figure studies. Illustration for Fashion Design covers a broad range of topics in the fashion drawing field and explains them each using a step-by-step approach. From model drawing and marker rendering, to children’s wear and accessories, this book provides answers to the most frequently asked questions, including trouble shooting sections. It is supported by an instructional DVD. An illustrated index includes everything from purses to seam finishes and a separate chapter is devoted to accessories. Balancing creativity and function, it covers techniques that yield professional results and are easy to use regardless of one’s level of experience.

The step-by-step approach gives readers the tools to create professional designs which merge form and function. The broad range of topics includes chapters on menswear, drawing children, plus and maternity sizes, portfolio presentations and presentation boards. Illustration for Fashion Design includes unique topics such as how to draw jewelry, bags, hats, shoes, glasses and leather goods. The book includes full-color presentations and renderings of stones and surfaces. Numerous illustrations include easy-to-follow instructions, with right and wrong examples.

Whether readers are just learning to create their first fashion drawings or working on portfolios, Illustration for Fashion Design provides the most complete and comprehensive methods available in the market to date. With over 2,000 drawings, it com­bines fun visuals with academic accuracy that allows artists to develop their creativity without sacrificing function.

Fernandez says that standard books and materials in fashion edu­cation assume that students possess a basic knowledge of drawing. But the approach to fashion illustration in this book appeals to the individual's ability to follow set rules and measurements rather than rely on visual comprehension of space and dimension. As an instructor he says that he has spent many hours search­ing through book after book trying to combine the best parts and offer them to his students: the children's chapter from one, menswear from another, and accessories from yet another. But in truth, designers will design everything from purses to children's wear.

II am so pleased that Gustavo's book is to be published because I know, with my 26 years of experience teaching Fashion Design and Fashion Production, that his method works.

I watch Gustavo skillfully demonstrate his twelve-step technique to students that have min­imal drawing skills. Within six classes, they can successfully draw and dress a fashion figure. By the middle of the semester, they can draw several different poses and render fabrics realistically us­ing design markers. By the end of the semester, they produce professional looking presentation boards, complete with mood boards, color stories, fabric swatches, flats, and elegant fashion figures in a variety of poses.

Using these skills, students create presenta­tion boards and build portfolios that lead to acceptance at the most prestigious and competitive fashion design schools nationwide and interna­tionally, including The Fashion Institute of Tech­nology and London School of Fashion. My students and I are anxiously awaiting this book. We know it will be a comprehensive guide to successful fashion illustration. – Rosemary Pringle, Fashion Design Program Head, from the foreword

Illustration for Fashion Design is an excellent reference for fashion industry professionals at any level; it covers a broad range of topics and explains them in a step-by‑step, comprehensive way. By using these proven and easy-to-follow instructions and the 12-step method in the book, anyone can create a fashion figure and begin to understand the dynamics of the body almost immediately. Beautifully illustrated, the book helps designers lay a foundation from which creativity can develop and flourish in every area of fashion design.

Arts & Photography / How-to

The Art of People Photography: Inspiring Techniques for Creative Results by Bambi Cantrell & Skip Cohen (Amphoto Books)

Portrait photography is one of the most challenging of all the photographic specialties. The person is right there – it seems so easy. But portraits aren’t just about what the subject looks like. Great people photography is about photography... and about understanding people.

In her latest collaboration with writer/publisher and industry insider Skip Cohen, The Art of People Photography, Bambi Cantrell, one of the top ten wedding photographers in the world according to American Photo Magazine, reveals her secrets for capturing the human experience in a portrait – and her success at marketing her business. They show photographers how to reveal the person behind the portrait and how to think and shoot outside the box.

Covering both location and studio photography, The Art of People Photography discusses the particular challenges of photographing men, woman, children, babies, families, and high school seniors, who, note the authors, "have become one of the fastest-growing segments of the portrait photography business." Beginning with the intended application of the photograph, the book details such specifics as posing (both solo and group shots), color vs. black and white, working with generations, plus the non-techni­cal art of establishing trust with clients. Cantrell share her favorite equipment and shooting tips, emphasizing "expression as the Holy Grail of people photography." Two hundred full-color photographs throughout provide examples of expression as captured by Cantrell.

The Art of People Photography helps photographers:

• Get creative with techniques and express themselves as artists.
• Learn what equipment a pro uses.
• Direct subjects with confidence.
• Get comfortable with both color and black and white.
• Learn the rules and how to break them.
• Market themselves effectively.

According to The Art of People Photography, in order to be great photographers, readers must first understand the tools of the trade, every piece of gear involved in the process, from cameras to lenses to films and digital media. Once they have mastered the equipment, beginning photographers have got to understand composition, lighting, depth of field, and exposure. Then they have to understand the printing process. Only when they have learned all the rules have they earned the right to break them. All the boundaries of the rules of composition and exposure can go right out the window as they learn to express themselves as artists.

With portraiture, the challenge isn't so much understanding imaging or their equipment as it is about understanding people. On location or in the studio, the final image is about one thing only: the person photographed. With the click of the shutter, photographers have to capture their subject's expectations in one exposure. And it makes no difference whether they are shooting digital or film – if they have miss the shot, that's it, they are done.

Cantrell's lens selection, use of depth of field, lighting, and composition have made her one of the best wedding photographer, but if asked the secret to her success, she says it has little to do with photography and more to do with knowing both her market and each person she photographs. When asked, "What makes your work so different?" her response was, "I just love people."

Cantrell's imagery is unmatched in the field of professional wedding photography and this comes through in the wealth of examples in the book. The Art of People Photography shows readers how to rise to that level of creativity and confidence. This informative and generous guide provides the inspiration, technical advice, and business savvy to help beginning professional photographers become adept.

Arts & Photography / Painting / Art History / Biographies & Memoirs

L S Lowry: A Life by Shelley Rohde (Haus Books Ltd.)

“It is my opinion,” says Shelley Rohde, the author of the life of the British artist Laurence Stephen Lowry, L S Lowry, “his works should carry a health warning: These pictures are addictive. Buy one and you are hooked for life. Study him and you become obsessive.”

Rohde is a writer and television producer with a long background in newspaper journalism. She first met L S Lowry when she was working for the Daily Mail. Subsequently she made with Granada Television the award-winning documentary L S Lowry: A Private View. She talked to Lowry several times before he died in 1976, at the age of eighty-eight, and became, in her words: ‘an intemperate admirer of both the man and the artist’.

Lowry (1887-1976) depicted the industrial northwest of England as a bleak urban landscape through which lonely and detached figures go about their business – scenes of the early 20th century. He had a distinctive style of painting and is best known for urban landscapes peopled with many human figures or ‘matchstick men’. He tended to paint these in drab colors. He also painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits, and the secret ‘marionette’ works (the latter only found after his death). In the thirty years since Lowry's death several items have come into the public domain – including collections of private papers, now-housed in the archives of The Lowery, the culture and art center named in his honor on the Salford Quays on the banks of the Irwell in Manchester. These were made available to Rohde and are included in L S Lowry to give added insight into the artist.

On the first day of March in the year 1995 the Bennett Collection of works by the artist Laurence Stephen Lowry came up for sale at Christie's Auction House in London. Lowry had been dead for nearly twenty years. The auction was an event that, in retro­spect, came to be regarded as something of a seminal moment in the English art world. In the words of Jonathan Horwich, Deputy Chairman of Christie's U.K., “It was a sale that somehow, magically, reached parts that other sales could not reach. It took us all by surprise.”

Unusually for an auction house as grand as Christie's, most of the buyers that day were people who were not collectors and who, possibly, had never been in a saleroom before. Even more surprising, many of the successful bidders paid in cash. One woman had traveled from Newcastle-upon-Tyne with £60,000 in notes in her bag and spent it all on works by Lowry. She was so unsure of herself in such unfa­miliar surroundings she brought cash with her because she “didn't think you would accept a cheque from someone you didn't know.” Christie's' cashiers reported later that they had taken more money in hard currency than they had ever taken before in one day.

According to Rohde, Lowry's reputation as a chronicler of the aftermath of the industrial revolution, an English artist with a unique eye and a quirky view of life, was by that time well established. He was as underestimated by the art establishment in death as he had been in life. It was almost as if he were too popular; too beloved of the general public, the ordinary people who inhabited his pictures – as if the simple fact that his work was liked, understood, recognized, collected, bought, issued as prints, put on mugs carried with it some sort of stigma, an indication of a lack of quality or class or taste. Or whatever it is that makes great art.

As critic Waldemar Januszczak observed: “...the snobbish art establishment has never taken Lowry seriously...” Januszczak had been to Salford to look at the pictures in the Salford City Art Gallery and had written: “What emerges strongly...is that Lowry was anything but unsophisticated...He deserves to be seen alongside Stanley Spencer, Edward Burra, and Lucien Freud as one of the edgy and independent urban realists of the century.”

Artist Harold Riley, who was at the Slade when Lowry was a Visiting Lecturer, said: “His imagery is cast iron. Blue chip. Other artists appreciate his technique but they don't necessarily – if they are from the south or unfamiliar with Lowry's land­scape – understand him. They understand the industry but not the imagery.” But then Riley is from Salford, and as he says, that means he knows what Lowry is about. He adds: “In my opinion he is head and shoulders above every English artist since Turner.”

The ugly issue of snobbism in art raises its unattractive head when it comes to the work of an artist who certain members of the cognoscenti consider to be no more than a peintre de dimanche with an ‘inability to draw the human figure’; or in the words of the Evening Standard critic Brian Sewell, ‘a cloth-capped nincompoop.’

Art critics and historians have been un­able to fit [Lowry] into a school of ‘art,’ says Lindsay Brooks, current Director of Exhibi­tions at The Lowry. “[They] have never been able to handle his popularity. Negative views about Lowry are largely the result of a prevailing view of the British art establish­ment that "if somebody is popular or accessible, they cannot be very good.”

One of the most positive factors in Low­ry's posthumous struggle for recognition has been – according to Mike Leber, a Keeper of the Lowry Collection at Salford City Art Gallery in the old man's lifetime – the atti­tude of the Lowry Estate and their handling of the legacy. “The fact that they have hung onto the collection and have been so protec­tive of his image has done nothing but good. They have not only allowed ready access to his work – loaning frequently to galleries for exhibition – which is paramount, but they have always been aware of the scholarship surrounding Lowry's work.

“If such a situation continues I firmly be­lieve that it will happen one day – the recognition Lowry deserves and the establish­ment of a world wide reputation.

Curator, critic and art historian Julian Spalding is a self styled ‘mad enthusiast’ for Lowry. Giving the 2006 Lowry annual lec­ture at The Lowry he declared: ‘As the twentieth century recedes and we can begin to assess the achievements of British artists in relation to those abroad, it is my belief that Lowry will emerge as the only painter of the period to have made a unique contribution to art on the world stage.

“Lowry not only painted a subject area no one had tackled in any depth before – the industrial scene and the lives of its peo­ple – but he also evolved a radically original language of art.

“One always recognizes a Lowry, whether it shows a crowd going to a football match, a tramp sleeping on a park bench or just an empty seascape. His pictures range in mood from charmed delight to slapstick fun, from profound despair to eerie calm, from merry companionship to utter loneliness. But they are always Lowrys.

“He has been able to express this extraordi­nary range of feelings because he developed, doggedly over many years, a powerful and intensely personal artistic vocabulary. There has been nothing like it before in the history of art.”

L S Lowry is lavishly and meticulously illustrated with close to one hundred pictures and photographs, paintings and drawings, each of which illuminates a different facet of Lowry's life and work.

Arts & Photography / Social Sciences / Anthropology

The Anthropology of Art: Histories, Themes, Perspectives by Maruška Svašek (Anthropology, Culture and Society Series: Pluto Press)

The Anthropology of Art provides a critical introduction to anthropological perspectives on art, and offers a new perspective which centers on the analysis of commoditisation and aestheticisation.

Defining art as a social process, author Maruška Svašek argues for an anthropological approach that links the production and consumption of artifacts to political, religious and other cultural dynamics. Presenting a wide variety of cases, sociology, and cultural studies, Svašek, lecturer in the School of History and Anthropology at Queen's University, Belfast, examines the significance of objects in everyday life, and demonstrates their ability to evoke emotions and generate actions. It also analyzes the shifting boundaries between art and other categories such as craft, kitsch, propaganda and pornography.

The Anthropology of Art demonstrates that while some artifacts are intentionally produced as artworks, others not originally intended for that purpose are actively appropriated and transformed into art by art dealers, curators and anthropologists.

Finally, the book explores the process and effects of collecting and exhibiting artifacts in increasingly global contexts.

Svašek starts out by considering the different ways anthropologists might explain what many of us regard as artistic behavior; we would very likely ask them the question: what is art? The question can be interpreted in two distinct ways. On the one hand, it demands to know the criteria by which objects that are often seemingly incomparable, such as Michelangelo's Last Judgement, Damien Hirst's dissected cow in formaldehyde and Australian Aboriginal Dream Paintings can be similarly classified as `works of art'. The pursuit of common qualities that can bridge the divide between such distinctly different objects is sometimes referred to as a generalizing system. Broad definitions argue that, because art exists in all societies, it constitutes a universal category that can be used not only to explain what art is, but can also be used as an analytical tool to explore similar types of behavior involved in the production, use, and consumption of objects and artifacts in different parts of the world. As Chapters 2 and 3 in The Anthropology of Art demonstrate, this perspective is problematic because it disregards the fact that art is itself a ‘set of historically specific ideas and practices that have shifted meanings across the course of the centuries’.

In their pursuit of a broad definition that would allow them to identify and compare different artifacts in different cultures and societies, supporters of the generalizing approach found that the broader their definitions, the more meaningless they became. Recently, Richard Anderson proposed a theoretical definition of art that outlined certain combinations of highly probable artistic features. In the hope of avoiding the ethnocentric projection of one society's ideas of what constitutes art upon another, and aiming to challenge what he considered an artificial separation of high-brow and popular art, he argued that “like a chameleon, the word ‘art’ takes on different colors, depending on the verbal foliage in which it is found”. Anderson's own attempts to evaluate art by appraising the artist's commitment to his medium for instance, forced him to concede that, on those criteria even a committed comic-book reader could be considered a great artist. By over-extending his classifications, his category of ‘art’ became meaningless.

In contrast to this generalizing approach, The Anthropology of Art offers an alternative answer to the question ‘What is art?’ Instead of considering art as a universal category, it instead stresses the processual nature of art production, and identifies the many different factors that influence the ways in which people experience and understand it. Instead of generalizing definitions of art that often prove deceptive simplifications, which hide or distort complex historical processes, the book aims to analyze the conflicting definitions of art and aesthetics in specific socio-historical contexts.

The Anthropology of Art is divided into two parts, entitled 'Theorising Art' and 'Objects, Transit and Transition'. Part 1 includes the introductory chapter and consists of two more chapters which critically discuss and compare anthropological theories of art that have been developed throughout the history of the discipline, pointing out their analytical strengths and weaknesses.

Chapter 2, 'From Evolutionism to Ethnoaesthetics', discusses the main theoretical developments from the early beginnings of the discipline in the nineteenth century to the late 1960s, and explains why cultural relativism became the dominant paradigm.

Chapter 3, 'From Visual Communication to Object Agency', points out how cultural relativism slowly gave way to processual relativist approaches as an increasing number of scholars began to attack cultural relativist notions of bounded culture and, more recently, started criticizing their use of ‘art’ as a tool of cross-cultural analysis. Instead, it proposes an alternative relativist approach, which allows for the analysis of aestheticisation, commoditisation and object agency in contexts of power.

Part 2 begins with Chapter 4, entitled 'Performances: The Power of Art/efacts', which focuses on object agency. Various case studies clarify how objects and works of art trigger quite specific emotional reactions in users and viewers, which often lead to social action that can also be politically relevant.

Chapter 5, 'Markets: Art/efacts on the Move', looks in more detail at com­moditisation processes, examining the development of changing markets of art and ethnographic objects. Building on some of the findings in Chapter 4, it explores the influence of exchange mechanisms on the ways in which objects are valued, understood and handled, also showing that marketing strategies often affect the ways in which artifacts are interpreted and experienced.

Objects are appropriated by a variety of museums, including ethnographic museums, folklore museums and museums of art. Chapter 6, 'Museums: Space, Materiality and the Politics of Display', examines the involvement of such museums in object transit and transition in nationalist, colonial and postcolonial settings. Numerous case studies explore the relation between representation, aestheticisation and issues of power, and contribute to an analysis of the impact of spatial and discursive recontextualisation on object perception and experience.

Chapter 7, "'Fine Art": Creating and Contesting Boundaries', develops one of the main arguments of The Anthropology of Art, namely that ‘fine art’, though defined differently in different times and spaces, is always a category of exclusion. The analysis mainly focuses on the creation of boundaries between ‘art’ and supposedly non-artistic categories such as ‘craft’, ‘kitsch’, ‘pornography’ and ‘propaganda’. Various case studies show how artists have tried to undermine these oppositions by appropriating elements of the latter categories into their art.

In Chapter 8, 'Processual Relativism: Fante Flags in Northern Ireland', a detailed case study of Fante flag-making and flag exhibition ties up the main arguments of the book.

The Anthropology of Art offers a new perspective by defining art as a social process, focusing on the commoditisation and aestheticisation of art, and analyzing the shifting boundaries between art and other categories. The book makes a strong case for the study of object transit and transition in local, national and transnational fields of power, focusing on the movement of material objects within and across historical, social and geographic boundaries, and examining transitions in terms of the objects' value, meaning and efficacy. Intellectually provocative for specialists in the field, The Anthropology of Art is ideal as a teaching text, providing a detailed overview of themes central to anthropology, art history, art sociology, and cultural studies.

Audio / Health, Mind & Body / Self-Help

Your Body Speaks Your Mind: Decoding the Emotional, Psychological, and Spiritual Messages That Underlie Illness (Audio CD, unabridged, 3 CDs, running time: 3 hours) by Deb Shapiro (Sounds True)

Your Body Speaks Your Mind: Decoding the Emotional, Psychological, and Spiritual Messages That Underlie Illness by Debbie Shapiro (Sounds True)

Our bodies are constantly sending us messages. Are you paying attention?

We cry tears when we are sad or get ‘butterflies’ in our stomach when we are nervous. We are all aware of connections between the mind and the body. But what about the bigger issues, when the body gets ill, diseased, or damaged?

Now Your Body Speaks Your Mind by Deb Shapiro – author of The Body Mind Workbook and Unconditional Love – shows readers a practical way to learn the language of the body so they can understand how their thoughts and feelings directly affect their physical health. "The body shows us what we are unconsciously ignoring, denying, or repressing," she says.

In this audio adaptation of her UK best-selling book Your Body Speaks Your Mind, Shapiro shows listeners how to initiate communication between the body and mind, and decode the information the body provides. With her, readers discover the intricate link between feelings and thoughts and specific parts of the body, and how unresolved psycho-emotional issues can affect physical health. Listeners learn the language of the body in order to understand how thoughts and feelings directly affect physical health. With creative visualization and meditation exercises, Shapiro, who has trained extensively in various schools of bodywork, Buddhist meditation, and Jungian psychology, helps listeners understand the meaning of symptoms, shift fixed thinking patterns, release hidden doubts, initiate forgiveness, and take a more active role in their own healing and well-being.

Your Body Speaks Your Mind guides readers through the internal messaging system, including:

• Steps they can take to heal the body with their mind, and vice-versa.
• A top to bottom Body Scan so readers can hear and respond to the messages from each of their physiological systems.
• A guided practice that enables readers to dialogue with their symptoms and illness.

• A cross-referenced index of symptomatic illnesses, from headaches to pneumonia, and the emotional imbalances they symbolize.

"Healing is a continual journey – one of embracing ourselves ever more deeply," explains Shapiro. “By learning the body’s language of symptoms,” she says, “you will actively engage in an intimate two-way communication that affects both your physical state and your mental and emotional health.”

Your Body Speaks Your Mind deepens readers’ relationships with their own minds and bodies. Shapiro shows them how to access this powerful dialogue to decode the priceless information the body gives out.

Business & Investing / Economics / International

China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World by Ted C. Fishman (Scribner)

How has an enormous country once hobbled by poverty and Communist ideology come to be the supercharged center of global capitalism?

China today is visible everywhere – in the news, in the economic pressures battering the U.S. and around the globe, in the workplace, and in every trip to the store. Updated with new statistics and information, China, Inc. is a dramatic account of China's growing dominance as an industrial superpower by veteran journalist and former commodities trader journalist Ted C. Fishman. In it explains how the profound shift in the world economic order has occurred – and why it already affects us all. "No country has ever before made a better run at climbing every step of economic development all at once," he writes, in China, Inc.

Fishman's account begins with the burgeoning output of China's vast low-cost factories and the swelling appetite of its 1.3 billion consumers, both of which are being driven by historically unprecedented infusions of foreign capital and technological know-how.

Traveling through China's frenetic landscape of growth, Fishman visits the factories, markets, streets, stores, towns, and cities where the story of Chinese capitalism is being lived by one-fifth of all humanity. Drawing on interviews with Chinese, American, and European workers, managers, and executives, the book answers questions like:

• What does it mean that China now grows three times faster than the United States?
• …that China uses 40 percent of the world's concrete and 25 percent of its steel?
• What is the global impact of 300 million rural Chinese walking off their farms and heading to the cities in the greatest migration in human history?
• Why do nearly all of the world's biggest companies have large operations in China?
• What does the corporate march into China mean for workers left behind in America, Europe, and the rest of the world?
• What makes China's emerging corporations so dangerously competitive?
• What will happen when China manufactures nearly everything – computers, cars, jumbo jets, and pharmaceuticals – that the United States and Europe can, at perhaps half the cost?
• How do these developments reach around the world and straight into our lives?

These are ground-shaking questions, and China, Inc. provides answers.

If the twentieth was the American century, then the twenty-first belongs to China. It's that simple, Ted C. Fishman says, and anyone who doubts it should take his whirlwind tour of the world's fastest-developing economy. – The New York Times

A must-read for American business people who operate in, buy from, or compete with China. – Chicago Sun-Times

Fishman ... obviously is on to something.... As a correspondent who has lived in Beijing for the last five years, I found China, Inc. to be a valuable account of how China got where it is and where it's going. It's full of fascinating observations based on some nifty research. . . . There are critical lessons to be learned from China, Inc. – Michael A. Lev, Chicago Tribune

Intelligent and engaging. – Far Eastern Economic Review

China, Inc. is the amazing story of how the slumbering Red giant woke up and, at warp speed, transformed itself into the greatest superpower of the very near future – with the biggest, tallest, longest, and fastest of just about everything there is. Fishman will forever change your view not just of China's place in the world – but of America's as well. – Craig Unger, New York Times bestselling author of House of Bush, House of Saud

Fishman succeeds in making the remarkable stirrings on the other side of the planet tangible to an audience a world away. – Washington Post

Read China, Inc. to understand U.S. panic. – South China Morning Post

Ted C. Fishman is an accomplished financial writer.... His background gives him special insight to his work. – Inc. Magazine

Fishman's excellent and very readable new book . . . deftly combines anecdotes and analysis to help us understand China's economic miracle. – Christian Science Monitor

When analyzing American attitudes toward China, Fishman is a shrewd observer. – The Daily Telegraph (London)

China, Inc. is a scary and important book. – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Anyone still wondering why Wal-Mart doesn't play the made-in-America card in its marketing any longer can stop wondering. China, Inc.... Fishman's fascinating and unsettling treatise lays out in depth that and other effects of the Asian dragon's great economic uncoiling. – The Philadelphia Inquirer

A thought-provoking and accessible forecast of strange times to come. – Kirkus Reviews

Informed, comprehensive, and fascinating . . . full of unforgiving facts and unforgettable figures. And it's no slog-through read. The details of entrepreneurial artfulness and government-sanctioned wheel­ing and dealing . . . are conveyed in clear prose, and at a breathtaking pace. – Barron's

China, Inc. is an engaging work of penetrating, up-to-the-minute reportage and brilliant analysis that will change how readers think about America's future. Fishman paints a vivid picture of the mega trends radiating out of China. Provocative, timely, essential, and dramatic, Fishman shows how China will force all of us to make big changes in how we think about ourselves as consumers, workers, citizens, and even as parents.

Business & Investing / Human Resources / Women’s Studies

Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success by Sylvia Ann Hewlett (Harvard Business School Press)

For reasons that range from a tightening job market to retiring baby boomers, companies can't afford to lose experienced, well-qualified women. They aren't easily or cheaply replaced. – interview with Sylvia Ann Hewlett, The Wall Street Journal

If more than half of today's professional school graduates are female, why is that women still represent only 8% of top earners at Fortune 500 companies? Sylvia Ann Hewlett uncovers the reason for the first time in a study of 2,400 women that laid the groundwork for Off-Ramps and On-Ramps.

With talent shortages looming over the next decade, what can companies do to attract and retain the large number of professional women who are forced off the career highway?

By documenting the successful efforts of a group of cutting-edge global companies to retain talented women and reintegrate them if they’ve already left, Off-Ramps and On-Ramps also answers this critical question. Working closely with companies such as Ernst & Young, Goldman Sachs, Time Warner, General Electric and others, Hewlett identifies what works and why.

According to Hewlett, economist and the founding President of the Center for Work-Life Policy, Director of the Gender and Policy Program at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, the problem isn't that women don't have the commitment. It's that the career track was never modeled on the lives of women and has now become even more out of touch. Increasingly, today's careers advance only those professionals with no gaps in their resume, who can survive workweeks lengthened by global hours and 24/7 Blackberry culture, and who can work even harder in their thirties. These heightening demands are out of touch with the reality of women's lives. Two thirds of professional women ‘off­ramp’ – voluntarily leave their careers to devote themselves to family. Others ‘take scenic routes’ – reduced hours or flexible work. These women want to return to full-time work and advance their careers, but today's linear career model excludes them.

According to Hewlett, to retain qualified women during today's worsening talent shortage, a more flexible career model is necessary. She hopes that all companies can follow the example of American Express, Cisco, Citigroup, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, British Telecom, Booz Allen Hamilton, Ernst & Young, Lehman Broth­ers, and Time Warner, which are creating more sustainable careers for women by:

• Developing innovative on-ramping, flex-time and job-sharing programs that will help women stay in the workforce throughout their lives.
• Reducing the stigma of these programs by positioning them as not as personal accommodations, but as company-wide imperatives that fight the war for talent and improve the bottom line.
• Going public at the top about flexibility with CEO leadership and visible off-ramping role models that will inspire junior employees to follow their example.

Hewlett tells the stories of these companies and the inspiring stories of women who found fulfillment from their careers after off-ramping. Hewlett also includes her own personal story as a mother who off-ramped and on-ramped, and as the daughter of a courageous woman whose livelihood was saved by an on-ramp at a time when few women worked at all.

A remarkably useful business book. In today's intensely competitive global economy, companies cannot afford to lose key female talent. With clarity and vision, Hewlett ably blends case studies with path-breaking analysis and creates a blueprint for action. This research gives employers the wherewithal to retain and reattach highly qualified commit­ted women. – John A. Thain, CEO, NYSE Group, Inc.

In an era of escalating competitive pressure, companies must be innovative and proactive in keeping an increasingly female workforce vibrant and productive. Some companies are getting it. Thanks to Hewlett for showcasing these compa­nies and putting a spotlight on corporate leaders who have the courage and the savvy to make the necessary changes for women not only to survive, but to bring themselves fully to the leadership table. – Ella L. J. Edmondson Bell, associate professor of business administration, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College

Off-Ramps and On-Ramps provides a compelling model for rethinking career development for the twenty-first century. Illustrated with vivid business case studies, this book is an essential guide for how to manage talent so that employ­ees and employers can succeed. – Ellen Galinsky, President and cofounder, Families and Work Institute

Sylvia Ann Hewlett combines her savvy analysis of women's life paths and job challenges with significant case studies of how companies can succeed at generating flexibility and meaning at work without letting work take over life. Her research is extensive, her argu­ments are compelling, and her insights are as memorable as they are practical. This is a valuable book that is certain to stimulate discussion and action. – Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and author of Confidence

Off-Ramps and On-Ramps is based on first-hand experience with gold-standard companies and is grounded in extensive new data that provides the most comprehensive and nuanced picture of women's career paths to date. A vital resource, this book smashes a ‘male competitive model’ that has long insisted on smooth, cumulative lockstep careers as a prerequisite for success – to the detriment of ambitious women and talent-hungry companies everywhere.

Cooking, Food & Wine / Health, Mind & Body / Diet

The Anti-Inflammation Diet and Recipe Book: Protect Yourself and Your Family from Heart Disease, Arthritis, Diabetes, Allergies – and More by Jessica K. Black (Hunter House Publishers)

FACT: Inflammation in the body interferes with and slows down metabolism and the healing response.

FACT: Data indicates that inflammation is linked with chronic illnesses like heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, asthma and allergies.

FACT: Inflammation ages us – it detracts from beauty and longevity.

FACT: Inflammation can be reduced through healthy eating.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), seven out of ten deaths are caused by chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, all of which have a direct connection to inflammation and nutrition. The connection between inflammation and heart disease, arthritis, and other chronic ailments has become increasingly clear. Many food allergies and poor dietary choices over-stimulate the immune system and cause inflammatory responses that erode the body’s wellness and pave the path for ill health.

Unfortunately, due to imbalances in the standard American diet, most Americans suffer from fairly high levels of inflammation. As a result, many develop chronic diseases that could be controlled or prevented through proper nutrition. What can be done to ensure optimal health and healing?

Based on her naturopathic practice, naturopathic doctor Jessica Black has devised a complete program for how to eat and cook to minimize and prevent inflammation and its consequences. The first part of The Anti-Inflammation Diet and Recipe Book explains the benefits of the anti-inflammatory diet with a discussion of the science behind it. The second half contains 125 easy-to-­prepare recipes, a week's sample menus for summer and winter, full nutritional analysis for all recipes, as well as a food substitution chart, so that readers can modify their favorite recipes and make them healthier. It encourages whole foods, reduces processed foods, sugars, and other potential toxins such as hydrogenated oils, and encourages ample intake of vegetables and fruits for essential nutrients.

The Anti-Inflammation Diet and Recipe Book, Black, co-founder of a primary care center in McMinnville, Oregon, helps readers reclaim health by guiding them to practices that facilitate cellular regeneration rather than cellular degeneration and disease. Black educates readers on making diet choices that promote easier digestion and allow greater absorption of nutrients.

Black says she wrote this book because many of her patients, who were trying to follow a naturopathic, anti-inflammatory diet, couldn't find any recipes to use. She prepared and tested all the recipes herself. The Anti-Inflammation Diet and Recipe Book includes an array of recipes from breakfasts, appetizers and herbal teas to soups, entrees, salads and delicious desserts, for example:

Entrees: Blackened Salmon, Pesto Pizza with Chicken, Turkey Meatloaf

Breakfasts: Five-Minute Breakfast, Mexican Morning Eggs

Salads: Avocado Tuna, Curry Chicken, The Not-So-Greek Salad

Soups: Winter Soup, Cream of Carrot and Ginger, Nutty Onion

Desserts: Blueberry Upside-Down Cake, Coconut Vanilla "Ice Cream"

Jessica shows that healthy eating need not be time consuming. Quick and efficient – yet nutritionally sound – meal preparation can now be a reality for everyone. – Dick Thom, D.D.S., N.D., from the Foreword

While providing delicious food choices, the revolutionary diet in The Anti-Inflammation Diet and Recipe Book eliminates allergens and reduces the intake of pesticides, hormones and antibiotic residues. Appropriate for men and women of all ages – and especially beneficial for children – the book will help people learn to eat and cook healthily. Most of the dishes can be prepared quickly by novice cooks.

Computers & Internet

The Web's Awake: An Introduction to the Field of Web Science and the Concept of Web Life by Philip D. Tetlow (Wiley-IEEE Press)

Has the World Wide Web evolved into a new life form?

While researchers in the emerging field of Web science have attempted to categorize what the Web is, The Web's Awake takes a radically new approach that will change readers’ understanding of the very nature and essence of the Web – what it is and where it is heading.

The central thesis of The Web's Awake is that the phenomenal growth and complexity of the web is beginning to outstrip our capability to control it directly. Many have worked on the concept of emergent properties within highly complex systems, concentrating heavily on the underlying mechanics concerned. Few, however, have studied the fundamentals involved from a sociotechnical perspective. In short, the virtual anatomy of the Web remains relatively uninvestigated. The Web's Awake attempts to seriously explore this gap, citing a number of provocative, yet objective, similarities from studies relating to both real world and digital systems. It presents a collage of interlinked facts, assertions, and coincidences, which point to a Web with potential for life.
Drawing from theories originating in the natural sciences, mathematics, and information technology, The Web's Awake explores how the continued growth and increasing complexity of the Web has caused it to take on a life of its own. The book examines a number of characteristics and behaviors of the Web that have not been programmed, but rather have evolved. As the number and strength of these new Web characteristics and behaviors continue to increase, the author Philip Tetlow argues that the Web should be considered a living organism in its own right, a new post-human species consisting of a single member.

Having established a new understanding of what the Web is, Tetlow, Senior Certified IT Architect in IBM's Global Business Services Division, a Chartered Engineer, and an Open Group Master IT Architect, next offers a remarkable perspective on how the Web is evolving towards independence. He argues that understanding the Web's evolution as an act of nature enables us to better harness the Web's resources for the good of society.

According to Tetlow, many books have been written on the complexities of the natural world and the interplay between modern technology and the Universe's periodic cycles. Many more have been written on our current understanding of ‘life’ and the prerequisites needed for its emergence. Such books collate ideas from a wide range of disci­plines, but few, if any, directly relate such ideas to the single most powerful and prevalent computer technology in existence today. This is the World Wide Web, the ever-growing maelstrom of information muscle structure strung over the bones of the global Internet.

There is little doubt that the Web is having a profound effect on our personal and social existence, pulling down the barriers of time and distance and placing un­equalled opportunities to access information at the fingertips of everyday people. Why is the Web evolving in the way that it is? What does the Web actually look like now and what will it look like in the future? Is ‘evolution’ even the right word to use to describe its progression? These are all questions that have been relevant for some time, but which have appeared to be taboos in all but the most open-minded of circles. In truth a new science is need­ed to help address such questions, a science that combines the empirical strength of the material classics while still embracing the synthetic expression granted by the abstract worlds of computing. This is a science that must account for the atomic components of the Web all the way up to the phenomena presented by its totality. This is Web Science and from its birth should rightly come a new collection of un­derstandings, not least of which should be some clarity on the idea of Web Life.

In the spirit of heresy, Tetlow has ploughed through the jungle of works related to the various types of question asked here. In doing so, he says he has been exceptionally fortunate: His professional life has brought him in touch with many of the best minds in the world – first, through his employment as a Technical Architect at IBM and, second, through his membership of The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on IBM's behalf. He has met with a number of world experts along the way, and this has enabled him to pull together a number of ideas and conclusions from a patchwork of original, consistent, and acknowledged findings that all point to a conclusion (a finding that might currently be somewhat unorthodox in parts) that the Web is emerging as a truly natural entity.

The Web's Awake attempts to lay out the case for such a conclusion, stringing together observations and findings from a number of diverse fields. If the evidence is correct, even in part, then it brings profound respon­sibilities for society as well as some huge consequences for the ways that we run and organize our personal and collective lives. Most outcomes of the Web's devel­opment will undoubtedly be beneficial in the long term, but some will be detrimental.

According to Tetlow, The Web's Awake is not a work that aspires to be a politically, morally, or religiously correct text, nor is it necessarily aligned with any particular philosophical or religious school of thought. It is merely a personal interpretation of a large collection of strongly interlinked facts and findings from a wide range of sources and research areas. These range from quantum mechanics, through gen­eral systems and complexity theory, and on to the social sciences, a daunting spec­trum to be sure, but one that is nonetheless necessary to do justice to this subject.

Tetlow says he has deliberately tried not to write this book as an academic work. Instead he has chosen to use common language and phrases wherever possible. Even so, there are some reasonably complex and abstract areas he has to cover before the complete case for a living Web can be fully presented. The Web's Awake may well be both too light in parts for the serious academic and too deep for those with merely a casual interest.

Regardless, Tetlow provides a compelling and enjoyable read, enthralling and thought-provoking. Stringently researched and clearly presented, The Web's Awake offers a fascinating and provocative perspective on what the Web is and what it will be. This argument, that the Web is indeed awake, is a radical change from what we had assumed. Whether readers’ interests lie in computing, information technology, evolution, physics, or biology, the clearly written, plain-English arguments are fascinating material for thought.

Education / Professional & Technical

Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas edited by Louise Stoll & Karen Seashore Louis (Professional Learning Series: Open University Press)

There is great interest internationally in the potential of professional learning communities for enhancing educational reform efforts and sustaining improvement. Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas is an international collection expanding perceptions and understanding of professional learning communities within and beyond schools, as well as highlighting frequently neglected complexities and challenges.

Drawing on research, each chapter offers a deeper understanding of topics such as distributed leadership, dialogue, organizational memory, trust, self-assessment and inquiry, and purpose linked to learning. Three of the most challenging dilemmas facing professional learning communities are explored – developing professional learning communities in secondary schools, building social capital, and sustaining professional learning communities. The authors provide pointers on why these challenges exist, offering rays of hope for ways forward.

Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas is edited by Louise Stoll, Past President of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement and Visiting Professor at the London Centre for Leadership in Learning, Institute of Education, University of London and at the University of Bath; and Karen Seashore Louis, Rodney S. Wallace Professor in Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota, and a former vice-president of the American Educational Research Association. The book is part of the Professional Learning Series edited by Ivor Goodson and Andy Hargreaves, a series which examines the actual and possible forms of professional learning, professional knowledge, professional development and professional standards that are beginning to emerge and be debated at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Professional learning was propelled forward by the increasing availability of bodies of statistical evidence about student achievement, school by school, as a result of the ascent of the accountability movement. This provided communities of learners with increased and improved evidence to inform their judgments about what improvements needed to be made in their schools, and about the impact of these improvement efforts. After all the intensive activity and implementation efforts surrounding professional learning communities, it is now time to take stock, to have a research-based appraisal of what they have achieved, of where and why they have fallen short, and of the kinds of challenges and further opportunities that remain. From the United States and United Kingdom Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas's edi­tors bring together leading researchers from their respective countries and other parts of the world to explore the problems as well as the possibilities of professional learning communities; the dilemmas in, the depth of and the divergent ways in which members of these communities can and do work together; the linking of professional learning communities to assessment, evidence and results; and the extension of these communities across entire school systems and networks of fellow professionals and improving schools.

Stoll and Louis say they approached Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas with the belief that there is no universal definition of a professional learning community, but there is a consensus that one will know that one exists when one can see a group of teachers sharing and critically interrogating their practice in an ongoing, reflective, collaborative, inclusive, learning-oriented, growth-promoting way. The term ‘professional learning community’ suggests that focus is not just on individual teachers' learning but on (1) professional learning; (2) within the context of a cohesive group; (3) that focuses on collective knowledge, and (4) occurs within an ethic of interpersonal caring that permeates the life of teachers, students and school leaders.

The difficulty of developing professional learning communities should not be underestimated. In addition to the usual daily implementation issues associated with any change process, there are bigger hurdles that, as yet, remain unresolved in many places. Of these challenges, the editors have chosen to highlight several in Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas, although they recognize there are other important ones. The first challenge is the endemic difficulty of creating PLCs in secondary schools, where size and structure militate again school-wide collaboration, and where, specific disciplinary knowledge takes priority over shared knowledge about pedagogy and adolescent develop­ment needs. This is why secondary school studies of professional learning communities often focus on subject departments, and why professional community is usually lower among secondary school teachers.

A second challenge within professional learning communities is brought into even sharper focus when their membership is extended beyond classroom teachers; that is the nurturing of social capital. Social capital is based on the quality of relationships among members of a social group and is facilitated by the extent and quality of internal and external networks. Social capital is often taken for granted in tightly knit communities. However, the more cohesive the internal ties are within a group, the less likely the members are to be densely networked with people in other groups. As those who study social networks have found, it is ties among groups that foster the most rapid spread of information. Without due attention to fostering ties outside the school, strong professional communities can, paradoxically, become a barrier to change.

Another key challenge, also explored in Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas, is sustainability. Sustainable development in all organizations, including schools, is premised on a number of principles, including inclusiveness, connectivity, equity, prudence, and consistent attention to the needs of human beings. What matters most in PLCs, however, is learning in the broadest sense, learning that is for all and is continuous. This raises tensions between the inevitable and necessary flexibility and moving, energized set of relationships and stability, because it is extremely hard to learn in unstable settings. Instability is a serious problem for schools which, as public institutions, have a limited ability to manage their own policies, even under school-based leadership and management. Instability that comes from outside the school is currently confounded by turnover among teach­ers and school leaders in many countries.

Sustaining connections and community is made more complex by the explosion of technology, which permits the development of online groups that provide stimulating sources of information and safe, neutral arenas for support, but may also be unstable, more likely to involve imbalanced participation, and less amenable to the sustained, deep, reflective engage­ment that most of us associate with face-to-face relationships that endure over time.

Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas pulls together people from different countries in the English-speaking world, many of whom have spent significant periods of time exploring professional learning communities. As they found commonalities in the data that were reassuring, Stoll and Louis also confronted similarities in the challenges that they face. The book is divided into parts where the contributors tackle aspects of these three issues: divergence, depth and dilemmas. There is a short introduction to the contributions at the start of each part, and the book concludes with a short invited reflection on professional learning communities.

All who are interested and concerned about educational reform and the improvement of schools will find this book a must read. It stimulates, it challenges, and it informs, such that the reader is most surely enriched by its plenitude. – Dr. Shirley Hord, Scholar Emerita

At last we have a book of international cases to add to the literature on networks! Policymakers and practitioners alike will find the reasons why networks are fast becoming the reform organizations of choice. The book elevates network understanding to a new level. – Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas is an international collection expanding perceptions and understanding of professional learning communities within and beyond. The book is a must-read for teachers, teacher educators, staff developers, policy makers and anyone interested in building capacity for sustainable learning and the ability to harness your community as a resource for change. The contributions in the book will be of value to readers in many countries, who seek to understand and develop professional learning communities without reverting to simplistic recipes.

If readers work in a professional learning community, are considering becoming so, or are experiencing difficulties and frustrations in the process, this book provides powerful insights that will help them move ahead.

Education / Theory / Administration / Reference

Assessing Teacher Competency: Five Standards-Based Steps to Valid Measurement Using the CAATS Model by Judy R. Wilkerson & William Steve Lang, with a foreword by Richard C. Kunkel (Corwin Press)

Assessing Teacher Competency is being published at a time when there is a strong backdrop of public interest, public policy, and even public demand that all call for the evidence of important outcomes as critical to our nation and its schools. No Child Left Behind (NCLB), a bipartisan national policy framework, calls for increased attention to assessing teacher competency and doing so with strong research-based methods.

The book is a step-by-step guide to teacher assessments that meet national accreditation and accountability standards. Evaluation experts Judy Wilkerson and Steve Lang in Assessing Teacher Competency provide detailed guidance for the complete five-step assessment process, making this a resource both for preservice and inservice settings, including accreditation reviews and teacher induction programs.

Wilkerson, Associate Professor of Research and Assessment at Florida Gulf Coast University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in measurement and evaluation, and Lang, Associate Professor of Educational Measurement and Research at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, work together to build teacher assessment scales. Their work is standards-driven; they have worked with many stakeholders in Florida and around the country. They say they have had their fingers and toes stepped on from time to time, and through perseverance have produced a publication that offers a valid procedure that is based on sound princi­ples of measurement, program evaluation, accreditation, and public policy. Wilkerson and Lang provide readers a solid foundation and strong design to help them think through the use of data collected on teacher preparation program graduates that impact the national mosaic. Assessing Teacher Competency provides an underpinning to both improve teacher competencies and to prove those competencies in both the cognitive and affective areas.

According to Wilkerson and Lang, too often in education we spend an inordinate amount of time planning instruction and then deal with assessment as an afterthought. Here, the authors reverse the tradition. They believe it is critically important that teacher preparation and staff development programs offered in colleges and school districts assess teacher candidates and teachers using systematic processes based on recognized teacher standards; that they identify the assessments needed to ensure that teachers have met those standards; and that they develop instruction targeted at helping teachers succeed in demonstrating the stan­dards. The authors offer a comprehensive planning process, rooted in the standards of teaching, as the key to successful assessment. This process allows professional educators to commit to excellent assessment through effective planning in order to focus their vision of high-quality teaching.

The model described in Assessing Teacher Competency is aimed at protecting children from unquali­fied teachers, regardless of entry route. They believe that it is possible to define the critical tasks of teaching, based on standards. These tasks can be embedded in courses and district-based training programs and ensured in ways that make sense through frequent and substantial evaluation with benchmarks for competence and high standards for exit. The assessment model in this book is targeted primarily at the preservice, minimally skilled teacher; however, it is also a starting point for moving beyond the entry level teacher to advanced teaching.

Assessing Teacher Competency is divided into 10 chapters, with the core in Chapters 3 to 7. The book begins with two introductory chapters. The first establishes the expectations and options for accountability and teacher assessment, continuing their discussion of NCTAF, NCLB, Title II of the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, and then adding additional findings from the National Research Council's Committee on Assessment and Teacher Quality. They include a brief review of related literature, provide a discussion of standards, and conclude with an overview of vari­ous assessment options.

The second introductory chapter is all about portfolios and their recommendations for assessment systems in general, including those that are portfolio based. They acknowledge the utility of portfolios for advanced certification, as in the case of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards but raise serious questions about the way in which portfolios are currently being used to assess initial certification candidates. They identify conflicting paradigms that account for this and propose five recommendations to address the con­flicts, continue with requirements and caveats for accountability in portfo­lio design, provide recommendations for assessment system design in general, and end with an introduction to the five-step model that is the purpose of the book.

The heart of Assessing Teacher Competency is the five chapters in the middle – Chapters 3 through 7 – which establish the steps and sub-steps of the CAATS model – Competency Assessments Aligned with Teacher Standards. The model calls for clearly delineating the assessment design inputs, planning with a continuing eye on valid assessment decisions, writing tasks designed to maximize validity and reliability, decision making and data management, and credible data. In each of these five chapters, readers are presented with the following:

• A quick summary or refresher of where they have been so far.
• An introduction to the CAATS steps to set the stage.
• "Before Moving On ..." – To invoke early thinking about the content of the chapter.
• "Chapter Definitions and Guiding Questions" – To aid understanding.
• A detailed discussion of how to implement the step with examples and impor­tant points in highlighted text.
• An alignment of the steps with the ‘gold’ standard of assessment design (1999 AERA, APA, NCME Standards of Educational and Psychological Testing).
• "Story starters" – To prepare readers to answer the ‘nay-sayers’ in their departments.
• Activities, worksheets, and/or examples to work through the steps of the model.

After the step-by-step discussion of the model, they conclude with three more chapters. Chapters 8 and 9 provide some technical information on cut-score or stan­dard setting, and a measurement model that provides information for validity, reliability, bias studies, gain score calculations, rater adjustments, and further research.

Throughout Assessing Teacher Competency Wilkerson and Lang help readers address the need for assessment credibility from a psychometric standpoint. They acknowledge the fear of high-quality assessment that exists in our society, so they write in an easy style, using humor as a tool. Even their technical chap­ters are intended to be as user-friendly and to-the-point as they can make them, but their message is clear. They maintain that it is important to truly measure what one intends to measure and needs to measure (validity), and to do so in a trustworthy and consistent way (reliability), and that the instruments and procedures are fair and unbiased (fairness).

In the last chapter of the book, Chapter 10, they discuss the potential for legal chal­lenges that are tied to a failure to attending to psychometric integrity, and end with a 2005 court case in which a non-standards-based decision (not valid) made without due process (not fair) caused the teacher preparation institution to lose.

I strongly believe you will agree with these hopes when you read Wilkerson and Lang's Assessing Teacher Competency and follow the clear steps it proposes. – Richard C. Kunkel, Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Former Executive Director, National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education

Provides possible solutions for the problems faced in the assessment of future teachers, and realistically reveals the extent of the task of teacher certification. It provides those responsible for teacher certification with a structured learning experience that should improve our abilities with this task. – Pearl Solomon, Associate Professor, St. Thomas Aquinas College
I have not seen anything quite as systematic as this material, which guides a reader through a process for developing a valid and reliable assessment plan. It covers all the areas that one would want to see covered in designing a system for accreditation or other purposes. – Martha Gage, Director, Teacher Education & Licensure, Kansas State Department of Education
Structurally accurate, complete, and readable. The activities at the end of each chapter are among the best I have ever seen. – Elaine L. Wilmore, Professor of Educational Leadership

Valid and reliable decisions about teacher competency are based on fair, valid, and reliable assessment systems – Assessing Teacher Competency is the book all teacher educators, supervisors, and mentors have been waiting for. Written in a reader-friendly style for busy faculty members and school administrators with little or no prior knowledge of statistics, Assessing Teacher Competency is a comprehensive model designed to create fair, valid, and reliable assessments of teacher knowledge and skills. It is all-inclusive, making it an ideal resource and superior reference volume.

Audiences that may find this work useful include those involved in assessing teacher competency: teacher educators, colleges of education preparing for accreditation and program approval, school system administrators, state department personnel, national policymakers, graduate students learning about measurement and evaluation, measurement professionals, and school board members or elected officials who want to understand what a valid and reliable, performance-based teacher assessment system can be.

Entertainment / Music / Biographies & Memoirs

Jimmy Page: Magus, Musician, Man: An Unauthorized Biography by George Case (Hal Leonard)

He's a genius. He's a great player, a songwriter, a producer. When you hear a Page solo, he speaks. – Eddie Van Halen

Jimmy Page is the first-ever biography of Led Zeppelin's legendary guitarist and producer.

Freelance writer George Case, a devoted Jimmy Page fan since his teens, in this unauthorized biography traverses all of Page's hallowed stomping grounds to tell the story of one of rock 'n' roll's most enigmatic and influential talents. Beginning with his childhood in war-torn Britain, Case takes Page across the fantastical landscapes of the Sunset Strip, Kashmir, Clarksdale, Bron-y-Aur, and beyond.

From the heady days of swinging London in the 1960s – when Page was lighting up the scene as an incendiary session man (think Tom Jones's "It's Not Unusual" to the Kinks' "You Really Got Me") – as one of the three most influential British rock guitarists, he played a pivotal role in the recording studios that launched the British Invasion of the '60s.

Case brings him through the bombast, beauty, and blues of Led Zeppelin, as well as detailing the formation of Zeppelin, where Page combined his blues-based rock with singer Robert Plant's ‘soaring tenor moan’ to create a radically new sound, masterminding the Zeppelin juggernaut. Then there is his dark, nefarious side that would come to define rock excess – Case relates the wanton sex and drug orgies.

Jimmy Page takes on the facts and the myths of Jimmy Page and his music, and unveils his deeply spiritual, personal and artistic dimensions. And he covers Page’s milestone achievements, his emergence as a cultural icon and honored philanthropist, and as a revered rock superhero.

This is a three-dimensional look at the life of a man who is all too often swallowed by his myth. Best of all, it reminds us why anybody cares about Jimmy Page in the first place: his extraordinary music. – Anthony DeCurtis, Contributing Editor, Rolling Stone

As long as there are teenage boys in the world, there will be an audience for Led Zeppelin, the '70s-era hard rock legend whose "Stairway to Heaven" is still one of the most-ever-played songs in the history of American FM radio. Jimmy Page …certainly deserves Case's detailed and informed look at his past and present work. In this unauthorized biography, freelance writer Case focuses on Page's music as much as he does on Zeppelin's lurid touring lifestyle, and he is good at reporting Page's early work playing on countless recording sessions. …Case successfully shows how Page and his Zeppelin's musical influence became "so broad and so established that even players who had never consciously emulated his techniques had been affected by them." – Publishers Weekly

Meticulously researched, Jimmy Page is the complete story of rock 'n' roll's most enigmatic and influential icon, telling the story in sharp detail and leaving no stone unturned.

Entertainment / Music / Reference

The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia by John Kenneth Muir (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books)

"One great rock show can change the world" says Jack Black's character Dewey Finn in the 2003 Richard Linklater comedy The School of Rock. The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia, a love song to fifty years of rock movies (1956-2005), maintains that this postulate is not merely optimistic, it happens to be true.

As for rock music, it is specifically and eternally the music of youth; the melody of rebellion, experimentation and, importantly, potential. Since youth represents the future (especially in movies), each great rock show boasts the power to forever alter the course of our collective tomorrow.

The point of this rumination on the so-called Dewey Finn Postulate remains simple. For over half a century, rock 'n' roll music and the technological art form of movies have combined to create some of the greatest and most beloved movies of our time. In the process of doing so, perhaps some of these memorable silver-screen rock shows – efforts such as Don't Look Back (1967), Gimme Shelter (1970), Tommy (1975), Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982), Purple Rain (1984) and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004) – HAVE actually changed the world too. – from the book

From the 1950s and the age of ‘juvenile delinquents’ in films such as Blackboard Jungle to more intimate, twenty-first century rock band portraits such as Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, this book by noted film authority John Kenneth Muir features entries on rock documentaries such as Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, movies starring rock stars including the Sting vehicle The Bride, and films boasting extensive rock soundtracks, for example George Lucas's paean to the age of cruising, American Graffiti. The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia includes:

• 231 film entries from 1956 through 2005, including cast list, creative personnel, M.P.A.A. rating, running time, and DVD availability.
• Entries on the familiar conventions of this cinematic form, such as the Vietnam War, the ubiquitous press conference (in which band members wax philosophical), the rampant destruction of property (hotel rooms, specifically) and even the Yoko factor (meddling girlfriends).
• Biographical entries on players who made significant impact on the silver screen, from Elvis Presley and The Beatles to Alice Cooper and Prince.
• Interviews with rock movie directors Allan Arkush (Rock 'n' Roll High School), Martin Davidson (Eddie and the Cruisers) and Albert Magnoli (Purple Rain).
• In addition to pure rock 'n' roll, the films included cover all genres of popular music, ranging from Johnny Cash to Madonna, rock-influenced musical theatre (Jesus Christ Superstar), tejano (Selena), disco (Can't Stop the Music, Xanadu), and reggae.

According to Muir, who writes a monthly column for the Webzine Far Sector (http://farsector.com) and hosts a popular entertainment and nostalgia blog, Reflections on Film/TV (http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com), as the decades have passed, the face and form of rock movies have changed with the times; reflecting and often forecasting each new age or trend.

The fifties introduced films like Don't Knock the Rock (1956), which were careful to appear morally valuable, and assured parents that this new fangled ‘jungle music’ would not debauch the decade's youth or transform them into juvenile delinquents. The 1960s came, and rock movies quickly became the voice of the counterculture, in efforts as diverse as the cinema verité Don't Look Back (1967), Head (1968), and Alice's Restaurant (1969).

The 1970s first saw cynicism in the Watergate age and then unfettered escapism and the rise of the blockbuster. The rock efforts of the 1970s reflected the zeitgeist of the time; in a word: disco. Multiplexes filled with titles like Saturday Night Fever (1977) and The Bee Gees' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978). Reagan's conservative Eighties came and the wide availability of cable TV and the ubiquitous, powerful nature of the boob tube gave rise to MTV and the new short form of ‘music videos,’ which forever impacted how cinematic artists crafted rock movies. Flashdance (1983) and Footloose (1984) are just two examples of this new aesthetic.

The independent film movement of the 1990s democ­ratized film production, making it cheaper and expanding the once-limited playing field of Hollywood for new and original voices. The VHS/DVD revolution and birth of the World Wide Web suddenly meant that years and years of rock films           previously missing in action could be resurrected to form the gestalt of home entertainment libraries. At the same time, movies picked up on a new and excit­ing trend in rock music: Seattle grunge and alternative rock. Movies such as Slaves to the Underground (1997) and the documentary Kurt & Courtney (1998) diagramed these new perspectives.

By the dawn of the new millennium, the popular TV series American Idol and a slew of other so-called reality programs like MTV's The Real World again changed how rock movies were crafted, granting endeavors such as Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004) a brand new (and sometimes shocking) level of intimacy.

According to Muir, there is a wide variety of film types that feature either rock music or rock practitioners, and he includes as many of these types as possible in The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia. In addition to important movies reflecting the various types, this work takes the extra step of identifying rock movie's conventions and trends. This is critical, especially now, at this juncture, since there are fifty years of back-­story and history to consider and weigh. What thematic elements or stock characters bind the diverse rock-film genre together? What components do these films have it common? With films from Beach Blanket Bingo to the notorious Bubba Ho-Tep, readers are in for a rockin' good time. Whether that ‘one great rock show’ is a beach movie starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, a misbegotten horror/rock fusion like The Horror of Party Beach, or a rib-tickling, heavy metal mockumentary like This Is Spinal Tap, they will find all their favorites in the pages of The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia. Highly accessible to a general audience, this book is an infinitely suitable thumb-through reference for teenagers, casual moviegoers, and regular film fans.

Entertainment / Music / Social Sciences / Popular Culture

Other People's Property: A Shadow History of Hip-Hop in White America by Jason Tanz (Bloomsbury USA)

As he tells it, in 1989 author Jason Tanz was blown away by Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back CD. Before long his room was papered with posters of NWA and Malcolm X. And when he went off to Brown University, Tanz tried to help start the first campus chapter of the NAACP. Readers may be surprised to learn that Tanz is a white boy from Tacoma, WA.

Over the last quarter-century hip-hop has grown from an esoteric form of African-American expression to become the dominant form of American popular culture. Today, Snoop Dogg shills for Chrysler and white kids wear Fubu, the black-owned label whose name stands for “For Us, By Us.” This is not the first time that black music has been appreciated, adopted, and adapted by white audiences – think jazz, blues, and rock – but Tanz in Other People's Property says that hip-hop’s journey through white America provides a unique window to examine the racial dissonance that has become a fact of national life. In such culture-sharing, Tanz, senior editor at Fortune Small Business, sees white Americans struggling with their identity, and wrestling, often unsuccessfully, with the legacy of race.
Today, presidential candidates drop knowing references to OutKast and soccer moms shout ‘you go, girl.’ Other People's Property is about how hip hop is consumed once it moves outside the inner cities that birthed it, away from the black community that has provided the bulk of its inspiration and artists, and into the farthest reaches of suburbia. Other People's Property examines how we got there, and what it means. It is a book about hip-hop's mainstream white audience and the assumptions, subtexts, and emotions that bubble just under the surface of their fandom.

To support his anecdotally driven history of hip-hop’s cross-over to white America, Tanz conducts dozens of interviews with fans, artists, producers, and promoters, including some of hip-hop’s legendary figures – such as Public Enemy’s Chuck D; white rapper MC Serch (3rd Bass); and former Yo! MTV Raps host Fab 5 Freddy. He travels across the country, visiting ‘nerdcore’ rappers in Seattle, who rhyme about Star Wars conventions, a group of would-be gangstas in a suburb so insulated it’s called ‘the bubble’, and a breakdancing class at the upper-crusty New Canaan Tap Academy..

In his attempt to nail down answers and gain insight, Tanz doesn't shy away from turning the microscope on himself and asking "why has hip hop been so attractive to me?" He unflinchingly reveals anecdotes from his own past and writes with insight about his personal experience as a white fan.

Suburban white kids' increasingly ubiquitous fascination with hip-hop culture is the subject of this thoughtful and often insightful work of long-form journalism. Tanz, a young white man himself and an editor at Fortune Small Business, is an apt chronicler of the racial and cultural obstacles that stand between the producers and consumers of rap. He has an obvious passion for the music at hand, and he demonstrates his connoisseurship through brilliant evocations of the power of the band N.W.A. and the often painful history of white rappers. … his chapter about hip-hop marketing and commercialization displays a keen understanding of the advertising forces at work without ever devolving into simplistic damnation….Tanz solidly displays his strong grasp of the broad cultural significance of the rise of hip-hop. – Publishers Weekly
Hip-hop in the American pop-cultural mainstream is a matter of much more than the Beastie Boys, as Tanz's skewering history of middle-class white assimilation of black cultural motifs for fun and profit makes clear. … Tanz makes what sense can be made of such aspirations and affords an ironic, insightful look at how rap and hip-hop have permeated the media landscape even while large segments of society maintain a baffled disconnection from the music. Food for thought. – Mike Tribby, Booklist
Personal without being self-indulgent and well-researched but never stiff, Other People's Property is a thoughtful, clear-eyed look at a hot-button topic – It's a real contribution to the study of hip-hop. – Alan Light, former editor in chief, Vibe magazine, and author of Vibe: History of Hip Hop and The Skills to Pay the Bills: The Story of the Beastie Boys
At once a personal narrative about growing up in racially divided America and a cultural analysis of our Hip-Hop culture, Other People's Property is a penetrating analysis of the many ways that the United States and the world have been transformed in the last three decades by rap artists and their audiences. The extraordinary changes they have generated in every dimension of our society are startling. Tanz’s book will be a revelation for those who do not already know that they are living in Hip-Hop America! – Emory Elliott, President, American Studies Association

An eye-opening look at race and identity in the U.S., Other People's Property blends memoir, history, cul­tural analysis, and on-the-ground reportage to explore hip-hop's decades-long journey through white America. Drawing on the author’s personal experience as a white fan as well as his in-depth knowledge of hip-hop’s history, Other People's Property provides a hard-edged, thought-provoking, and humorous snapshot of the particularly American intersection of race, commerce, culture, and identity.

Entertainment / Sports

Just Play Ball by Joe Garagiola, with a foreword by Yogi Berra (Northland Publishing)

Our fathers remember baseball the way it should be, colorful characters who played for the love of the game.

From one of the game's most recognized voices, Just Play Ball focuses on the positive aspects of our national pastime. Joe Garagiola serves up anecdotes and humorous stories from baseball greats – past and present – offering his unique behind the scenes, behind the catcher's mask, and behind the microphone perspective on a baseball career entering its 60th year. Beginning with a foreword by Yogi Berra and ending with what amounts to a love letter to the game of baseball, Just Play Ball is a whiff of fresh cut grass, rosin bags, and pine tar ... just when the game needs it the most.

Joseph Henry Garagiola, Sr. (born February 12, 1926 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a former catcher in Major League Baseball who later became an announcer and television host, popular for his colorful personality. In 1991, he was hon­ored by the Baseball Hall of Fame with the Ford Frick Award for outstanding broadcasting accomplishments. He has also been given his own star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

As an announcer, Garagiola is best known for his almost 30 year association with NBC. He began doing national baseball broadcasts in 1961 (teaming with Bob Wolff). He became a broadcaster for the New York Yan­kees from 1965 to 1967. He returned to broadcasting for NBC from 1974 to 1988. His books have sold millions of copies, and he continues to be a favorite as a TV announcer for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Garagiola and his across-the-street neighbor Yogi Berra (not a shabby catcher, either) played sandlot baseball in St. Louis and in the minor leagues until World War II intervened. After his discharge from the Army, Garagiola broke into the major leagues as a catcher with the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1946 season. The Cardinals beat the Red Sox in the World Series that year; Garagiola batted .316 and had four hits in the pivotal fourth game. Garagiola went on to play for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs, and New York Giants. After injury ended his play­ing career, he won rave reviews for his commentary for the Cardinals' broadcast and was soon doing NBC's Game of the Week for a national audience. His television notoriety skyrock­eted when he became a co-host on NBC's Today program, where he worked with broadcasting greats Barbara Walters, Bryant Gumbel, and Katie Couric.

Garagiola is National Chairman of NSTEP (National Spit Tobacco Education Program), aimed at educating people about the serious health risks involved in the use of spit tobacco.

Joe doesn't talk about his hitting, but with Just Play Ball he has hit a home run. I know how that feels, and now he knows how that feels. Good stories and plenty of laughs along the way. A high five from me. – Hank Aaron

If you're looking for ‘baseball talk’ and a laugh, this is the book. – Brandon Webb

Joe and I have had a million laughs over the years. Now with this book, Just Play Ball, I'll have a million more. I'll bet you will laugh out loud at some of the stories. – Tom Lasorda

Sports is not only about numbers, it's about people. I like stories about people and that's what the book is all about. Just Play Ball is solid baseball wrapped in humor. – Jerry Colangelo

Joe talks about the trouble he had hitting, but this book proves he doesn't have any trouble telling a funny story. – Luis Gonzalez

Baseball legend Garagiola's Just Play Ball is an insightful look at what is right with America's pastime, reminding readers of what the game is (or was) all about. A nostalgic laugh fest.

Health, Mind & Body / Alternative Medicine / Massage

The Foundations of Shiatsu by Chris Jarmey (Lotus Publishing (UK) & North Atlantic Books (US))

So, what is shiatsu, and how does it fulfill the dual role of a healing system and a method for personal development? Perhaps it is easier to first discuss what it is not. It is not merely acupuncture without needles or acupressure, although acupressure can be considered a sub-division of shiatsu. Neither is it simply an oriental method of physiotherapy or soft tissue manipulation; although if assessed purely from its range of physical techniques, it does incorporate aspects of these methods.

The fundamental principle of shiatsu is to hold, with clear mental focus, sustained stationary contact with a receiving person's body using thumbs, fingers, palms or sometimes elbows or knees; with sufficient patience to wait for a response in the receiver's subtle energy or Ki (qi, ch'i) flow. A variety of stretching, rotating and levering techniques may be required to reduce the receiver's muscular and mental ‘holding on’, but essentially, stationary pressure or connection at the appropriate angle and depth is what differentiates shiatsu from massage. – from the book

Shiatsu – a Japanese bodywork therapy – works by stimulating the body's vital energy flow in order to promote good health. The practitioner applies pressure and stretching to the energy lines or ‘meridians.’ The Foundations of Shiatsu written by a renowned practitioner Chris Jarmey, is an in-depth introduction to the basic principles and methods of this practical healing art.

The Foundations of Shiatsu provides a description of how and why shiatsu works and the ways in which to apply it. A straightforward explanation of the basics underlying shiatsu forms the starting point, followed by detailed advice on how the practitioner or student can prepare both body and mind for giving shiatsu. A discussion of the principles of applying techniques leads into practical, step-by-step instruction on a wide range of technique sequences, all accompanied by explanatory line drawings and color photographs. These help beginners maximize their understanding of how to relieve stress and promote well-being through shiatsu. A comprehensive overview of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as applied to basic shiatsu completes the picture.

Jarmey is course director and principal of the European Shiatsu School, which he founded in 1985. He also is the author of several successful books including The Concise Book of Muscles, The Atlas of Musculo-Skeletal Anatomy, The Concise Book of the Moving Body, The Theory and Practice of Taiji Qigong, Acupressure for Common Ailments, and The Book of Meditation. His book Shiatsu: The Complete Guide is currently the leading reference book for shiatsu students and therapists. Jarmey teaches body mechanics, bodywork therapy, and anatomy extensively throughout Europe, and currently runs a bodywork therapy practice in Marlborough, Wiltshire, UK.
According to Jarmey, Shiatsu is a natural healing discipline from the same ancient oriental medicine principles as acupuncture.

The Foundations of Shiatsu explains that the quality and effectiveness of shiatsu is dependant upon the state of mind of the giver. For example, shiatsu demands an ability to patiently still and focus the mind in order to detect subtle changes within the receiver's vitality. Thereafter, it requires humility and skill to assist the natural healing process. It works more deeply if practitioners understand that they cannot help restore true health effectively if they fail to acknowledge and respond to the person's particular energetic rhythm and distribution of Ki. Shiatsu practitioners learn to listen to those energies and assist their natural inclination towards balance and harmony. Shiatsu is therefore about skillfully nurturing the body/mind's potential for regaining vitality.

The Foundations of Shiatsu describes what is covered in a short shiatsu course for beginners. It gives readers insight into how to develop the qualities of conscious touch described. It is not intended to bring readers to the point of consummation of those abilities. Only the sustained patient practice of shiatsu following a legitimate and thorough training will give them the necessary