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We Review the Best of the Latest Books

ISSN 1934-6557

Febuary 2008, Issue #106

Contents:

Audio / History / Americas / African Americans

A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation by David W. Blight, read by the author, with Richard Allen & Dion Graham [Abridged Audiobook, 5 Audio CDs, running time: 6 hours] (Random House Audio)

A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation by David W. Blight (Harcourt)

Day after day the slaves came into camps and everywhere the “Stars and Stripes” waved – they seemed to know freedom had dawned to the slave. – John Washington, 1873, remembering August 1862

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group in A Slave No More.
Wallace Turnage was a teenage field hand on an Alabama plantation, John Washington an urban slave in Virginia. They never met. But both men saw opportunity in the chaos of the Civil War, both escaped north, and both left remarkable accounts of their flights to freedom. Handed down through family and friends, these narratives tell gripping stories of escape. In A Slave No More Turnage's journal (a sketch of my life or adventures and persecutions which I went through from 1860 to 1865) is about his attempted escapes and their dire consequences: from his first to his successful fifth and last runaway. His account is particularly noteworthy in its revelation of the slave and free-black networks he found and utilized. Washington's Memorys of the Past is very much a coming of age story, offering a unique window on life in a slave society.
Working from a genealogical material, historian David W. Blight, director of Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and professor of American history, has reconstructed Turnage’s and Washington’s childhoods as sons of white slaveholders and their climb to black working-class stability in the North, where they reunited their families.
To relate a bit of Washington’s story from A Slave No More: John M. Washington was born a slave on May 20, 1838, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Washington begins his narrative with the wry comment that he “never had the pleasure of knowing” his mother’s owner, Thomas R. Ware, Sr., who died before John was born. And he supposes “It might have been a doubtful pleasure.” So far as can be determined, Washington also never knew his father, though readers can assume he was white. As an autobiographer reconstructing his own youthful identity, Washington says revealingly: “I see myself a small light haired boy (very often passing easily for a white boy).”
With these words Washington recollects the complicated story of so many American slaves – mixed racial heritage. The offspring of sexual unions between black women and their white male owners or pursuers suffered a legacy of confusion, shame, and abuse, but they also occasionally benefited from economic and social advantages, especially in towns and cities. Washington was one of more than 400,000 out of four million American slaves by 1860 who were officially categorized as ‘mulatto’ or other terminology to distinguish a person of some white parentage. From 1830 to the Civil War, the state of Virginia especially had gone to great effort, although unsuccessfully in practical terms, to legally establish a color line marking who was white and who was not. White friends, and perhaps relatives, aided John’s education and opportunities early in his life. But in Fredericksburg and elsewhere, due to his mother’s status and color, he was considered a chattel slave until the war came.

Exactly who Washington’s father was – and how John got his middle initial and last name – have been impossible to trace. A John M. Washington, a distant cousin of President George Washington, lived in Fredericksburg, went to West Point in the 1810s, became an artillery officer, and died in a shipwreck in 1853. But no evidence exists for his patrimony of John. Ware had four sons by 1838, ages twenty-six, twenty-four, twenty, and eighteen. Any of them could have been Washington’s father, although only the two younger ones, John and William, seem to have been residents of Fredericksburg at the time.
Washington’s story is much clearer on his mother’s side. Women determined, protected, and supported John’s life chances. His maternal grandmother was a slave named Molly who was born in the late 1790s and owned by Thomas Ware. Molly, called ‘my Negro woman,’ is acknowledged for her ‘faithful service’ in Ware’s 1820 will, in which he bequeathed her and her children (valued at $600) to his wife, Catherine (who would eventually be John’s owner). By 1825 Ware’s estate inventory lists Molly and four children; John’s mother, Sarah, was the oldest at age eight. Molly would have another four children by the 1830s. In June of 1829 this strong-willed mother misbehaved (perhaps running away) in such a manner that Catherine Ware arranged with a punishment house to execute a “warrant against Molly and for whipping her by contract $1.34.” Perhaps Molly’s defiance was sparked because her sister, Alice, had just been sold away for $350.
Sarah Tucker, John’s mother, was likely born in January 1817. Who the men fathering all these children were remains a researcher’s mystery. Sarah probably also had a white father; she is described in various documents as being ‘bright mulatto’ and short in height. Ware did not own any men who could have been either Sarah’s or John’s father. When Sarah gave birth to John in 1838, she was a twenty-one-year-old who had somehow learned to read and write, a less unusual accomplishment for urban slaves in small households than for plantation slaves.
Washington yearningly describes his eight years in the countryside in the idyllic opening section of his narrative. His mother must have worked as a house slave because he played ‘mostly with white children.’ He spent summers ‘wading the brooks’ and climbing ridges from which he could see the ‘Blue Ridge Mountains’ and a “moss covered wheel . . . throwing the water off in beautiful showers” at a mill on the Rapidan River. And perhaps most important, by the time he was eight, Sarah had taught him the alphabet.
Equipped with literacy, if not with good spelling or grammar, Washington brilliantly uses these images of nature as backdrop for his descent into the hell of slavery. He employs natural beauty as a metaphor for freedom and a reminder of the terror of bondage, knowing that the glories of nature can both inspire the soul and mock human sadness. He worries at one point that his ‘minute events’ would not ‘interest’ his reader, and then he quickly moves his story forward.
According to A Slave No More, recent study of runaway slaves in the antebellum South found that slaveholders’ advertisements often described a slave as ‘proud, artful, cunning . . . shrewd’ or ‘very smart.’ Historians Loren Schweninger and John Hope Franklin conclude that the typical runaway exhibited “self-confidence, self-assurance, self-possession . . . self-reliance.” It was rare for women to run away, especially those with small children. In the database produced by Schweninger and Franklin, based on extant runaway advertisements in five Southern states, 81 percent of all runaways were male. Of the 195 Virginia runaways from 1838 to 1860, of which Sarah would be one, only seventeen (9 percent) were female.

The audio version of A Slave No More is read by the author together with Richard Allen, a stage actor and four-time Audie-nominated and Earphone-winning narrator with stage and television credits; and Dion Graham, an award-winning and critically acclaimed actor, who has performed on and off-Broadway, in films, and in several hit television series.

Three fascinating works are packaged here: two unpublished manuscripts by former slaves Wallace Turnage (1846-1916) and John Washington (1838–1918), and an illuminating analysis of them by award-winning historian Blight. …Blight provides an accessible historical and literary context for the manuscripts and explores, as fully as possible, the men's lives not covered in their manuscripts (both are self-emancipated). These powerful memoirs reveal poignant, heroic, painful and inspiring lives. – Publishers Weekly
Two remarkable lives, previously lost, emerge with startling clarity, largely through the words of the principal actors themselves... Washington and Turnage... offer a precious commodity. – William Grimes, The New York Times
[The narratives are] fascinating documents that live up to Blight's claims for them. – Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
[The] narratives are powerful and poignant and help to fill in the cracks of history in voices too rarely heard... While nothing can match the power of the men's own words, Blight's commentary does much to round out the portrait of the slave and former-slave experience... Readers will... be powerfully grateful. – Christian Science Monitor
[F]ascinating... gripping stories that speak to our understanding of the slave legacy and the meaning of the Civil War and Reconstruction with obvious implications for the issues of reparations, historical responsibility, and historical memory that continue to roil our society. – Boston Globe
Two recently uncovered slave narratives create the backbone for this enthralling, intimate read. – Chicago Tribune

Working from an unusual abundance of genealogical material, Blight has reconstructed Turnage’s and Washington’s childhoods in slavery and their climb to black working-class stability in the North, where they reunited their families. In A Slave No More, the untold stories of these two ordinary, and yet also extraordinary, men take their place at the heart of the American experience. We are fortunate, indeed blessed, that Blight has recovered and brought to light these stories.

Audio / History / Americas / Biographies & Memoirs / Racial Reconciliation

Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History [AUDIOBOOK] (9 Audio CDs, unabridged, Running Time: approximately 9 hours) by Thomas Norman DeWolf (Brilliance Audio)

Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History by Thomas Norman DeWolf (Beacon Press)

In 2001, at forty-seven, Thomas DeWolf was astounded to discover that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in American history, responsible for transporting at least 10,000 Africans to the Americas. His infamous ancestor, U.S. senator James DeWolf of Bristol, Rhode Island, curried favor with President Jefferson to continue in the trade after it was outlawed. When James DeWolf died in 1837, he was the second-richest man in America.
When Katrina Browne, Thomas DeWolf’s cousin, learned about their family’s history, she resolved to confront it head-on, producing and directing a documentary feature film, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North.
Inheriting the Trade is Tom DeWolf’s memoir of the journey in which ten family members retraced the steps of their ancestors and uncovered the hidden history of New England and the other northern states. Their journey through the notorious Triangle Trade – from New England to West Africa to Cuba – proved life-altering, forcing DeWolf to face the horrors of slavery directly for the first time. It also inspired him to contend with the complicated legacy that continues to affect black and white Americans, Africans, and Cubans today.
Inheriting the Trade reveals that the North’s involvement in slavery was as common as the South’s. Not only were black people enslaved in the North for over two hundred years, but the vast majority of all slave trading in America was done by northerners. Remarkably, half of all North American voyages involved in the slave trade originated in Rhode Island, and all the northern states benefited.
 DeWolf tackles both the internal and external challenges of his journey – writing about feelings of shame, white male privilege, the complicity of churches, America’s historic amnesia regarding slavery – and our nation’s desperate need for healing.

Tom DeWolf’s deeply personal story, of his own journey as well as his family’s, is required reading for anyone interested in reconciliation. Healing from our historic wounds, which continue to separate us, requires us to walk this road together. – Myrlie Evers-Williams, civil rights leader, chairman emeritus of the NAACP (1995-98), and author of The Autobiography of Medgar Evers, Watch Me Fly, and For Us, the Living
Inheriting the Trade is like a slow-motion mash-up, a first-person view from within one of the country’s founding families as it splinters, then puts itself back together again. – Edward Ball, author of Slaves in the Family

Inheriting the Trade is a powerful and disarmingly honest memoir. An urgent call for meaningful and honest dialogue, the book illuminates a path toward a more hopeful future and provides a persuasive argument that the legacy of slavery isn’t merely a southern issue but an enduring American one.

Business & Investing / Economics / History / Americas

Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600-1933 by Rodolfo F. Acuña (University of Arizona Press)

In the San Joaquin Valley cotton strike of 1933, frenzied cotton farmers murdered three strikers, intentionally starved at least nine infants, wounded dozens, and arrested more. While the story of this incident has been recounted from the perspective of both the farmers and, more recently, the Mexican workers, Corridors of Migration is the first book to trace the origins of the Mexican workers’ activism through their common experience of migrating to the United States.

Rodolfo F. Acuña explores the history of Mexican workers and their families from seventeenth-century Chihuahua to twentieth-century California, following their patterns of migration and describing the establishment of their communities in mining and agricultural regions. He shows the combined influences of racism, trans-border dynamics, and events such as the Mexican Revolution and World War I in shaping the collective experience of these people as they helped to form the economic, political, and social landscapes of the American Southwest in their interactions with wealthy landowners.

Acuña, founding chair of the Chicano studies program at San Fernando Valley State College and professor of Chicano/a studies at California State University, Northridge, follows the steps of one of the murdered strikers, Pedro Subia, reconstructing the times and places in which he lived. By balancing the social and geographic trends in the Chicano population with the story of individual protest participants, Acuña shows how the strikes were in fact driven by human choices rather than the Communist ideologies to which they have been traced since the 1930s. Corridors of Migration thus uncovers the origins of twentieth-century Mexican American labor activism from its earliest roots through its first major manifestation in the San Joaquin Valley cotton strike.

Acuña relates that when he began this project in 1973, he wanted to write the story of the 1933 San Joaquin Valley Cotton Strike. A milestone in Chicana/o history, the strike involved 18,000 cotton pickers and their families, 80 percent of whom were Mexicans. Against all odds, they defied the planter community – which com­prised planters, banks, ginning companies, the American Legion, and the Boy Scouts, among others. The enemy were all those who nurtured racism and the willingness to distort truth, to murder, and to deliberately starve men, women, and children, to maintain total control over their ‘America.’ The only missing pieces of the puzzle were, how had Mexicans gotten to the San Joaquin Valley – and how had they endured?

In 1973, the major work on the strike was Paul S. Taylor and Clark Kerr's study, but it had not answered either of these questions. Acuña conducted extensive interviews and read mountains of documents. He made his pilgrimage to Berkeley and visited Paul S. Taylor in the summer of 1973. He says he was caught off guard when Taylor launched into a lecture on how Mexicans had fought for ‘tierra y libertad’ in Mexico but, here in the United States, were too apathetic to obtain land. According to Taylor, Mexicans were leaderless. He described Pat Chambers – the communist organizer of the 1933 strike – as a physically small man, saying he would not be surprised to hear Chambers described ‘as a Brooklyn Jew.’ The commu­nists, Taylor told him, had taken a leaderless people and brought them down on the law-and-order people. The Mexicans had accepted the communist leadership, which made things all the more difficult because the planters' principal weapon was that the strike leaders were communists. Taylor said that planter after planter would say to him, "Every dime I had in the world was tied up in that crop." Taylor had internalized the collective myths of our society, accepting as absolute truth the illusion that nothing would have happened if the communists had not organized the strike.

Acuña in Corridors of Migration says he believes it is fair to say that if what happened in the 1933 strike had happened to white workers, it would have been a major page in U.S. labor history. Organizer Caroline Decker told him that it was a good thing that some of the workers were white. If they hadn't been, there would have been a massacre.

As a starting point for his research, Acuña randomly selected Pedro Subia, who had been murdered on a picket line near Arvin, California, on October 10, 1933. He wanted, not to write a historical biography, but to learn more about the experiences of Subia's wave of immigrants. What corridors had they forged on their way to the San Joaquin Valley?

One of the principal corridors leading from Mexico to California passed through Chihuahua. For centuries, Mexican people moved through this central corridor, which he choose to call the Camino Real corridor, on their way to the mines of northern Mexico. They often stayed a generation in places like Zaca­tecas before moving north. In more contemporary times, some passed through Chihuahua or lived there for a time. The mines were hugely important in pulling people north. In mining camps such as Parral, newcomers formed barrios, where they lived alongside their compatriots. They named these neigh­borhoods after their former homes, a practice they continued when they moved into the Southwest. Drawn by a bonanza, large numbers of people would populate mining camps, haciendas, pueblos, presidios, and the like. When the bonanza ended, the population would contract, with thousands migrating to other bonanzas or haciendas and farm settlements. Along the way, they named their colonias after their homes – Chihuahuitas, Sonora Towns, and the like.

According to Corridors of Migration, Pedro Subia was born in Camargo, Chihuahua. With thousands of his compatriots, he moved along the Mesilla corridor from El Paso, Texas, to Morenci, Arizona, where he worked for thirty years before migrating to Cal­ifornia. The mines of Arizona pulled tens of thousands of Mexicans to the United States from 1870 to 1920. Acuña captures the experiences that Subia and his compatriots had before forging corridors to eastern Arizona, and their Chihuahuita in Morenci.

Thousands of Mexicans from Zacatecas, Durango, and other Mexican states also traveled these corridors, even as Sonoran and New Mexican workers and their families forged and followed still others. Major events such as the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20 intruded into their consciousness, as news, rumors, and propaganda flowed back and forth between Mexico and the United States. A huge copper empire was formed in Sonora by copper companies such as Phelps Dodge. During the Revolution, as the mines expanded in the United States and contracted in Mexico, many miners – now politicized by the Revolution – were forced across the line to seek work in the mines of Arizona and in the factory farms of western Arizona and eastern California.

The reclamation project along the Gila River to the Salt River Valley led Subia and other Mexican workers to the final corridor. Tens of thousands like Subia traveled west, often following the crops of the greenbelt that linked the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles, working in factory farms created by the mira­cle of modem irrigation. Industrialized commercial agriculture, like mining, required huge armies of workers. Many of the Mexican miners drifted into agriculture naturally. Since colonial times, they had worked the land and sea­sonally gone to the mines to supplement their living. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they migrated to larger U.S. municipalities and emerging cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles. The corridors brought them to the San Joaquin Valley in 1933.

According to Corridors of Migration, from all accounts, Pedro Subia was a decent and hardworking family man. When Subia died in the San Joaquin Valley, he left a son, who also lived and died in the valley, where he made his own Chihuahuita. Like many other Mexican immigrants, Pedro Subia Sr. and his family were looking for somewhere they could enjoy, at least for a time, what so many others did.

To write the book, Acuña says he made pilgrimages to university li­braries, historical societies, church record repositories, state and national ar­chives – in the U.S. and in Mexico. He also conducted extensive oral interviews of Clifton-Morenci miners and residents of Chihuahua, Mexico.

This is one of the most ambitious and significant works in Mexican, Chicano, and labor history as well as the history of Mexico-United States relations to appear in recent years. . . . This is a classic, and with its sweeping grasp, massive documentation, and strong writing, it will stand as the greatest scholarly contribution in Acuna's illustrious career. – Dr. Dionicio Nodín Valdés, author of Al Norte: Agricultural Workers in the Great Lakes Region

From one of the founding scholars of Chicano/a studies comes Corridors of Migration, the culmination of three decades of dedicated research into the origins of the migrations and the labor activism that have helped to shape the economics and politics of the United States into the twenty-first century. The documents presented in the book explode the myth that Mexicans were born apathetic and never attempted to organize.

Business & Investing / Job Hunting & Careers / Reference

Salary Facts Handbook: The Definitive Source of Pay Information on 800 Jobs by the Editors at Jist Publishing (Jist Works)

You know you'd like to earn more money, but do you have the facts or know the marketplace well enough to justify getting a higher salary for yourself? What will you earn if you move to a bigger city or a different industry? How much money will you make in a different career or with more education? – from the book

Salary information is closely guarded by businesses, but in an official government survey, 1.2 million establishments disclosed facts and figures on current wages for 800 jobs at 11 levels of education and training. Based on this survey data, Salary Facts Handbook gives accurate and detailed pay information.
The Editors at JIST have in Salary Facts Handbook tried to make complicated labor market and career information understandable, accessible, and useful. Readers also get advice for negotiating a better salary, discovering whether they are underpaid, leveraging their skills, and asking for a raise. Readers discover a job's starting pay; find out its mean and median pay; and see how wages vary by state, metropolitan area, and industry. They learn how gender, education level, age, union membership, veteran status, industry, and other factors affect pay. The authors also provide information about the minimum wage, holiday pay, overtime pay, hazard pay, severance pay, and much more.

Salary Facts Handbook shows, for 800 jobs, how much earnings can vary and for what rea­sons. For example, here are some facts extracted from the book:

  • If readers want to earn money as a Hairdresser, Hairstylist, or Cosmetologist, try to land a job in a movie studio. Beauticians employed in the Motion Picture and Sound Recording Industries averaged $84,430 per year, compared to an average of $23,350 for those employed in Nursing and Residential Care Facilities.
  • Among the 30 largest metropolitan areas, the lowest-paying area for Dentists is Chicago. Dentists there earn an average of $74,810, less than half of what they earn in some other areas, such as San Francisco, Orlando, Washington, St. Louis, and Cleveland.
  • Veterans working in water transportation jobs such as Sailors and Marine Oilers and Captains, Mates, and Pilots of Water Vessels enjoy a 38.8% salary advantage over nonveterans.
  • Actors average 10 hours of work per week, and half of them work varying hours.
  • The best-paying job that can be learned through on-the-job training is Air Traffic Controllers (median earnings of $117,240).

Summary of major sections of Salary Facts Handbook include:

  • Part I. Tips for the Best Salary. Learn how to boost earnings. Identifies the factors that affect earnings: educa­tion, location, industry, labor unions, veteran status, gen­der, and work hours. Explains how to leverage knowledge and skills for better pay in a present job or in a new occupation. Gives specific tips for negotiating pay, including the overall strategy, useful information to have for the interview, negotiating during the interview, and responding to a job offer.
  • Part II. Pay Rankings of Jobs, Industries, and Locations. Compares jobs by ranking them according to their earn­ings. Lists are organized in several useful ways, such as the highest-paying jobs at each level of education or training and the highest-paying jobs in each industry. Also ranks industries, states, and metropolitan areas by their average pay. From these lists readers may get ideas about jobs or indus­tries to consider or places where readers might relocate.
  • Part III. Salary Facts. Provides detailed salary facts about 800 occupations: national wages at several different levels; best-paying industries; wages in the 50 states and the 30 metropolitan areas with the biggest workforces; and income effects of personal factors such as level of educa­tion, gender, and veteran status. Information is based on authoritative government surveys.
  • Part IV. Frequently Asked Questions About Salary. Answers common questions about pay, such as who does and does not qualify for minimum wage or overtime pay, how much of pay can be based on commissions, and what severance pay and hazard pay are.

The book also has two appendices: the first, Resources for Further Exploration lists resources for researching the facts about pay and jobs and for learning how to conduct a successful job hunt, and the second, Salary Adjustment Percentages for All Met­ropolitan Areas, provides percentages that readers can use to adjust national average income figures upward or downward to match local income levels.

Salary Facts Handbook gives readers ideas about how to improve their earnings by getting further education, mov­ing to a new location, or shifting to a higher-powered industry. If they are still planning their career, they will find lists that compare jobs, industries, and locations by salaries so they can target the most prom­ising choices.

Ultimately, pay depends on an agreement between the individual and their employer. Readers can use the book to learn specific strategies and tips to help negotiate the best possible salary. Readers can thus avoid the traps that let interviewers screen them out of a job and use techniques that can persuade employers to pay more than they may have intended.

This comprehensive reference features an easy-to-use format; vast and varied information; and many useful rankings of jobs by demographic, geographic, and education, and other criteria. Salary Facts Handbook gives readers access to closely guarded salary information. Readers will find authoritative wage figures, not just national averages, but also figures for states, major metropolitan areas, and different industries, and not just one-size-fits-all figures, but also adjustment factors they can use to help fit their salary expectations to their actual situation. The authors used this data to create an accurate resource for job seekers, career changers, and students. Readers get facts plus advice in one essential resource.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership

Mastering the Rules of Competitive Strategy: A Resource Guide for Managers by Norton Paley (Auerbach Publications)

The stakes are high and real. Money is spent. Personnel are committed in a battle for the triumph or downfall of a company. Yet, given the same circumstances, some companies continue to thrive while others wash out. In the end, it is the dynamics of the competitive marketplace, the quality of the organizations business plan, and the ability to implement strategies, that validate and ensure a company’s existence.

Written by Norton Paley, consultant to large companies and nations as well as small and midsize companies, Mastering the Rules of Competitive Strategy blends selected historical lessons with modern business practice to provide a platform on which to understand, develop, and apply competitive business strategies. It identifies commonalities in culture and strategy among businesses that have successfully adapted to changing marketplaces and emerging competitors.

According to Paley, strategy is the art of coordinating the means (money, human resources, and materials) to achieve the ends (profit, customer satisfaction, and company growth) as defined by company policy and objectives. In more pragmatic terms, strategy is defined as actions to achieve objectives at three levels:

  • Corporate strategy. Deploying company resources through a series of actions that would fulfill executives' vision and objectives for the future of the organization.
  • Midlevel strategy. Covers actions in a three- to five-year period and focuses on fulfilling specific objectives.
  • Lower level strategy or tactics. Time frame shorter than those at the two higher levels. Correlates with a company's or business unit's business plan and the yearly budgetary process.

Mastering the Rules of Competitive Strategy defines nine rules of strategy to implement in readers’ own companies to achieve success. The book’s nine chapters correspond to the nine strategies:

Strategy Rule 1. Shift to the Offensive: Turn a Risky Competitive Situation into a Fresh Market Opportunity. When boldness meets caution, boldness wins. Based on historical evidence in the military and other disciplines, this rule points out that standing still – stalled by lack of ideas and immobilized by fear – can fester into severe problems. Readers learn how to use a ten-step guideline to customize strategies and stay on the offensive.

Strategy Rule 2. Maneuver by Indirect Strategy: Apply Strength against Weakness. Indirect strategy is the rule that stands out as one of the consis­tently successful ingredients of a business plan. Readers learn how to apply strength against a competitor's weakness, resolve customer problems with offerings that outperform those of competitors, and achieve a psychological advantage by creating an unbalancing effect in the mind of the rival manager.

Strategy Rule 3. Act with Speed: The Essential Component to Secure a Competi­tive Lead. Exhaustion through the draining of resources damages more companies than almost any other factor. This rule shows readers how to identify the barriers to speed and to maintain ongoing momentum.

Strategy Rule 4. Grow by Concentration: Deploy, Target, Segment. This rule means adopting a strategy that concentrates resources where one can gain superiority in selected areas. They emerge stronger than their competitor in key segments of their choosing. This rule also shows readers how to integrate concentration into business plans and strategies.

Strategy Rule 5. Prioritize Competitive Intelligence: The Underpinnings of Business Strategy. This rule shows readers how to utilize the tools of competitive intelli­gence, identify the behavioral personalities of competitors, and select agents to augment traditional competitive intelligence techniques.

Strategy Rule 6. Align Competitive Strategy with Your Corporate Culture: The Life-line to Your Organization's Future. Readers learn how to identify the characteristics of high-performing business cultures and see their impact on developing competitive strategies. They also learn techniques to reenergize the company's culture as they reinvent their competitive strategies.

Strategy Rule 7. Develop Leadership Skills: The Moral Fiber Underlying Business Strategy. Leadership is about responsibility and accountability, as well as achieving corporate and business unit objectives. This rule shows readers how to per­sonalize their leadership style and power-up their business strategy through effective leadership.

Strategy Rule 8. Create a Morale Advantage: Engage Heart, Mind, and Spirit When All Else Fails. In all mat­ters that pertain to an organization, it is the human heart that reigns supreme at the moment of conflict. Readers learn how to overcome the barriers to success resulting from poor morale and use techniques to activate high morale.

Strategy Rule 9. Strengthen Your Decision-Making Capabilities: Fortify Intuition, Enhance Business Experience, Expand Knowledge. Studying business history in general and probing past campaigns in particular can sharpen decision-making and strategy skills. Since no event is a stand-alone occurrence, readers learn how to link one event to another, and uncover the roots of a problem. Using case examples, readers learn how to analyze market events and interpret competitive encounters despite the fog of uncertainty.

According to Paley, deliberately and systematically following these nine enduring rules of competi­tive strategy can help readers overcome the obstacles that have crushed other managers. Then, integrating them into their business plans and strategies can increase their chances of triumphing over rivals. On the other hand, deliberately avoiding them or even minimizing their use places readers at a distinct competitive disadvantage.

Mastering the Rules of Competitive Strategy has a unique feature at the end of each chapter: the strategy diagnostic tool provides a reliable performance measure to support readers in building, evaluating, and monitoring their business strategies. Also, there is an outline of a strategic business plan in the appendix that can serve as the starting place for developing strategies, as well as a format for presenting ideas to management. Each chapter is supported with real-company examples, quick-tip guidelines, and applications.

Mastering the Rules of Competitive Strategy guides readers to think like strategists and become more proficient as they fight today's competitive battles, helping managers successfully navigate a changing marketplace. It shows them how to prepare themselves, their subordinates, their company, or business unit – to win customers, to win market share, to win a long-term profitable position in a marketplace, and to win a competitive encounter before a rival can do excessive harm. The time-tested rules and numerous real case examples serve as guiding principles as readers get to the roots of competitive strategy.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership / Human Resources / Training

Better Than Bullet Points: Creating Engaging e-Learning with PowerPoint by Jane Bozarth (Pfeiffer)

Better Than Bullet Points focuses exclusively on the application of PowerPoint to the creation of online training programs. Jane Bozarth, e-learning coordinator for the North Carolina Office of State Personnel's Human Resource Development Group and a columnist for Training Magazine, steps readers through the powerful features of this popular desktop application, covering everything from text to art, animation to interactivity. Better Than Bullet Points thus offers a guide for tapping into the force of PowerPoint and PowerPoint-based authoring tools, such as Articulate or Adobe Presenter, to create e-learning programs.

In writing this book, Bozarth assumes that most users have PowerPoint 2002 (XP includes the 2002 version) or 2003, and that some have upgraded to Vista/2007. Readers with earlier versions will find most of the book relevant to them; the biggest difference being the more limited animations available to those using older versions. PowerPoint 2007 introduced a new interface, and where the difference is noticeable, instructions have been included for both 2007 and 2002XP/2003. Otherwise, changes brought with 2007 are, for the purposes of develop­ing e-learning, minimal.

As Better Than Bullet Points offers a chronological tour through the process of creating e-learning with PowerPoint, Bozarth recommends reading the chapters in order, then returning to needed sections. The book sometimes refer­ences material covered earlier, so familiarity with the content will help.

Chapter 1 provides an overview, with examples, of the possibili­ties of using PowerPoint for developing e-learning. Readers then begin a chronological tour of creating good PowerPoint-based e-learning programs. Chapter 2 discusses the basics of instructional design for e-learning, with particular attention to setting clear goals, reducing cognitive load, and practical applications of the research on multimedia learning. This chapter also walks through the process of transforming former classroom content for online delivery and ends with ideas on choosing an appropriate treatment and examples of creating a basic program layout. Chapter 3 deals with developing a good user interface, creating navigation, and making decisions about learner control. Chapter 4 addresses the issue of choosing graphics and text that are meaning­ful, rather than decorative, and examines the impact the right images can have. Chapter 5 extends this discussion to creating and editing images for use in e-learning programs. Chapter 6 offers a look at effec­tive animations and the focus is on animations that teach rather than entertain. Chapter 7 provides exten­sive examples of creating interactions, from quizzes and games to simulations with branching decision making. Chapter 8 provides exam­ples of some add-ons, such as animated talking characters, and discusses ways of extending programs through blended learning and collaborative experiences. Examples of performance support tools, job aids, and ideas for ‘nice to know’ content are included. Chapter 9 covers the final step of development, adding narration and multimedia. Chapter 10 looks at ways of distributing e-learning programs to learners. The Appendix offers a quick overview of basic PowerPoint features and commands. Finally, there is a References and Resources section.

Rather than purchasing expensive software, dedicated for e-learning, Better Than Bullet Points advocates using a tool that most of us already have, saving time and money without the cost of re-training. The benefits of combining PowerPoint and proven instructional design principles are refreshing: a clearer message and targeted training that can stand on its own. – Diane D. Chapman, teaching assistant professor and director, Training and Development Online Program, Department of Adult & Higher Education, North Carolina State University

Jane Bozarth again shows us how to maximize resources and time while getting results. In her typical straight-shooting style, the author demonstrates that quality e-learning comes from good design, not expensive tools and software. Our own organization has achieved great success with her common-sense approaches – and now yours can, too. – Thom Wright, director, North Carolina Office of State Personnel

PowerPoint ranks very high in our ‘top 100 tools for learning.’ It is a powerful tool yet it is not exploited as much as it could be for learning purposes. This book will show you how to get the most out of it. – Jane Hart, Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

Jane Bozarth's guide Better Than Bullet Points explains the power of graphic choices, treatments, hotspots, and hyperlinks. She suggests ways to replicate games and simulations, to handle multimedia files, and to create a good GUI using the Slide Master. Readers will see how to blend their e-learning with other training systems and make it available to all their learners. – Karen Hyder, online speaker coach and event producer, The eLearning Guild

By providing in-depth guidance and exercises, Better Than Bullet Points enables training practitioners to create effective learning interactions in PowerPoint. Perfect for front-line trainers as well as instructional designers, the book includes step-by-step instructions, and the information is practical and immediately applicable. Provided that readers already own copies of PowerPoint, the book puts free real-world tools into their hands and helps make e-learning accessible to those who have previously been excluded from taking advantage of the opportunities e-learning can provide.

Business & Investing / Small Business & Entrepreneurship

Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing: A Simple Battle Plan for First-Time Marketers by Jay Conrad Levinson & Jeannie Levinson (Entrepreneur Press)

There actually is a way to assure that one will market the right way and attain the profits that are the fruits of guerrilla marketing, according to this book. That way is to start in the right place. Many business owners start out in the wrong direction, doomed to become a statistics in reports of the 50 percent of small businesses that fail the first year and the 95 percent that fail within the first five years. Many of these now forgotten companies had the goods, but they didn't have the marketing savvy.

There are so many businesses like these that Jay Conrad Levinson and Jeannie Levinson wrote Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing to help those ventures onto the right course. As consultants, they take start-up entrepreneurs by the shoulders and aim them in the right direc­tion, then give them a nudge and watch gravity go to work.

According to Jay Conrad Levinson, father of guerrilla marketing and the chairman of Guerrilla Marketing International and Jeannie Levinson, the president of Guerrilla Marketing International and co-founder of the Guerrilla Marketing Association, readers will learn a few minor changes they can make to bring about major results, that is, increase profits and free time. As they go deeper into the options for marketing their business in guerrilla fashion, they will learn about a guerrilla marketing strategy, and then create one that they will be able to use for the next one to ten years. The wisdom that went into that strategy will translate into the guerrilla marketing calendar to guide them and put them in control, and they will see how to get the most from the internet.

According to Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing, the way to get off to a running start is to have the personality of a successful guerrilla marketer, and the book shows how to develop it. Entrepreneurs also need to have special attributes. The way to get those attributes is to be born with them or to gen­erate them. They also need the right attitudes. Guerrilla marketing is not easy, but the Levinsons want readers to know that once they have the personality, the attributes, and the attitudes of a guerrilla, it is hard to fail. It's tough to be anything but successful with the mindset of a guerrilla.

So let’s say that readers are about to launch a guerrilla marketing attack. It is a ten-step process, and the Levinsons tell readers the research they must do. They show readers how to create a benefits list so that they know what makes them good and can communicate that goodness to their target audience.

Another key concept is meme – a simple way to communicate an idea instantly, and the book shows readers how to create one. In fact, there are 200 marketing weapons that readers can use, and the majority of them don't cost a cent, yet they're all weapons of mass profitability. The book helps readers figure out which of the weapons are best for them. Readers are going to have to operate with a plan, and the book shows how to create that plan – it may be only seven sentences long, but it will also be powerful and potent. To achieve financial greatness, the timing has got to be perfect, so the book covers how to create a guerrilla marketing calendar.

Then the Levinsons show how to get allies through what they call fusion marketing partners. Once readers are armed with these guerrilla marketing necessities they launch the guerrilla marketing attack. The hard stuff comes next – maintaining the attack. The Levinsons teach readers what to expect and how to sidestep the tough parts.

Keeping track of efforts is important, and Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing shows readers how. Then comes a time when everything is falling into place and they are making larger bank deposits than expected. According to the authors, that is not the time to kick back; instead, that's the cue to ramp up all the actions and to improve every single aspect of marketing.

Guidance for new marketers, reminders for experienced ones, and useful tips for everyone. … You need to read this book today; adopting this mindset, it will be difficult for you to not be successful. They are the BEST at the game! – Loral Langemeier, The Millionaire Maker, CEO and founder of Live Out Loud

Jay is a genius. Now you can be one too. Just do what he and Jeannie say, don't tell anyone where you got the ideas and you're in. On the other hand, that would be selfish. Time to tell everyone you know what an amazing resource you're getting... – Seth Godin, author of Meatball Sundae

The Guerrilla Marketing series has gained the well deserved trust of millions of followers worldwide who have benefited greatly from its wisdom. Now comes the Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing that will enable readers everywhere to adopt the mindset of a guerrilla marketer in order to achieve better business results, at less cost, faster. This is a wonderful book from equally wonderful people. – Stephen M.R. Covey, author of The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything

If you are starting a business on a tight budget, this book is for you! The Father of Guerrilla Marketing reveals dozens of high impact, low-cost strategies for getting new customers using time, energy and imagination. If you want to start making money from your new business, get this book! – Mitch Meyerson, founder of Guerrilla Marketing Coaching

Sit down, buckle your seat belt and be prepared to succeed. With this book you no longer have excuses to fail but a system to succeed. This Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing is consistently unique and stimulating and provides unquestionable value to all who pick it up, peruse it and use it.  – Al Lautenslager, bestselling co-author of Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days

... If you want the best, most proven, most widely used and easiest-to-implement advice in the world on how to market a startup business, go no further than Jay and Jeannie Levinson's new book. They know what really works, and you need to know what they are so generously willing to share with you. – David Garfinkel, author of Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich

All companies, whether just starting up or already working hard, can benefit from the guidance offered in Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing. The Levensons guide readers through a guerrilla marketing campaign, step by step, every step of the way. Their other Guerrilla Marketing books will be a lot more valuable to readers now that they can start at the start.

Cooking, Food & Wine / Health

Betty Crocker Whole Grains: Easy Everyday Recipes by the Betty Crocker Editors (Betty Crooker Book)

By now we're all well aware of the health benefits of eating whole grains, such as reducing the risk of cancer and heart disease or promoting a healthy weight or possibly even playing a role in managing diabetes. Yet we tend to avoid unfamiliar, but delicious and easy-cooking grains such as quinoa, kasha, bulgur or wheat berries, fearing they might not taste good. Those who embrace whole grains know that spelt, brown and wild rice, buckwheat, rolled barley and whole-grain cornmeal are as delicious as they are healthy. And they are low in total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.

But how do home cooks include the goodness of whole grains in their family's favorite meals? From the experts at Betty Crocker, Betty Crocker Whole Grains delivers the answers. From Oatmeal Pancakes with Maple-Cranberry Syrup and Campfire Popcorn Snack to Spanish Rice Bake and Frozen Strawberry Cheesecake, readers discover how tasty – and easy – cooking with whole grains can be. Featuring 50 color photos, the book demonstrates how easy it is to incorporate whole grains into any diet, such as: Whole Wheat Waffles with Honey-Peanut Butter Drizzle, Mixed-Berry Coffee Cake, Two-Seeded Checkerboard Dinner Rolls, Blue Cornmeal Muffins, Take-Along Oatmeal Bars, Caramel Corn Crunch, Broiled Dijon Burgers, Chicken and Veggies with Bulgur, Canadian Bacon-Whole Wheat Pizza, Lentil Stew with Cornbread Dumplings, Red Pepper Polenta with Gorgonzola, Chocolate Fudge-Raspberry Crisp, Cranberry-Orange Oatmeal Cookies, and a favorite in the Betty Crocker Kitchens, Three Grain Salad.

Features of the book include:

  • More than 140 easy recipes offer ways to enjoy whole grains at every meal.
  • Informative Q&As demystify whole grains and describe the many different types available, from bulgur and cornmeal to millet and quinoa.
  • Chapters on slow-cooker meals and sides, 30-minute meals and on-the-go snacks help readers feed their hungry families in a hurry.
  • Special sections take the guesswork out of cooking whole grains.
  • Recipes feature complete nutrition information, including whole grain servings and carbohydrate choices.
  • A thorough guide to whole grains including where to find and store them; ways to incorporate them every day; cooking charts for each.

This specially designed version of Betty Crocker Whole Grains features an all-new 32-page section that thoroughly explores heart health – amplifying why it's important to understand and incorporate information that will protect women and their families. Here is the most up-to-date advice from cardiologists as well as the latest nutrition data that can help anyone develop a life-long habit of good heart health, including:

  • Risk factors and various heart diseases (angina pectoris, stroke, heart attacks).
  • How to identify the signs of a heart attack or stroke.
  • Risk factors readers can change from quitting smoking to maintaining a healthy weight.
  • Advice on how to get started on the road to good heart health.
  • Top foods for a healthy heart with tips to add more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish and good fats to the diet while reducing saturated and trans fats, and keeping an eye on salt, alcohol, and calories.
  • Why being active and daily exercise is vital to heart health.

For more than 75 years, Betty Crocker has earned a reputation as the name readers most trust for culinary advice through cookbooks, magazines, radio and television. Increasingly Betty Crocker has published cookbooks focused on women's health, cancer, cholesterol, low-carbs, diet, exercise and well-being. Betty Crocker has now partnered with WomenHeart, the national coalition for women with heart disease, to promote awareness of this vital issue.
Each of the 1,000 recipes in this edition of the Betty Crocker Whole Grains contains breakdowns of nutrition information, including calories, fat, sodium, carbs, and other nutrients. ‘Low fat’ recipes are highlighted for easy referencing.

Betty Crocker Whole Grains not only demystifies, but defines whole grains and their benefits with this wonderful introduction to whole grains. It will have great appeal to cooks who are just discovering how interesting grains are, and to whole grain veterans in search of more grain recipes. With this cookbook, the experts at Betty Crocker make it easy for readers to include whole grains in their family’s favorite meals. The alliance between the Betty Crocker and WomenHeart will raise awareness of heart disease and send a powerful message to the many women who rely on Betty Crocker for great culinary and nutrition information they need to make good lifestyle choices.

Cooking, Food & Wine / Health

Techniques of Healthy Cooking, Professional Edition by The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) (Wiley)

When the CIA first approached the idea of nutritional cooking, in 1990, we set out to prepare a manual for our students to use in the two courses we then offered in nutrition and nutritional cooking. That manual grew like Topsy to become the 500-plus page volume we are now proud to present in its third edition. Over the years and through each edition of this book, more information has come to the fore about healthy cooking. And with each passing year, our guests have continued to call for great-tasting food that is good for you in every sense of the word. – from the introduction

More than ever, Americans are seeking ways to avoid weight gain and its associated health problems – but they still want to eat out and enjoy it. To cater to today's increasingly health-conscious consumers, successful chefs, restaurateurs, and other foodservice professionals must rise to the challenge of providing nutritious, well-balanced food that is still great-tasting and indulgent enough to leave diners feeling satisfied.

In its newly updated guide to healthy cooking, The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) provides professional chefs with the tools they need to create menus and recipes that are high in nutritional value and in flavor. Drawing on the latest dietary guidelines, Techniques of Healthy Cooking provides detailed information for chefs to introduce more flavorful, healthier choices to their menus. Readers will find advice on ingredients and serving sizes, guidance on developing recipes and menus, and more than 400 recipes.
Founded in 1946, The Culinary Institute of America is an independent, not-for-profit college offering bachelor's and associate degrees in Culinary Arts and Baking and Pastry Arts. A network of more than 37,000 alumni in foodservice and hospitality has helped the CIA earn its reputation as the world's premier culinary college.

Geared toward the sophisticated chef, Techniques of Healthy Cooking points out that "because chefs are often at the vanguard of culinary trends, [they] have the opportunity to influence changes in how people in the United States eat." The book offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date information available on healthy cooking techniques, ingredients, and menu planning. A broad overview of nutritional basics includes the current dietary guidelines and caloric intake recommendations, straightforward information on how nutrients function in the body, and expert instruction on reading and using food labels and on planning recipes and menus around a range of dietary guidelines. Chapters on Ingredients and Techniques teach the essentials of healthy cooking, from selecting the most wholesome ingredients to using healthy cooking techniques to maximize a dish's nutritional value and its flavor. Techniques of Healthy Cooking covers cooking techniques for everything from vegetables, legumes, and grains to meats, fish, poultry, and more, and includes recommendations for minimizing fat, salt, sugar, alcohol, and other unhealthy elements in a recipe.

Throughout the book, nearly 150 food photographs identify key ingredients and illustrate finished dishes, while step-by-step technique photos demonstrate key cooking methods. Embracing the trend of sharing among cultures, the book borrows healthy traditions from cuisines around the world, such as harnessing the antioxidant benefits of tea or using the strong flavor profiles of Mediterranean, Asian, and Latin American cuisines to replace excess sodium. In a chapter on Developing Healthy Recipes and Menus, chefs will find useful suggestions for reading a recipe for nutrition; modifying existing recipes to reduce calories, sodium, fat, and cholesterol; and developing original healthy recipes from scratch. The book also covers menu development techniques for general menus, vegetarian menus, and menus for special needs such as age, gender, and nutrition-related diseases.

Techniques of Healthy Cooking includes more than 400 enticing recipes divided into chapters like Soup, Salads, and Appetizers; Main Dishes for Lunches and Dinners; Side Dishes; and Breakfast and Beverages. They include:

  • Warm Salad of Hearty Greens, Blood Oranges, and Pomegranate Vinaigrette.
  • Corn Velvet Soup with Crabmeat.
  • Carrot Consommé with Lemongrass, Ginger, Spicy Asian Grilled Shrimp, and Bean Threads.
  • Tenderloin of Beef with Blue Cheese and Herb Crust.
  • Poached Cornish Game Hen with Star Anise.
  • Apple-Cheddar Pizza.
  • Brussels Sprouts with Mustard Glaze.
  • Pecan Carrots.
  • Celeriac and Potato Puree.

And no food bible, even a healthy food bible, would be complete without a chapter on Baked Goods and Desserts, which are just as scrumptious as their bad-for-you counterparts. Recipes like Chocolate-Ricotta Bavarian, Honey-Vanilla Cheesecake, Poached Pears, and Lemon Tart are all made with whole-grain flours, fruit juices to replace traditional sugars, and other healthy ingredients, proving that when it comes to healthy eating, it is possible to have your cake and eat it too.

Created by the experts at The Culinary Institute of America, Techniques of Healthy Cooking is an indispensable companion for the working chef in today’s health-conscious world. Beautifully illustrated with photos, this healthy food guide is perfect for the aspiring chef, the restaurant owner, and even for the serious home cook – anyone looking to make mealtime more nutritious without skimping on taste or style. Inspired by the information and recipes in the book, readers will be able to create dishes that are not only exciting and great-tasting, but healthy at the same time. Chefs will be able to introduce appealing new healthy menu options to consumers, address special health and nutrition requests effectively and easily, communicate nutrition information to customers in any type of establishment, and integrate the guidelines for healthy cooking into their day-to-day restaurant operations.

Criminology / Reference / Encyclopedias / True Accounts

The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation by Michael Newton, with a foreword by John L. French (Checkmark Books)

For good or ill, we live in interesting times.

It seems to be a law of nature that criminals always outpace law enforcement in adopting and adapting new technology. From six-guns to auto­matic weapons, Model-T Fords to Lear jets, adding machines to the Internet, lawbreakers always get there first, while law-abiding servants of the people lag behind.

Just how much modern science and technol­ogy affects the world of crime and crime fighting is explored in The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation. More than 300 entries cover the applications and techniques of crime scene investigation, including ballistics analysis, DNA identification, fingerprinting, forgery detection, forensic medicine, firearms identification, toxicology, tool marks, and trace evidence. This book also features case studies that demonstrate criminal investigation practices in action, as well as historical and biographical entries about key break­throughs and pioneers in the field of forensic science.

Entries in The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation include accident reconstruction, arson investigation, DNA evidence, explosives, forensic anthropology, forensic chemistry, forgery, Identi-Kit, medical examiners, organic compound analysis, spectroscopy, victimology, to name a few.

According to John French, for a long time, the advantage was with crimi­nals. If they could commit crimes and leave the scene undetected, they stood a good chance of escaping jus­tice. Those charged with law enforcement had to rely on luck, witnesses, and any obvious clues that criminals may have left behind. Luck was often with careful criminals, who made sure not to leave behind any incriminating personal effects.

In the foreword to The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation John French, crime scene supervisor with the Baltimore Police Crime Laboratory says that if he were asked to pick the one recent scientific advance that changed law enforcement most radi­cally, he would have to choose the computer. Comput­ers are used in the analysis of crime patterns: reports, crime scene diagrams, and facial composites by witnesses of suspects.

Police departments on the local, state, and fed­eral levels have established massive databases – data­bases that hold digital records of inked prints of those arrested, latent prints recovered from crime scenes, lands and grooves from fired bullets, fir­ing pin impressions from spent cartridge cases, and DNA patterns from body fluids recovered on crime scenes and taken from sex offenders.

The use of these computer databases gives law enforcement a powerful weapon. Entering a fingerprint into an AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System), a fingerprint examiner can sometimes make a match in a case without witnesses or suspects within 24 hours of the crime's being committed. Similar databases exist to match recovered bullets and cartridge cases from one scene to those on another and to the gun that fired them. Still another does the same for the DNA patterns from recovered evidence and known offenders.

These databases also turn back time. Investiga­tions of crimes that occurred five, 10, even 20 years ago are given new life as more and more information is gathered and criminals who walked free for far too long are being identified and arrested for their past misdeeds.

More important, with the ability to make faster and more accurate identifications comes the oppor­tunity to free those falsely accused of or unjustly imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. Just as the beginnings of fingerprint, firearms, and ABO comparisons lead to the exoneration of innocent men, so too is DNA comparison freeing or clearing those wrongly suspected or convicted.

But criminals always outpace law enforcement in adopting new technology. According to Newton in The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation, the reasons for this law-and-order gap are two-fold. First, law enforcement and the related private security industry are by nature both reactive and conservative. Second, the police are forced to work within a framework of established laws, which always lag behind criminal trends, mending fences after the fact. Offenses must be legally defined, parameters and penalties debated, guidelines for investigation clarified, budgets approved. The process may take months or years, and even when it is accelerated – as in the congressional response to terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 – implementation of new legis­lation still takes time.

Criminals, for their part, are bound by none of the restrictions that hamper law enforcement. The most notorious of them are innovators, always thinking of new ways to victimize the public. As the Reno gang ‘invented’ train robbery in 1866, and Jesse James pioneered daylight bank robbery a few years later, so modern felons labor nonstop to take full advantage of new technology, seeking more efficient ways to beat the system and avoid detection in the process.

According to Newton, progress always has a price. No advance in tech­nology comes without corresponding changes in society, both good and bad. It is the challenge of a free society to use modern technology for the great­est benefit, while restraining those who would cor­rupt new inventions and use them for personal gain, to the detriment of their neighbors and in violation of the law. It remains for future historians to judge how well that task has been achieved, or whether cyberspace shall prove to be an ungovernable Wild Frontier.

… Michael Newton's The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation serves us well, discussing how pioneering investigators found the way to make science work for the law and how technology today continues to improve on their work. – John L. French, Crime Scene Supervisor, Baltimore Police Crime Laboratory

The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation is a clear and comprehensive reference. Newton ably uses the encyclopedia format to discuss the ‘interesting times’ we live in, where criminals stay one leap ahead of technology, corrupting new inventions for financial gain at the expense of those following the law. Just as he did in his previous volumes on kidnappings and serial kill­ers, Newton uses the encyclopedia format to discuss the history and advances of forensic investigation, giving readers a look at the science involved, the techniques used and the people who developed and promoted the science, and made it work.

Education / Policy / Social Sciences

Deaf Education in America: Voices of Children from Inclusion Settings by Janet Cerney (Gallaudet University Press)

Deaf Education in America provides a detailed examination of the complex issues surrounding the integration of deaf students into the general classroom. Author Janet Cerney, Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Deaf School, Denver, begins her comprehensive work by stressing to parents, educators, and policymakers the importance of learning the circumstances in which mainstreaming and inclusion can be successful for deaf students. This process requires stakeholders to identify and evaluate the perceived benefits and risks before making placement and implementation decisions. The influences of the quality of communication and the relationships built by and with the students are of paramount importance in leading to success.
In conjunction with these principles, Deaf Education in America examines the theory and history behind inclusion, including the effects of the No Child Left Behind education act. Cerney incorporates this knowledge with interviews of the deaf students themselves as well as with their interpreters and teachers. To ensure complete candidness, the students were surveyed in their homes, and the interpreters and educators were questioned separately. Through these exchanges, Cerney determines what worked well for the deaf students, what barriers interfered with their access to communication, and what support structures were needed to eliminate those barriers. As a result, Deaf Education in America offers concrete information on steps that can be taken to ensure success in an inclusion setting, results that reverberate through the voices of the deaf students.

As schools are increasingly moving toward integrating deaf and hard of hearing children, it is important for educators, parents, and policymakers to recognize the complexity of this issue. A deeper look at the influences of communication and relationship building, as well as their interaction, may help to identify for whom and under what circumstances integration is successful. Improved decision making by those involved in placement and implementation is only possible when the perceived benefits and risks associated with the integration of deaf and hard of hearing children are identified and carefully weighed.

Since the communicative needs of deaf students are unlike those of other groups of students with disabilities, their plight cannot simply be an extension of the overall movement toward integration of students with disabilities. Instead, their fundamental human right to language must be examined, studied, and planned for in their daily lived experiences in school. In considering the quality of communication and relationship building in the learning environments for deaf students, it is useful to gain an understanding of the nature of the real-life communicative rela­tionships of deaf students in inclusive settings. This information can be gleaned only through the perspectives of deaf students exposed to inclu­sive learning environments and the professionals who give them access to the voices beyond them.

The interviews contained in Deaf Education in America are the culmination of a qualitative research study investigating the quality of relationship building and communication in the integrated learning environments of deaf students. Since the research in educational interpreting has been scant, this study originated as an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the perspectives of students and interpreters on their relationships and other factors that influence success in an interpreted educational environment. A secondary goal was to gain knowledge of the barriers that deaf students face in accessing communication in integrated learning environments, as well as the support structures they need to succeed.

The data gathered for Deaf Education in America comes from interviews with 10 deaf stu­dents, 5 deaf adults, 10 educational interpreters, 4 regular education teach­ers, and 2 deaf education teachers involved in the integrated experience of deaf students. Interviewing seemed particularly important for the popula­tion of deaf students in that it allowed them to communicate through their native language, American Sign Language (ASL), while removing the pos­sible barrier of not understanding written English surveys or forms. This method also allowed a clearer understanding of the perspectives of these individuals while offering an opportunity to explore the themes embedded within their stories.

A substantial decision in planning for interviews seemed to be the choice of whom to interview. The goal was not in conformity, but in the complexities of the viewpoints and their places of divergence and intersection. Initially, it seemed that the greatest opportunity for understanding would come from choosing pairs: education interpreters with the children they service. But this would be asking interpreters to violate their code of ethics by disclosing information about a specific client. Therefore, Deaf Education in America focused on the perspectives of educational interpreters collectively, rather than on a single comparison with a specific child.

Many deaf students experience a lack of power within the school. Unlike other students their age, they can not choose their classes and where they want to sit in the classroom. They are often not afforded the power to choose their friends but instead are limited to whoever learns sign lan­guage. They are severely limited in their control over their own interac­tions because they rely heavily on their interpreters. Deaf students are also often limited in their ability to achieve academic success by factors such as the effectiveness of their interpreter, their ability to interact with the cur­riculum, and the level of support services available. The lack of power that deaf students experience extends far beyond that of other groups of stu­dents with disabilities or from those from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Overall, the speaking deaf students in Deaf Education in America find more satisfaction in the social and academic areas of school. They still experience frustrations that lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation, but they do not experience the same level of social isolation as the signing deaf students. However, even the speaking deaf students become frustrated due to the communication bar­rier. Though it may not be as intense as it is for their signing deaf counterparts, they have moments when they do not understand their teachers and hearing peers, which lead them to feelings of loneliness and of being different. They also express their frustration in being thought of as less capable by peers and teachers. Even the deaf students who have strong speech and hearing skills feel this indicator of oppression.

The speaking deaf students recognize that they are more easily able to access their education through the combined use of an interpreter and their own limited abilities to hear and speak. They know that even these limited abilities greatly increase their capacity to form relationships with hearing peers. At times they relish their role as an intermediary between their deaf and hearing friends. They are proud of their ability to function in two worlds.

While some speaking deaf students are sheltered from the harshest reali­ties of the underlying themes, the signing deaf students feel the full brunt of language deprivation, loneliness, social isolation, and oppression. In some instances, the deaf student's fundamental human rights to language and to education seem to be in danger as they struggle to connect with a hearing world through one channel of access – their interpreter. Therefore, teachers, interpreters, and other school personnel have an obligation to provide deaf students with language-rich environments, opportunities to build relationships with peers, and freedom from oppression.

According to Cerney in Deaf Education in America , majority (64%) of deaf and hard of hearing students are educated in integrated settings (Regional and National Summary Reports, 2005), yet we seem to be functioning in a void of knowledge. A body of research needs to be developed to increase our understanding of the impact of integrated education on the academic achievement of deaf students. Further research is still needed to analyze the technical differences between a direct and an interpreted education. Additionally, there is a critical need to understand the cause-and-effect relationships of longtime language deprivation, lone­liness, and social isolation on the mental health of deaf students.

The information gathered in Deaf Education in America has serious implications for fed­eral and state policy makers, school administrators, teacher preparation programs, interpreter preparation programs, and school personnel. To improve the integrated educational experiences of deaf children, Cerney proposes the following policies at the Federal, State, and district levels:

  1. Develop and monitor a national accountability system focusing on the academic achievement of deaf students.
  2. Address the knowledge gaps of professionals by creating professional standards for interpreters and teachers who interact with deaf students in different contexts.
  3. Develop national educational interpreter certification standards to ensure that all interpreters attain ASL fluency, adhere to a code of ethics, and understand the role of the educational interpreter.
  4. Develop state policy to allow students to use ASL credits to meet for­eign language requirements.
  5. Clearly indicate in both state and local educational policy that schools for deaf students are viable and positive options for deaf students.
  6. Enforce the policy of a reverse continuum of least restrictive environ­ments for deaf students so that least restrictive environment means that environment yielding the greatest access to language and social learning needs (Department of Education, 1992).
  7. Monitor the IEPs of deaf students at the federal level to ensure that the language and communication needs of deaf students are being met.
  8. Include a language planning document in each IEP that requires a discus­sion of how to meet deaf students' language and social learning needs.
  9. Create magnet programs for students who choose integrated educa­tional placements to encourage larger numbers of deaf students within the same school.
  10. Include in each IEP a plan to identify and service deaf students' mental and emotional health needs with qualified professional providers.
  11. Develop policy to provide qualified interpreting substitutes (for example contract with a local interpreting service agency).

The study also makes specific proposals to guide:

  1. Collaboration Between Educational Agencies and Communities
  2. Support Structures for Educational Interpreters
  3. Deaf Education Teacher Preparation Programs
  4. Regular Education Teacher Preparation Programs
  5. Practice in Schools
  6. Professional Development for Teachers, Interpreters, and Other Adults in Schools
  7. Policy for Addressing Mental Health Needs

The voices of deaf children, as well as their interpreters and teachers, paint a picture of deprivation of communication and deprivation of social con­tacts. But our ceaseless worrying about the academic achievement of deaf children has not enacted change. By moving these recommendations into action, support structures can be created to increase the language and social experiences of deaf children. By doing so, we can make a positive impact on the lives of children and their future academic success.

The revelations gleaned from Deaf Education in America are consistent with previous studies and the discourse in the field of deaf education. The value of this thorough study is the generation of greater insight into these areas of concern. By probing the perspectives of participants about social interaction and rela­tionship building in integrated educational settings, it contributes to the knowledge base in the field of deaf education. By giving insight into the roles and functions of the educational interpreter, it provides baseline data in areas that were previously unexplored.

Health, Mind & Body / Alternative Medicine

Ayurvedic Spa: Treatments for Large and Small Spas As Well As Home Care to Help Everyone Become Healthy, Happy, and Feel Inspired by Melanie & Robert Sachs (Lotus Press)

One of the very first conversations I remember having with Bob happened when we were sitting together in the grounds of a very large psychiatric hospital on the south side of London. I was training as an occupational therapist and Bob had arrived for a placement from a counseling college. I wanted to feel him out on a matter that was eating at me. I cannot remember my exact words, but what I was basically ask­ing him was, "Am I crazy or is it this place, this health care system, this view of the body/mind system? And, if it is not me that's crazy, what is the alternative and what can we do about it?" That was nearly thirty years ago and our marriage and journey through our work lives together has been all about answering this question. – Melanie Sachs, from Chapter 1

If readers are spa owners looking for world class treatments, body workers wanting to learn methods that touch their clients, or anyone who enjoys creating nurturing rituals for themselves and family at home, Ayurvedic Spa offers to guide them to greater levels of beauty, peace and wellness.

Ayurvedic Spa, written by Melanie and Robert Sachs, both extensively trained in alternative health care systems, includes:

  • Ayurvedic assessments to customize treatments and help anyone personalize beauty and body care rituals.
  • Detailed descriptions and photos of spa treatments.
  • Stress reducing exercises and meditations from the Tibetan tradition.
  • Guidelines on how to integrate Ayurvedic treatments into their spa and into the life of their clients, friends, or family.

According to Melanie Sachs in Ayurvedic Spa, during the mid 80s and early 90s, Albuquerque was a focus for Ayurveda. Many of Dr. Lad's first students still lived and worked in the area and she studied with and became friends to such members of the Ayurvedic community as Amadea Morningstar, Dr. Da­vid Frawley, Lenny and Ivy Blank. These people attracted and invited other Ayurvedic teachers from India to come to the U.S. Through these connections the Sachs met and studied with Dr. Sunil Joshi, a pancha karma specialist who, with his wife Shalmali, turned their backs on the easy road to riches to rediscover the benefits of the ancient arts of rejuvenation. They also met Dr. Pankaj, a grand master of the art of pulse diagnosis and his wife, Dr. Smita Naram, a brilliant pharmacist.

In the mid 90s, their friend, Rex, curious about Melanie’s interest and success with Ayurveda in her own road to health, asked her if she would teach in a spa in Finland on what she had learned about Ayurveda, particularly as it applied to women and wellness. This was the birth of her book, Ayurvedic Beauty Care. And in 1995, Jane Wurwand, owner of Dermalogica and founder of the International Dermal Institute, another innovator in her field, asked Melanie to teach at her growing number of schools and it was in these classes that she learned how to teach Ayurveda ‘spa-style’. Much of the theory presented in Ayurvedic Spa was developed by formulating a jar­gon-free Ayurvedic language that could convey the essence of Ayurveda's concepts of energy and healing and presenting it to stu­dents and teachers. Once they moved to California, Melanie traveled monthly, mostly in America, but also to Australia, England and Germany. As her teaching progressed, an interest in product and equipment developed, and Bob became the point person – Diamond Way Ayurveda was born.

During this same time, the Buddhist community connected the Sachs with an excellent essential oil company in Germany, Primavera Life, which inspired the formulation of the vata, pitta, and kapha oil blends that are the basis of the Ayurvedic face and body oils.

According to Bob and Melanie, Ayurveda teaches that roughly 95% of what causes disease is related to stress and poor life-style habits. Thus while Ayurveda is as deep as any other medical system in offering advice for serious chronic and acute diseases, so much of what it offers on a day-to-day basis – diet, exercise, relaxation, mas­sage and various forms of detoxification – will improve the quality of living. The Sachs do not see Ayurvedic Spa as Ayurveda ‘light’, lesser significance than the more medical aspects and miracles of Ayurveda. The techniques that they offer in the book are the gateway to an Ayurvedic life, a life built on wisdom, compassion, joy, and vitality.

The book contains five sections:

  1. What You Need to Know Just in Case You Wanted to Know
  2. Welcome to The Spa!
  3. Treatments: Polishing Your Client’s Mandala
  4. Taking It Home with You
  5. Last Minute Essentials

Melanie and Robert Sachs opened the beauty industry's eyes to Ayurvedic principles and methods, allowing spa therapists to become holistic partners in their clients' to­tal well-being. From their hands-on treatments and talks on Eastern philosophies, the Sachs have developed a very loyal following among professional spa therapists and the general public. Industry professionals look to them for answers on how to balance inner and outer beauty with ancient systems that have powerful effects on the mind, body and spirit. A sought-after couple whose enlightening teachings have brought many to explore the world of Ayurveda, the Sachs' articles and presentations continue to be some of our most popular features because of their liveliness, innovation and clarity. The Sachs are definitely superstars in the skin care and spa worlds as with each endeavor, their commitment to their craft and their level of expertise flows from their passion to help others. – Monica Schuloff Smith, Editor in Chief, Les Nourelles Esthetiqnes & Spa, American Edition Florida Board of Cosmetology Member (2003-2007)

The Sachs, well known in the industry, adapt the techniques of Ayurveda to the spa business and explain exactly how to do it in Ayurvedic Spa. Of special interest are the assessments, allowing providers to individualize treatments. The candor of the Sachs in telling their personal journey is heart warming.

Health, Mind & Body / Diets & Weight Loss

The GenoType Diet: Change Your Genetic Destiny to Live the Longest, Fullest and Healthiest Life Possible by Peter J. D'Adamo, with Catherine Whitney (Broadway)

Disenchanted by the overabundance of one-size-fits-all diets, during the 1990s, eminent naturopathic physician, internationally renowned scientist, and bestselling author Peter J. D'Adamo helped millions of people lose weight by eating a proper diet based on their individual blood type. His bestselling book, Eat Right for Your Type has been translated into more than fifty languages and has helped superstars such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lopez, and Elizabeth Hurley maintain their Hollywood-perfect bodies.

In The GenoType Diet, he takes his research to the next level by identifying six unique genetic types. According to D’Amato, the GenoType is a survival strategy created by genes and cells in response to the individual prenatal environment. D'Adamo asserts, "We have the capacity to turn up the volume on good genes and silence bad ones, vastly improving our capacity for health and happiness. We don't need costly lab tests, drugs, surgery, or medical intervention…. All we need is an understanding of the diet and exercise plan that is right for our particular GenoType – the unique way in which our genes and cells interact." By doing statistical analyses of how genes, disorders, and physical traits are known to cluster together, D'Adamo established six GenoTypes and concluded that all 7.5 billion of us fit into one of them. The GenoTypes are:

  1. The Hunter. Tall, thin, and intense, with an overabundance of adrenaline and a fierce, nervous energy that winds down with age, the Hunter was originally the success story of the human species. Vulnerable to systemic burnout when overstressed, the Hunter’s challenge is to conserve energy for the long haul.
  2. The Gatherer. Full-figured, even when not overweight, the Gatherer struggles with body image in a culture where thin is ‘in.’ An unsuccessful crash dieter with a host of metabolic challenges, the Gatherer becomes a glowing example of health when properly nourished.
  3. The Teacher. Strong, sinewy, and stable, with great chemical synchronicity and stamina, the Teacher is built for longevity – given the right diet and lifestyle. This is the genotype of balance, blessed with a capacity for growth and fulfillment.
  4. The Explorer. Muscular and adventurous, the Explorer is a biological problem solver, with an impressive ability to adapt to environmental changes and a better than average capacity for gene repair. The Explorer’s vulnerability to hormonal imbalances and chemical sensitivities can be overcome with a balanced diet and lifestyle.
  5. The Warrior. Long, lean, and healthy in youth, the Warrior is subject to a bodily rebellion in midlife. With the optimal diet and lifestyle, the Warrior can overcome the quick-aging metabolic genes and experience a second, ‘silver,’ age of health.
  6. The Nomad. A GenoType of extremes, with a great sensitivity to environmental conditions – especially changes in altitude and barometric pressure – the Nomad is vulnerable to neuromuscular and immune problems. Yet a well-conditioned Nomad has the enviable gift of controlling caloric intake and aging gracefully.

D’Adamo explains how a host of environmental factors, including diet and lifestyle, dictate how and when genes express themselves. He goes on to demonstrate how, with the right tools, readers can alter their genetic destiny by turning on the good genes and silencing the bad ones.

Without expensive tests or a visit to the doctor, The GenoType Diet reveals previously hidden genetic strengths and weaknesses and provides a precise diet and lifestyle plan for every individual. Once the results are calculated, dieters are able to strength-test which GenoType they potentially are in the privacy of their own homes. Using family history and blood type, as well as simple diagnostic tools like fingerprint analysis, leg length measurements, and dental characteristics, D’Adamo shows readers how to map out their genetic identity and discover which of the six GenoType plans they should follow. Whether readers are Hunters, Gatherers, Teachers, Explorers, Warriors, or Nomads, D’Adamo offers a program that compliments their genetic makeup to maximize health and weight loss, as well as prevent or even reverse disease. To maximize each GenoType's health benefits, D'Adamo advises six diets. Broken down into fourteen food categories, the diets lists which foods each GenoType should add to their diets and which foods they should avoid. These customized programs optimize health and weight loss, and can prevent or even reverse disease.

D’Adamo, author of the bestseller Eat Right 4 Your Type again breaks new ground in The GenoType Diet with the first diet plan based on each person’s unique genetic code. In simple and concise prose, D'Adamo offers readers this twenty-first century plan for wellness and weight loss. Based on cutting-edge genetic research, the book provides a twenty-first-century plan for wellness and weight loss from a renowned healthcare pioneer.

Health, Mind & Body / Diet & Weight Loss / Exercise & Fitness

Women's Health Perfect Body Diet: The Ultimate Weight Loss and Workout Plan to Drop Stubborn Pounds and Get Fit for Life by Cassandra Forsythe, with a foreword by Kristina M. Johnson (Rodale)

When it comes to women's bodies – just as when it comes to the rest of life – one size does not fit all. Having a ‘perfect’ body means something different to every single woman on the planet. For some, it's getting a flat tummy. For others it's simply slimming down the thighs so that pulling on a favorite pair of jeans no longer feels like an Olympic event.

Drawing on recent research that has shed new light on the gender differences in food metabolism and the effect of exercise, the editors of Women's Health, the healthy lifestyle magazine for active women, have devised an eight-week weight-loss plan for women who would like to lose 5-25 pounds. They have crafted a plan with options, though with one simple goal: to help readers get their best body.

Key features of Women's Health Perfect Body Diet, written by Cassandra Forythe, nutritional educator and weight loss coach, include:

  • Meal plans that contain at least 40 grams of fiber per day.
  • An adjustment for the impact of female hormones on weight loss. (Women need a higher protein diet than men to increase lean body tissue and decrease body fat.)
  • Dieting techniques that revolve around psychological needs and personal goals and lifestyle.
  • Two diet plans to choose from – one higher in fats and lower in carbs; the other higher in carbs and lower in fats. (Simple food tests help women choose the type they need.)

With the Women's Health Perfect Body Diet readers discover a secret weapon, a revolutionary fiber supplement called glucomannan that will help control hunger by slowing the digestion and