November 2004, Issue #67

Antiques & Collectibles / Textiles & Costumes

A Pictorial History of Costume: From Ancient Times to the Nineteenth Century by Wolfgang Bruhn & Max Tilke (Dover Publications) is a visual history of world costume from ancient times through to the end of the nineteenth century covering all levels of society, from peasants to nobility.

A Pictorial History of Costume is a vast pictorial archive. Illustra­tions depict a treasure trove of wearing apparel, starting in ancient Egypt, circa 2200 B.C. and continuing to the late 1800s. Furs, veils, ruffs, sashes, and point­ed bodices abound, as do cloaks, leggings, waistcoats, breeches, mili­tary uniforms, and assorted head- and footwear.

In this republication of the edition published by A. Zwemmer Ltd., London, 1955, the panoramic display focuses on all levels of society, from peasants and the middle class to the nobility. Here are exotically clothed inhabitants of the Far East; armored gladiators of the Roman Empire and Crusaders of the Middle Ages; ladies of the Parisian aristocracy in the late nineteenth centu­ry; Dutch citizens of the 1600s; and hundreds of other figures modeling clothes from ancient Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, and Greece as well as apparel from England, France, Germany, Turkey, Holland, Italy, and other European countries.

A classic in the field, this splendid guide to fashion history takes readers on a grand tour of the world. A Pictorial History of Costume is an essential reference for costume designers and students of fashion history. Handsome and accurately rendered, this illustrated survey will particularly delight the armchair time traveler.

Arts / Culture Studies / Gay & Lesbian

How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS by David Gere (University of Wisconsin Press)

AIDS. 1981…1985.

A life-threatening medical syndrome is spreading, its transmission linked to sex. Blame is settling on gay men. What is possible in such a highly charged moment, when art and politics coincide?

David Gere, who came of age as a dance critic at the height of the AIDS epidemic, offers the first book to examine the interplay of AIDS and choreography in the United States, specifically in relation to gay men. Gere, associate professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA and longtime dance critic, in How to Make Dances in an Epidemic, writes about a time of extremes. Gere expands the definition of choreography to analyze not only theatrical dances but also ACT-UP protests and the unfurling of the Names Project AIDS quilt. According to Gere, these exist on a continuum in which dance, protest, and wrenching emotional expression have become essentially indistinguishable. The book’s chapters are titled Blood and Sweat, Melancholia and Fetishes, Monuments and Insurgencies, Corpses and Ghosts, and Transcendence and Eroticism. There is also an epilogue, extensive notes, and a bibliography.

Among the thousands of corporeal events that might have be­come the focus of a book on AIDS and dance, Gere has chosen just sixteen for close inspection, including two protests, two bene­fits, two memorial services, one processional funeral, three out­door performances, one installation, and five theatrical dances, including one that features an onstage erotic massage. His choices are anything but capricious, though he laments that so many performances cannot be considered directly within the scope of the book. But rather than treat only the well-known theatrical choreographies best known as AIDS dances, he draws upon an array of choreographies and corporeal events calibrated to assist readers in understanding the electric interchange between stage and real life and to elicit the major themes of the AIDS era with vividness.

Gere says that he made a decision midway through the project to focus exclusively on gay male choreogra­phers in the U.S., regardless of their HIV status, because he wanted to understand the resonance of their choreographies in the con­text of the codes and conventions of gay male culture. In terms of geography, the choreography Gere writes about in How to Make Dances in an Epidemic originates from locales all over the United States, with a strong concentration in New York and San Francisco, where the greatest number of AIDS-related works have been made. If culture is a constructed category – a premise that is central to all Gere’s arguments in How to Make Dances in an Epidemic – then someone who is expert in those constructions must execute their analysis. Still, Gere hopes that this study may eventually offer an opportunity for scholars to survey the relation between AIDS and choreography across cultures. This must be a joint project, however, not a solitary one.

Anyone interested in dance or in gay culture or in art and politics should, as I did, find this a fascinating book, impossible to put down. – Sally Banes, editor of Reinventing Dance in the 1960s

David Gere's How to Make Dances in an Epidemic is the definitive study of AIDS and dance, but its contribution extends well beyond ... A model of impassioned scholarship, this book rescues a nearly forgotten queer archive from obscurity while demonstrating how the arts continue to make all the difference in our lives. – David Roman, Professor of English and American Studies, University of Southern California

David Gere is shifting and reshaping the paradigms of scholarship in performance studies, cultural studies, and feminist and queer studies. – Nayan Shah, author of Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown

In How to Make Dances in an Epidemic Gere offers a gripping portrait of gay male choreographers struggling to cope with AIDS and its meanings. Gere’s offering is insightful; this is the first book to examine in depth the interplay of AIDS and choreography in the United States, specifically in relation to gay men.

Arts & Photography

Ladies Of The Lake: Women Rooted in Water by Kathleen Bagley, with photographs by Christine Thomsen (Dower Press) contains stories of women who live along the shores of Lake Placid in the Adirondacks, upstate New York.

Ladies Of The Lake offers a glimpse into the engaging lives of women who are rooted in water. Inspired by King Arthur's Celtic water goddess, Vivienne, and by the mod­ern Lady of the Lake, Anna Mabel Smith Douglass, the author, Kathleen Bagley, interviewed 23 women along the shores of Placid Lake in upstate New York. Taken as a group, these women represent a cross-section of human nature, each with a different and unique story. What makes these women similar is that all are drawn to the water and the enduring legacy of life on Placid Lake.

Ladies Of The Lake includes 155 photographs, many taken by local photographer, Christine Thomsen, of the women at home in their unusual camps and surrounding environments. Ladies like 82-year-old Helen Murray, who converted her camp to a popular club after World War II with zany style and grace; the eccentric yet practical artist Margo Fish, who hand-built the charming and enchanti­ng Tapawingo compound out of intricate twig and stone; and scratch-golfer and financial-expert Sue Riggins, who lost her one true love but managed to hang on to her camp. All are united by the lake's remarkable hold on them. Placid Lake truly is the main character in their lives.

That night there was a sudden dramatic summer storm with fantastic lightning. Kathryn sat out in one of the big Adirondack chairs on the waterfront and watched. 'I felt like I was in a drive-in movie,' said Kathryn. 'Nobody else around­, just me and this big, huge weather. The sky was electrifying, alive and intense. The wind was whipping through the trees in a frenzy: Kathryn was starting to understand what David Garrett meant about 'Forever Wild.' Before she went to bed that same night, she read Harvey Kaiser's Great Camps of the Adirondacks, cover to cover. – excerpt from the book in Kathyrn Kincannon, Managing the Masses

This fine book opens a door onto a little-noticed room in the mansion of Adirondack history; it's full of information, but of inspiration too. – Bill McKibben, Adirondack environmentalist and author of The End of Nature and Enough

Placid Lake is the place to paddle and Ladies Of The Lake is the reference you need to answer all those questions that inevitably float through your mind as you pass from camp to camp. We've all admired these structures from afar; now we get a rare chance to go inside and meet some of the fascinating women who inhabit them. – Nathalie Thill, Adirondack Center for Writing

This book is for anyone who visits or appreciates Placid Lake and the Adirondack area and has an interest in the region's rich culture and history. But it is also written for women – and men – who spend time on the water anywhere; for lovers of the changing seasons; for armchair enthusiasts who have never visited the area; and for anyone who wonders or delights in the serendipitous and inspiring lives of women everywhere. Ladies Of The Lake is the first book of its kind to appeal to each of these readers.

Arts & Photography / History / Architecture

Millionaires, Mansions, and Motor Yachts: An Era of Opulence by Ross MacTaggart (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.) is a re-creation of a time of fantastic wealth through never-before-seen photographs.

Through text and 250 duotone images, most never previously published, Millionaires, Mansions, and Motor Yachts re-creates a long-gone era of opulence and extravagance. Dominating this volume are the mansions and yachts of Alfred and Jessie du Pont. Equally larger-than-life personalities include Thomas Lawson, his expansive estate, Dreamwold, and yachts such as Dreamer; empire builder John Spreckels's 227-foot Venetia; Emily Cadwalader, who commissioned a vessel destined for world renown as a U.S. presidential yacht, before checkmating this achievement by ordering the largest private yacht ever built, the 407-foot Savarona; Eugene Tompkins, the "Napoleon of Theater Managers"; George Fabyan; Harry Darlington; and William Rands. Enfolded in these pages are not only the wealthy individuals who shaped this era but also curmudgeonly writer/yachtsman Thomas Fleming Day, photographer Nathaniel Stebbins, and the designers and builders who created these splendid yachts.

In Millionaires, Mansions, and Motor Yachts readers see how the very rich lived both on land and at sea. They also see the life below the decks and the individuals who spent almost their entire working lives in the cramped kitchens and quarters on these great yachts. The starkness of the crew's quarters is a striking contrast to the Tiffany glass, marble counters, and over-the-top sumptuousness of the staterooms above. Readers must  question the sheer quantities of natural resources that these grand yachts required and the societal structures that brought about such riches. Yet, there is no denying the aesthetic grandeur of these creations.

With a lifetime of sea experience and a penchant for finding "lost" photographs, Ross MacTaggart, writer, researcher, architectural designer, carpenter, and urban observer, is the perfect guide through this age of opulence. Using his background as both a seaman and an historian, he weaves technical details together with intriguing anecdotes about the past. Millionaires, Mansions, and Motor Yachts is a luxuriant volume with stunning photos taking readers back through time and recreating "the warmth of a summer sun oil skin, the passing scent of a gentle salt-tinged breeze, and laughter echoing across expansive teak decks."

Arts & Photography / Fashion

Norman Parkinson: Portraits in Fashion by Robin Muir, with a foreword by Iman (Trafalgar Square Publishing)

Photographer Norman Parkinson was both a superb craftsman and a consummate artist. From his first shoot in 1935, he brought a dramatic glamour, bold inventiveness, and daring new sense of individuality to the fashion portrait. “If a girl looks like a model,” he said, “she is not for my lens.” Parkinson’s ideal was embodied by sitters like Jerry Hall, Iman, and Appollonia van Ravenstein. His long association with Vogue, and his many assignments for Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, Queen, and other international magazines, brought him fame and recognition. His impulsive and unstructured style changed the static, posed approach to fashion photography, while his enchanting, idiosyncratic persona charmed his sitters and projected an alluring and glamorous public image. In return, he gave the fashion world ineffable style. Norman Parkinson – organized by decade and illustrated with fashion plates, portraits, and contact sheets – is a lavish record of a career that encompassed – and informed – five decades of fashion.

Standing at 6 feet 5 inches tall, Parkinson was unable to remain unobtrusive behind the lens and instead created ‘Parks’, the moustachioed, ostentatiously elegant fashion photographer – as much a personality as those who sat for him, and frequently more flamboyant. Parks reinvented himself for each decade of his career, from his ground-breaking spontaneous images of the 1930s, through the war years and the Swinging Sixties to the exotic locations of the 70s and 80s. Included here are some of the world's most beautiful women – his incomparable fashion portraits of Iman, Jerry Hall, Audrey Hepburn and Ava Gardner, for example. By the end of his life (he died on location in 1990) he had become a household name, the recipient of a CBE, a photographer to the royal family, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and the subject of a large-scale retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

The world of fashion has been both roman­ticized and criticized for its ability to project a vision of ideal beauty onto runways, magazines, and fashion books such as this one. But unlike other publications, this one seems to take its cue from the public de­bate about whether fashion magazines are contributing to the image problem of today's youth by using retouching that turns unusu­ally beautiful women into impossibly perfect ideals. Highlighting the photos "left out" from the pages of British Vogue, the book gives readers a tour of how fashion magazines both choose their photos and change them. ... A great addition to any fashion collection, large or small. – Rachel Collins, Library Journal

Whatever happened, you might ask, to Twiggy and Bianca Jagger and Jean Shrimpton, among other supermodels of yesteryear? British Vogue creative director Derrick and sidekick Muir sifted through 1.5 million images housed in the magazine's library to produce a multidecades-long tribute to the artists, photographers, and beauties parad­ing through its pages. It starts at the earliest, in the 1920s, with a black-and-white picture of three aristocratic women; all photographs, at the very least, identify the photographer, the subjects, the credits (hair, outfit; cosmet­ics) – and at the very best, tell some fascinat­ing stories. ... Fantastical, ethereal, yet a very real portrait of many ages. – Barbara Jacobs, Booklist

Norman Parkinson is an impressive and timely book examines an unrivalled twentieth-century photographic portfolio. This elegant monograph, written by Robin Muir, fashion curator, co-editor of People in Vogue and Unseen Vogue, is the first to focus exclusively on the celebrated photographer’s fashion portraits. Shining through his work is Parks's inimitable wit and style, and his unique eye for glamour and beauty.

Arts & Photography / Cooking, Food & Wine

Yours In Food, John Baldessari by John Baldessari (Princeton Architectural Press) invites readers to take a seat at John Baldessari's table for a feast of visual and literary delights.

In John Baldessari's, Yours In Food, John Baldessari, the founding member of the conceptual art movement explores America at the table, savoring the nuances of breaking bread in carefully composed vignettes appropriated from video and film. Baldessari, one of the most influential American artists to emerge since the mid-60s, gathers together a group of luminaries to provide mediations on food that compliment his carefully composed visual dining images appropriated from video and film. Reflections on food and eating specially commissioned from a smorgasbord of the country’s foremost contemporary writers on culture and the arts, from novelist David Eggers to musician David Byrne, offer up the perfect accompaniment to Baldessari's work. Selections include:

• Some Thoughts On Cooking, in which the author himself gives readers his favorite recipe – the 6-minute 30-second boiled egg.
• Notes On Taste by Peter Schjeldahl – thoughts on the sense of taste.
• Dave Eggers' Fuel decries the simplicity of food.
• Francine Prose wrestles with The Artichoke.
• Lynne Tillman – on the dynamics and intrigues of group institutional dining room eating in At Breakfast.
• Michael More's Eggs, Butter, Cheese written as a play – scattered food memories: good, bad and in-between.
• David Byrne's imaginings on knives, forks and fermented fish paste in Food.
• Andy Grundberg's Hotcakes at the Trail's End Restaurant on the art of food photography.
• John Haskell's Toast about Celeste, a beautiful Chicago waitress.
• Paul Auster's From the Red Notebook – reminiscences of food and the lack thereof during his lean years in France.
• Glenn O'Brien's fascinating namedropping and gossip in My Dinner With Andy.
• Tim Griffin in Holidays – on the decadent bounty of traditional American eating.
• David Gilbert on How To Cook A Turkey – a recipe for being a bitter wife and mother making a holiday meal.

Baldessari serves up a nuanced look at Americans breaking bread, accompanied by meditations on eating. Paired with his images, these humorous, insightful, and, in some cases, bizarre meditations investigate one of the most fundamental and telling of all human experiences. A visual and intellectual feast, Yours In Food, John Baldessari is sure to entertain and delight readers of fiction, art history, and cultural criticism and all lovers of food.

Arts & Photography

Transfigurations by Alex Grey (Inner Traditions)

Every once in a great while an artist emerges who does more than simply reflect the social trends of the time, able to transcend established thinking and help us redefine ourselves and our world. Today, a growing number of art critics, philosophers, and spiritual seekers believe they have found that vision in the art of Alex Grey.

Transfigurations is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Sacred Mirrors, one of the most successful art books of the 1990s. It includes Grey's major works completed in the past decade, including the seven-paneled altarpiece Nature of Mind. Grey's portrayals of human beings blend scientific exactitude with visionary depictions of universal life energy, lead the soul's journey from material world encasement to recovery of the divinely illuminated core of being. Also included are World Soul, a bronze sculpture of a divine being that symbolically encompasses all realms of consciousness and embraces all religions and dimensions of the universe.

An essay by renowned author and transpersonal psychologist Stephen Larsen provides a biographical sketch of the artist's creative process, his personal struggles, and his vision. Grey's early forays into dark, transgressive performance art and his later theophanic installations are documented in a special twenty-page performance section. Art critic Donald Kuspit elucidates Grey's primary subject, mystical light, as it manifests through his unique approach to the human figure. A conversation between noted philosopher Ken Wilber and the artist explores the possibilities of art serving as a vehicle for transformation. Albert Hofmann, the chemist who discovered LSD, writes the foreword that places Grey's work at the conjunction of science and mysticism.

Grey's vision...[is] an antidote to the cynicism and spiritual malaise prevalent in much contemporary art. – New York Times
Alex's work, like all great transcendental art, is not merely symbolic or imaginary: it is a direct invitation to recognize and realize a deeper dimension of 'our very own being. – Ken Wilber, author of Integral Psychology and The Eye of Spirit
Alex Grey is making some of the most beautifully refined imagist work in the country today. – Walter Hopps, senior curator, Guggenheim Museum and Menil Collection
A beautiful, unusual work. – The Midwest Book Review

Transfigurations represents ten years of visionary artwork from a rare artist embraced by critics, spiritual leaders, and the general public during his lifetime. Grey's art leads us on a transformative journey through the darkness of the material world to the divinely illumined core. Images of becoming, of existential pain, search and confusion, love, death, and transcendence are icons in the long corridors of Grey's creative odyssey. From his earliest paintings of skeletons, to his most recent beings girdded with fire and eyes, Grey brings us an ever-deepening visual contemplation on the nature of personal and transpersonal identity.

Biographies & Memoirs / Arts & Photography

Women I Have Dressed (and Undressed!) by Arnold Scaasi (Scribner)

A Jewish boy from Montreal, Arnold Scaasi has been dressing legends for almost five decades. He has dressed First Ladies, entertainment icons, socialites, and the wives of some of the world's most powerful men. His work has earned him prestigious awards from the Council of Fashion Designers of America – the Creative Excellence Award in 1987 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. Famed as New York's last true couturier, Scaasi was also designated a "Living Landmark" by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. His tenure as one of the world's premier fashion designers and tastemakers has afforded him vast stores of insider knowledge and firsthand perspectives on an array of illustrious personalities who – in their disparate arenas of high-wattage celebrity and influence – have defined our contemporary notions of female power and glamour.

In Women I Have Dressed (and Undressed!) Scaasi recounts his intimate experiences with larger-than-life female icons who made their mark in spheres as varied as politics, Hollywood, the music industry, and high society. Scaasi devotes each chapter to a group of women, including "Broadway Girls," "New York Girls," and "Hollywood Girls." He shares dozens of behind-closed-doors anecdotes exploring what makes these women tick. Here, readers discover: Joan Crawford's fetish for cleanliness; the Barbra Streisand's famous Oscar night outfit and her obsession with perfection; Mamie Eisenhower's staunch refusal to wear a bra; the bountiful charms of Joan Sutherland, the opera legend; Mary Tyler Moore's and Sophia Loren's unique glamour; Rose Kennedy's prediction of a future woman president; Aretha Franklin's fear of flying. Scaasi also talks about his visits to the White House to his good friend and client Barbara Bush, and his confrontations with Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe.

He who must be obeyed – designer Arnold Scaasi – is the warmhearted, super-talented, demanding, and temperamental genius who can create a dress right on your very body and make you look like a million bucks. He has done this for me many times and he is my closest claim to personal glamour. I would trust him with my life – and certainly with my hemline. What a treat that he has dropped the veil to tell "all" about the celebrated females he has helped to make celebrated. – Liz Smith

Arnold Scaasi, who seems to have dressed just about every famous woman in society, the jet set, the theater, the movies, etc., is also a born storyteller, and a witty one at that. He is very much a fixture in the world of people-who-go-out-every-night, and his stories of great ladies of that world are hilarious and touching. His book is a passing parade of style and social history at its best. – Dominick Dunne

Women I Have Dressed (and Undressed!) is a fascinating read of personal experiences – the book contains is a trove of irresistible insider dish and a tender, humorous memoir of the most influential women of our time. By taking the reader on this journey, Scaasi has captured a look at the social history of part of the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st.

Business / Psychology & Counseling / Health, Mind & Body / Self-Help

Prisoners of Our Thoughts: Viktor Frankl's Principles at Work by Alex Pattakos, with a foreword by Stephen R. Covey (Berrett Koehler Publishers, Inc.) expands on Viktor Frankl's seminal Man's Search for Meaning, examining the book's concepts in depth and widening the market for them by introducing an entirely new way to look at work and the workplace.

World-renowned psychiatrist Frankl, in the bestselling Man's Search for Meaning,  vividly details his horrific experiences as a prisoner held captive in a World War II Nazi concentration camp. In that book, Frankl discusses how it is possible to find real meaning in a life that is filled with suffering and difficulty. A dedicated student of Frankl’s teachings, Alex Pattakos, Ph.D. was urged by Frankl himself to write Prisoners of Our Thoughts.

Pattakos, a former colleague of Frankl's, in this new book brings the search for meaning at work within the grasp of readers using simple, straightforward language. Pattakos, a Ph.D., is a principal of The Innovation Group, founder of the Center for Personal Meaning, based in Santa Fe and a former full-time professor of public and business administration, who served as a graduate program head. In Prisoners of Our Thoughts, Pattakos encapsulates Frankl's therapeutic system in seven core principles. Each of these principles, in turn, is described in easy to understand terms and applied to various work situations so that readers can relate personally to the principle as well as learn when and how to apply it. The seven principles are:

1. Exercise the freedom to choose your attitude. In all situations, no matter how desperate they may be, you always have the ultimate freedom to choose your attitude.
2. Realize your will to meaning. Commit authentically to meaningful values and goals that only you can actualize and fulfill.
3. Detect the meaning of life's moments. Only you can answer for your own life by detecting the meaning of any given moment and assuming responsibility for weaving your unique tapestry of existence.
4. Don't work against yourself. Avoid becoming so fixated on an intent or outcome that you actually work against the desired result.
5. Look at yourself from a distance: Only human beings possess the capacity to look at themselves out of some perspective or distance, including the uniquely human trait known as your "sense of humor."
6. Shift your focus of attention. Deflect your attention from a problem situation to something else and build your coping mechanisms for dealing with stress and change.
7. Extend beyond yourself. Manifest the human spirit at work by relating and being directed to something more than yourself.

Frankl believed that we all have the opportunity to choose how we view any situation. We can also choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution. In this connection, the search for meaning at work begins with us and, as Frankl would say, only we, as individuals, can answer for our own life by detecting the meaning at any given moment and assuming the responsibility for weaving our own tapestry of existence. The search for meaning at work offers us both formidable challenges and ample opportunities for working and living an authentic life.

Those who seek meaning in work and life will find much value in this practical application of Viktor Frankl's wisdom. – Dee Hock, Founder and CEO, Visa; Author, Birth of the Chaordic Age

It has been a long wait, a very long wait! But, Viktor Frankl's principles and methods have at last been set free to be used and enjoyed and practised in the work situation.  – Dr. Patti Havenga Coetzer, Founder, Viktor Frankl Foundation of South Africa

If you are completely satisfied with your way of life, and your way of being in the world, you don't need this book. But if, like most of us, you hunger for a greater sense of meaning, purpose and freedom in your life, Prisoners of Our Thoughts will provide you the stories, concepts, and opportunities that will help you to break free from old patterns of thought and action. – Judi Neal, Ph.D., Executive Director, Center for Spirit at Work, University of New Haven

The search for meaning at work, in work, and through work concerns us all. In bringing Viktor Frankl into the workplace, Alex Pattakos has produced a thoughtful and powerful guide that offers insight and wisdom. – Alan M. Webber, Founding Editor, Fast Company magazine

Never before have Frankl's teachings been described in such an easy to understand and easy to apply way – one that clearly shows how and why Frankl regarded the search for meaning as the primary human motivation. By demonstrating how Frankl's key principles can be applied to all kinds of work situations, Prisoners of Our Thoughts opens up new opportunities for finding personal meaning and being authentic at work.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership

The Transparent Leader: How to Build a Great Company Through Straight Talk, Openness, and Accountability by Herb Baum, with Tammy Kling, with a foreword by Doug Parker (HarperBusiness)

It seems that over the past few years the words, “straight talk, openness and accountability,” didn't mean very much. From Enron to WorldCom, corporate America was rocked with scandal after scandal. Employees lost their savings and jobs, investors lost their shirts, and the public lost their confidence in big business.

Herb Baum, CEO of the Dial Corporation, is known throughout the business world as a leader who insists on honesty and openness in the way he conducts business, and he has demonstrated that these policies are not a hindrance to success. In his new book, The Transparent Leader Baum brings readers back to the basics of transparency and good corporate behavior. In his folksy, down-to-earth style, Baum reminds readers of the way things used to be, and he teaches corporate executives how to be transparent leaders and in turn create transparent companies. In The Transparent Leader, Baum describes policies and management techniques that can be employed within any company to get outstanding results without skirting the rules or bending the truth. Using examples from his experience at Dial, Campbell Soup, and Quaker State, Baum shows readers:

• The Power of Transparency – the crucial components of a transparent organization, including the qualities of transparent leaders and employees and how they can benefit the company.
• The Pillars of Transparency – integrity, honesty, quality corporate governance, and effective communication.
• How to execute transparency in the organization.

Baum tells readers that by applying these ideas to their own work lives, they will become open and transparent leaders, setting an example for the employees in their organizations to follow.

The Transparent Leader identifies the major roadblocks to success, and how to avoid them, including mediocrity, getting too comfortable, maintaining a herd mentality, and greed. Baum's techniques of fostering trust, integrity and accountability at all levels shows how managers can reverse the erosion of employee loyalty, and restore consumer trust in products, brands, and American business.

The book is most compelling when Baum details specific practices at Dial, especially as it concludes with a special appendix of letters, internal memos, and external presentations from the Dial Corporation and Quaker State that underline and illustrate Baum's methods of transparent leadership. In an age of corporate scandal and malfeasance, The Transparent Leader is a breath of fresh air.

Business & Investing / Economics

Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America by Nomi Prins (The New Press) is a Wall Street insider's view of the boom economy legacy: fraud, class-action suits, bankruptcies and the search for real reform.

Whether it's the jail sentence handed out to tech banker Frank Quattrone, the eagerness of Martha Stewart to start serving time, or the endless legal escapades of former Enron execs, fallout from the boom years on Wall Street just keeps coming. But headline corporate scandals are merely the surface of bigger, murkier problems in the financial world. After fifteen years at the diamond face of the banking industry, including stints at Lehman Brothers and as managing director at Goldman Sachs, who could be better qualified than Nomi Prins to lift the rock and see what squirms beneath?
Critical, independent voices are seldom found within the citadels of international finance. That's what makes Nomi Prins unique – during fifteen years in the upper flights of banks, Prins, former managing director at Goldman Sachs, senior managing director at Bear Stearns, currently senior fellow with the public policy center Demos, never lost her ability to see the broader picture. The result is an insider's account of the big banks' giddy ride through the boom economy. In Other People's Money, Prins provides first-hand detail of day-to-day life in the financial leviathans, with all its rich absurdities and ceaseless power plays.

In the first years of the Bush administration some of America's most prominent corporate executives cashed out billions of dollars in stock options before driving their companies to ruin through fraud and bankruptcy. In their wake they left a tangle of lost jobs, depleted pensions, and shattered lives. Yet, to write off this corruption as the unbridled greed of a select few is an oversimplification. As Prins shows in this exposé, the much-publicized corporate malfeasance of recent years resulted from deregulation that trashed the rules of responsible corporate behavior. Faced with increasingly absent regulatory agencies, toothless legislation, and an utter lack of accountability, the stock market roared on the back of phony balance sheets while the executives made out like bandits and Congress looked the other way.

Prins was not fired or forced to resign, but walked away from the game in 2002 out of disgust with the burgeoning corporate corruption of the 1990s, just as its magnitude was becoming clear to the public. In Other People's Money, she examines how decades of systematic deregulation and lack of Congressional culpability, combined with Wall Street's ravening hunger for expansion and power, enabled outrageous avarice and illegality. Prins exposes the whitewash reforms brought in to control it as cosmetic solutions, devoid of lasting effect, and recommends daring alternative measures to attain economic stability. Worse yet, everything remains in place for a repeat performance.

[T]he definitive account of the schemes, scams, and monumental egos that emptied out untold 401Ks and left thousands jobless. – Ellen Frank, author of The Raw Deal: How Myths and Misinformation About Deficits, Inflation and Wealth Impoverish America
Nomi Prins's work brings together a social justice perspective and a rigorous financial methodology. – John Dizard, Financial Times
A book that needs to be in the hands of any citizen interested in economic justice and fair play in the marketplace. – Ralph Nader
While her book may make you angry, it will also make you laugh. – Bethany McLean, senior writer at Fortune and co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron

As Other People's Money testifies, Prins was there and lived to tell the tale. Prins brings an insider's eye to the old boy networks, revealing how hot money flows between Wall Street, corporate America, and Capitol Hill. The book is eye-opening, scandalous, and fascinating.

Children’s (Ages 3-7)

The Worm Family by Tony Johnston (Harcourt, Inc.)

Written by Tony Johnston, author of numerous award-winning books for children and illustrated by Stacy Innerst, acclaimed children's book illustrator and editorial artist, The Worm Family concerns, of all things, a family of worms.
The Worm family loves being wormy. They're skinny – they're squiggly – they're very long – and they sing loud worm songs. They're nothing like their glossy, bossy, buggy neighbors. And the neighbors don't like that one bit. What are the Worms to do? Jump back into their skinny car and hope to find nicer neighbors somewhere else? Or stay put – and show the world the Glory of Worm?
In The Worm Family, a tale both warm and quirky, a family of merry, down-to-earth worms proves that being different is truly grand. They may not fit in, but they carry on, doing things they love with the family they love – and finally find some fuzzy-wuzzy neighbors who like them just as they are. Oh joy! They're Worms!

Children’s / History & Historical Fiction

The Scarlet Stockings Spy by Trinka Hakes Noble, illustrated by Robert Papp (Thomson / Gale, Sleeping Bear Press)

Philadelphia 1777 is no place for the faint of heart. The rumble of war with the British grows louder each day, and spies for and against the Patriots are everywhere. No one is above suspicion. Still, everyday life must go on and young Maddy Rose must help her mother, especially since her father's death at the Battle of Princeton and now with her beloved brother Jonathan off with Washington's army.

And it is Maddy Rose’s scarlet stockings that prove to be a valued mode of espionage as Maddy and her older brother Jonathan, now an American soldier, develop a form of communication that no British soldier would ever notice. With a view of the harbor from her bedroom window, Maddy keeps an eye on the British ships for the army and awaits late-night visits from Jonathan. When Maddy hangs her wash on her clothesline, Jonathan can read the exact positions of the ships as well as how heavy those ships sit in the water. Their system works wonderfully until the war strikes a little closer to home.

But Maddy doesn't lose hope, nor do the American soldiers who eventually bring independence to the colonies. As those soldiers sacrifice to bring the war to an end, so does Maddy, leading to an unforgettable conclusion to a new American legend.

In The Scarlet Stockings Spy Trinka Hakes Noble melds a suspenseful tale of devotion, sacrifice, and patriotism with the stark realities of our country's birth. From the first page to the last, Robert Papp's detailed, gorgeous and inviting images bring the reader back to a time and place of great movements and enormous consequences. There is a depth and quality to Papp’s work that quickly draws in young readers and compliments Noble's wonderful story of bravery and sacrifice at a time of war.

Cooking, Food & Wine

The Best American Recipes 2004-2005 edited by Fran McCullough & Molly Stevens, with a foreword by Bobby Flay (Best American Recipes Series: Houghton Mifflin)

Acclaimed by reviewers from the New York Times to People magazine as the only collection of its kind, The Best American Recipes offers a dazzlingly diverse selection. To create The Best American Recipes 2004-2005, this year’s edition, Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens, series editors who are widely published food writers, combed through hundreds of sources, from the most talked about to the most obscure, tracking down thousands of recipes. They thoroughly home-tested each dish so readers can be sure that every one is foolproof.

Variety is the key. Readers will find inspiration for every occasion, with rediscovered classics and simple dishes from the nation's top chefs. The more than 150 recipes include

• a quick starter: Minted Pea Soup, from the British cooking sensation Jamie Oliver
• an elegant breakfast: Baked Eggs in Maple Toast Cups, from a small Vermont food company
• a quick weeknight supper: Chicken Saltimbocca, from a supermarket flyer
• a versatile vegetarian main dish, great for a party: Cremini Mushrooms with Chive Pasta, from a celebrated New York chef
• a memorable holiday side dish: Mashed Potatoes with Sage and White Cheddar Cheese, from a major food magazine
• the perfect snack: Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters, from a soon-to-be-published cookbook by a baking expert

Recipes come with tips and suggestions from the editors' home kitchens, which expand cooking and serving options.

The recipes are relatively easy but yield such memorable dishes. – USA Today
The perfect stocking stuffer for any cook. – Minneapolis Star Tribune
 The cream of the crop. – People

The perfect gift for the busy cook. – Food & Wine

Throw out all those clippings – here's what's worth saving from every magazine article, book, church newsletter, and Internet chat room and newsgroup from the past year. – New York Times

The range is eye-opening. – Wall Street Journal
A great compendium. – House Beautiful
A well-rounded everyman's cookbook. – Harper's Bazaar
The Best American Recipes 2004-2005 defines elegance. – Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Hailed by Food & Wine, CBS This Morning, and the Wall Street Journal as the perfect choice for any cook, The Best American Recipes is the most wide-ranging and extensively home-tested collection of its kind. Although totally un-illustrated and variable in terms of exotic ingredients and time-consuming preparations, McCullough and Stevens track down the tastiest dishes of the year.

Cooking, Food & Wine

Williams Sonoma Barcelona: Authentic Recipes Celebrating the Foods of the World by Paul Richardson, with photography by Jason Lowe, edited by Chuck Williams (Foods of the World Series: Oxmoor House)

From a square of pinenut-studded coca and cafe con leche in late morning to an aperitif and bowl of spicy olives in a bar at midday to a late-night dinner of Paella Parellada at a favorite restaurant in the evening, Barcelonans love to eat. At the table, they respect tradition and innovation, insisting both on classic dishes for holiday feasts and on sampling the latest creations of the city's cutting-edge chefs. Williams Sonoma Barcelona is a lavishly photographed behind-the-scenes look at this dynamic culinary scene. In these pages, readers discover countless tales of the places, people, and foods that have made not only this lively city, but all of Catalonia, one of Europe's most exciting dining destinations. Readers also find over 45 authentic recipes, from classics like Tomato-Rubbed Bread, Fideua, and Crema Catalana to more contemporary fare, such as Garlic and Spring Vegetable Soup and Hazelnut Cake with Licorice – each bringing the taste of Barcelona to the table.

Readers learn how to:

• Recreate the rich heritage of Catalonian cuisine at home with Grilled Green Onions with Romesco Sauce or Stone-Cooked Lamb Chops with Herb Oil
• How the geographical location of Barcelona, between the Pyrenees mountains and the Mediterranean, has shaped the way the city eats, with favorites such as cured meats, olive oil, artisanal cheeses, wine, fresh seafood, and seasonal produce
• Some of Europe’s most traditional and contemporary dining experiences among Barcelona’s marvelous diversity of restaurants

Williams Sonoma Barcelona was put together by Paul Richardson, food writer and the author of Indulgence: Around the World in Search of Chocolate and Cornucopia: A Gastronomic Tour of Britain and the former editor of both Taste and Wine magazines out of Great Britain, under general editorship of Chuck Williams, general editor, who opened his first Williams-Sonoma store in the California wine country town of Sonoma and later moved it to San Francisco, now with more than 235 stores are now open in the United States. Photography is by Jason Lowe, an award-winning food and travel photographer.

An insider’s guide to the recipes, ingredients, and traditions that define international city cuisine, the Foods of the World series is the definitive cookbook collection for anyone passionate about food and travel. Richly photographed, with over 45 authentic recipes and in-depth culinary features, each book brings readers closer to the best eating experiences each city has to offer from a culinary authority Americans trust.

Education / Professional & Technical / Preschool & Kindergarten

The Bilingual Book of Rhymes, Songs, Stories, and Fingerplays by Pam Schiller, Rafael Lara-Alecio & Beverly J. Irby (Gryphon House, Inc.)

Did you know that children who are exposed to just 50 words of a second language prior to age six develop an "ear" for the sounds of that language?

With over 450 selections in both Spanish and English, The Bilingual Book of Rhymes, Songs, Stories, and Fingerplays is filled with entertaining ways to expand children's vocabulary and explore the sounds of both languages. Organized by theme for easy use, this collection provides a springboard for teaching a second language, for understanding and exploring cultures, and for working in a bilingual classroom. For example, there is a section called ‘Insects and Bugs’, containing, under ‘Songs’ our all time favorite, the Itsy Bitsy Spider/La araña pequeñita – okay, it’s not technically an insect. The fingerplay to go with they song is not given in the book.

Compiled by Pam Schiller, early childhood consultant and popular keynote speaker and author; Rafael Lara-Alecio, professor and director of the Bilingual Programs in the Department of Educational Psychology at Texas A&M University; and Beverly J. Irby, professor and department chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, this invaluable, thick handbook invites teachers to share the magic and celebrate both the Spanish and English languages and cultures with rhymes, songs, stories, and fingerplays. The Bilingual Book of Rhymes, Songs, Stories, and Fingerplays offers over 450 selections, with Spanish on one page and English on the opposite. Children will be thrilled to learn new words to their favorite Spanish and English tunes, learning the sounds of both languages – important skills for beginning readers.

Education

Leaving No Child Behind?: Options for Kids in Failing Schools edited by Frederick M. Hess & Chester E. Finn (Palgrave Macmillan)

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is the signal domestic policy initiative of the Bush administration and the most ambitious piece of federal education legislation in at least thirty-five years. Mandating a testing regime to force schools to continually improve student performance, it uses school choice and additional learning resources as sticks and carrots intended to improve low-performing schools and districts. The focus is on improving alternatives to children in low-performing schools.

Emerging from a conference held at the American Enterprise Institute on January 15-16, 2004, Leaving No Child Behind? provides the perspectives of leading education experts and policy analysts who identify the key challenges, point out potential policy responses, and explain the implications for NCLB and American schooling. Authors were the co-chairs of the meeting: Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at AEI and executive editor of Education Next, former high school social studies teacher, and professor of education and politics at the University of Virginia; and Chester E. Finn. Jr., Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, President of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and Senior Editor of Education Next, former assistant secretary for research and improve­ment at the U.S. Department of Education. Contributors include Richard Lee Colvin, Siobhan Gorman, Robert Maranto, April Gresham Maranto, Jane Hannaway, Kendra Bischoff, Alex Medler, David N. Plan, Christopher Dunbar, Jr., William Howell, Michael Casserly, Julian R. Betts, Anne Danenberg, and Douglas S. Read. This pioneering evaluation of the implementation and effects of the NCLB act during its first two years provides both a bird's-eye view of developments across the nation and a closer look at developments in selected states, communities, and schools. Here top experts evaluate the potential and the problems of NCLB in its initial stages of implementation.

It is time for public debate about NCLB to move beyond hype, hope, and imagined fears. This collection is at the cutting edge of what will be a new wave of empirically-based assessments. It will be an important resource for all concerned about the implications of NCLB. – Jeffrey R. Henig, Teachers College, Columbia University, Co-author, Building Civic Capacity: The Politics of Reforming Urban Schools

Leaving No Child Behind? is a first look at NCLB providing valuable insights, offering lessons crucial to understanding this dramatic change in American education. The findings will be of value to policymakers, the edu­cation community, and state and local officials as they proceed with the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Health, Mind & Body / Exercise & Fitness

Pilates Lite: Easy Exercises to Lose Weight and Tone Up by Karon Karter (Fair Winds Press) simplifies the popular exercise trend for readers of all fitness levels.

Pilates Lite asks readers, “Wouldn't you love to change your body?”

Nothing strengthens and lengthens abdominal muscles like Pilates – it's long been the fitness secret of ballerinas and Hollywood stars. The problem is that the exercises – even those for beginners – can be tough for many people who are new to the experience.

Always wanted to try Pilates but thought it was too hard? Think again!

Pilates Lite provides a simplified introduction to the Pilates workout. Karen Karter, author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Pilates Method and The Core Strength Workout, teaches readers the easiest way to create a long and lean Pilates torso. According to Karter, age, physical limitations, and athletic ability do not matter. Pilates works for many different types of people, so anyone can benefit from the gentle exercises and techniques presented in this book.

Based on her successful Dallas classes of the same name, Pilates Lite shows readers how to burn fat and tone their core muscles with simple Pilates moves. The book includes:

• The five principles of Pilates: concentration, control, centering, flow, and breathing
• Ten 15-minute beginner workout programs
• Five workouts with easy-to-find props
• Moving on with more advanced moves

Many of the exercises, such as the Double Leg Stretch, are performed against a wall to help support the lower back, while others use a towel as a stretching aid to help readers complete the moves without strain. Modifications are given for every move.

For readers who feel that Pilates may be too strenuous on their body or feel intimidated by classes, Pilates Lite puts the basics of this most effective abdominal flattener and back strengthener within their reach. Karter introduces the basics and takes readers through basic workouts with easy-to-follow directions. Illustrated in lavish full-color throughout, this book is the perfect introduction to Pilates.

Health, Mind & Body / Psychology & Counseling

Chronic Pain, Loss, And Suffering by Ranjan Roy (University of Toronto Press)

The course of chronic illness is unpredictable and extremely varied, and its connection to grief and loss has heretofore been vague. Some losses experienced by patients are permanent, while others are not. Still others experience a loss of self, going from 'normal' to the state of semi-invalidity in the course of a day. Ranjan Roy, professor in the Faculty of Social Work and the Department of Clinical Health Psychology at the University of Manitoba, is recognized as one of the leading experts in chronic pain, and in Chronic Pain, Loss, And Suffering – the first book of its kind – he attempts to describe the complexity that surrounds the issues of loss in the chronically ill population.

Unlike the suffering that occurs with the death of a loved-one, losses due to chronic pain are somewhat transient, and often do not occur all at once. Many seeming losses can be redeemed over time, for instance, through retraining and physical therapy, but are still serious and pose a challenge to the conventional understanding of the grief process. Indeed, clinical understanding of grief is undergoing a revolution. From its Freudian roots, it is shifting to a more social-psychological perspective. The phase-task approach to grief has come under serious scrutiny, and this book demonstrates some of the problems inherent in that conceptualization in its application to the chronically ill. In Chronic Pain, Loss, And Suffering, Roy evaluates the current state of knowledge through an examination of contemporary literature and clinical application. The chapters deal with a range of losses such as job loss, declining ability to function, loss of family and sexual roles, old age and its related losses, and suicide.

Roy uses clinical cases to illustrate how declining functioning, loss, and grief contribute to the suffering of chronic pain patients. He describes how coming to terms with the grief associated with the perceived and actual losses can help patients overcome the sense of suffering. He shows how the chronic pain patient may move from patient status to one of a person with chronic pain and accompanying limitations. Self-identity and self-esteem can be restored – people with chronic pain may be different than they were before the onset of their symptoms but they can still achieve fulfilling lives. Chronic Pain, Loss, And Suffering has an optimistic tone and message. Even though chronic conditions confront people with significant challenges, they may be able to overcome the limitations and perceived losses. Resolution and accommodation can be achieved not as an end but as a process.

Chronic Pain, Loss, And Suffering will prove invaluable to clinicians and therapists helping patients properly adjust to their loss without the crippling effects of chronic pain or illness. Through discussion of the struggles and successes that chronically ill patients encounter in their journey, this work will assist clinicians in helping patients come to terms with the difficulties they face and to establish a renewed sense of self.

Health, Mind & Body / Aging

Autumn Rhythm: Musings on Time, Tide, Aging, Dying, and Such Biz by Richard Meltzer (Da Capo Press)

Autumn Rhythm comes from a man whose work has always been music as much as it's been about it, and who now brings his syncopation of word, sound, and sense to the subject of life itself, as lived and lost. Autumn Rhythm is a clear-eyed gape into the Abyss.

A founding father of the rock criticism genre, Richard Meltzer, author of over a dozen books, here doglegs from his usual subject – music – to tackle head-on the one thing we all have in common… our mortality.

This is in Meltzer’s words, a “geezer book” – a look at loss in all its forms, from death of friends and the dawn of dementia, to failing health and fading sex drive. But it also explores the writing process, pays homage to the Beats, and in Meltzer’s typically tangential fashion, comes to the frank conclusion “all parenting is abuse.”

One of the greatest writers/thinkers/observers of our time, period. ... Playful, raw, and smutty, yet also perceptive, honest, and intelligent. – Stop Smiling Magazine
Meltzer is playful with the language...and he can make you laugh...[he] break[s] cultural taboos like so many pinatas. – Kirkus Reviews
Meltzer ponders all the cruel absurdities and mortal wounds endured in the inevitable onset of his geezer years. – Philadelphia Weekly
Cranky...self-consciously reflective...tender...and funny as hell. – Creative Loafing

Meltzer's heartsickness pounds through Autumn Rhythm.... Vivid, graceful, desperate, and funny – always funny. – Village Voice
Invigorating...entertaining and insightful...This collection of essays and slapdash collage of poetry and prose is a triumph. – Buffalo News
[Meltzer's] prose embodies the passion, humor, rambunctiousness, sexuality, and angst of rock...crotchety and hilarious...Meltzer rocks. – Austin Chronicle

The book is a frank, brilliant, and ultimately poetic contemplation of physical decline, the deaths of friends and family. Autumn Rhythm is a sublime and moving collection of essays by an eloquent master writer, equal parts candor, courage, humor, and desperation. A true-tongued, almost joyous, gallows humor permeates the book, a meditation on what it's like to be on the outer edge of "boomerhood," on the cusp of official seniority; what it's like to have been so long associated with a youth movement – rock music – yet to no longer be young. Absent-minded self-interruption and digression suit Meltzer to a tee.

Health, Mind & Body / Psychology & Counseling

Art Therapy by David C. Edwards (Creative Therapies in Practice Series: Sage Publications)

In 1982, when David Edwards entered the profession, most art therapists worked in the large asylums located on the fringes of major cities. Art therapy training was in its relative infancy. In the UK there were no published codes of ethics to guide art thera­pists in their work, and access to appropriate clinical supervision was often problematic – it was not until 1984 that the first book to provide a contemporary perspective on art therapy in the UK was published. Over the past two decades, as the asylums closed, new employment opportunities emerged, and books on art therapy appeared with increasing frequency, although much of this literature was written for the specialist rather than the general reader.

But this book is different. As a concise introduction to theory and practice, Art Therapy brings the subject matter to life through case material and examples of artwork produced during therapy sessions. Written by David Edwards, art therapist, teacher and clinical supervisor in the University of Sheffield Counseling Service and Derbyshire Dales Community Mental Health Service, the book places art therapy in its historical and cultural context and explains key theoretical ideas – such as symbolism, play, transference and interpretation – showing how these relate to practice. The book also provides useful information on training and employment as well as guidance on such practical issues as assessment, establishing and maintaining boundaries, and ending therapy.

Chapter 1 addresses what art therapy is and what it is not, in addition to outlining what it uniquely has to offer, where it is practiced and with whom. Chapters 2 and 3 are concerned with the history and development of the profession. The first of these chapters traces the origins of those ideas, which have shaped the development of art therapy, including develop­ments in the visual arts, psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Chapter 3 is more specifically concerned with the development of the art therapy profession in the UK. Chapter 4 explores the theoretical basis of art therapy, paying particular attention to the ways in which theories derived from psychoanalysis have been employed in order to help art therapists better understand the therapeutic process and the images clients make. Chapter 5 examines a range of issues concerned with the clinical practice of art therapy; including assessment, individual and group art therapy, using themes and endings. Chapter 6 discusses the training art therapists receive in the UK. Chapter 7 discusses the professional infrastructure supporting the practice of art therapy in the UK. Particular attention is paid to the registration of art therapists, codes of ethics and professional practice, supervision, continuing professional development and research. Because art therapy has emerged in different contexts, the final chapter, Chapter 8, offers an international perspective on art therapy, outlining the development of the art therapy profession in Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia. Throughout Art Therapy images and case material are used to illustrate the process of art therapy.

In choosing to write about art therapy from such a wide perspective, Edwards recognizes the limitations of the book, in particular, the case mate­rial discussed does not include work with children, the elderly or clients with learning and other disabilities. He has, therefore, provided two appendices to help readers fill in for themselves the gaps in the text. The first is an introductory reading list; in addition to referencing the majority of important recent contributions to the art therapy literature, the list also covers many of the specialist areas in which art therapists now work. Appendix 2 provides up-to-date sources of largely internet-based information on art therapy and related subjects, including professional organizations and training.

A readable and accessible overview which will contribute to a greater understanding of the profession of art therapy and the therapeutic use of art undertaken by registered art therapists. – Carole Pembrooke, Chair of the British Association of Art Therapists

Vivid clinical vignettes and remarkable illustrations combine to give a lively sense of art therapy in action. They bring the reader right into the art therapy studio. ... This book will be invaluable for beginners, students and experienced practitioners alike. – Joy Schaverien, Jungian Analyst in private practice and Visiting Professor in Art Psychotherapy at the University of Sheffield

Art Therapy provides a clearly written, accessible and informative introduction to art therapy in a style that does not assume prior knowledge of the discipline. While relevant to practicing art therapists in the UK and elsewhere, this book is aimed primarily at students, therapists and academics in related disciplines, prospective clients and anyone who may be interested in exploring the potential of art therapy to promote their own personal growth. For anyone training or planning to train as an art therapist, Art Therapy offers an excellent foundation on which to build future knowledge and skills.

History / African American

A Stranger and a Sojourner: Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman in Antebellum Arkansas by Billy D. Higgins (The University of Arkansas Press) tells the extraordinary story of Peter Caulder, a free African-American settler in the Arkansas Territory.

After serving as a rifleman in the war of 1812, Peter Caulder established a community of free-born African Americans in northern Arkansas and was largely accepted by his white neighbors until an 1859 expulsion law forced the community to flee the state and settle in Missouri. Like many frontier people, Caulder was unschooled and signed his name only with a mark. To document such a man's life, and to determine how he thrived within a slave society and came to join a free black backwoods community, Billy Higgins, professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, has skillfully interwoven often neglected primary sources – many of which are reproduced here – from around the country. Through the information revealed in censuses, tax records, sutler's account books, army returns, folk stories, land warrants, traveler's journals, and newspaper notices – an account of Caulder, his family, his friends, and his community has emerged.

Billy Higgins, detective-historian of remarkable merit, has put together one of the more intriguing stories I have ever read about the Antebellum South in all its complexity. . . . It is essential reading for students of African-American and Southern history. – Don Higginbotham, author of George Washington: Uniting a Nation

A painstakingly reconstructed account of a remarkable life, one that reveals the interwoven frontiers of race, geography, and culture in nineteenth century America. And a worthy reminder that history is always more complicated than we thought. – H. W. Brands, author of The Reckless Decade

Billy Higgins's extraordinary research and graceful writing have produced a fascinat­ing study that brilliantly illuminates an important and misunderstood issue – the place of free persons of color in the rural South. In tracing these sojourners, this book also adds considerably to our understanding of the frontier in the 1830s and 1840s, and the exhaustive bibliographical essay is a major accomplishment. – Roy Talbert Jr., professor of history at Coastal Carolina University

This extraordinary, thoroughly researched, ground-breaking book, A Stranger and a Sojourner, tells the story of a pioneering African-American community leader whose life is turned upside down on the eve of the Civil War.

History / Europe

Working towards the Führer: Essays in Honour of Sir Ian Kershaw edited by Anthony McElligott & Tim Kirk (Manchester University Press)

Working towards the Führer brings together leading historians writing on the Third Reich, in honor of Sir Ian Kershaw, whose own work, along with that of the contributors to this volume, has done much to challenge and change our understanding of Nazi Germany.

Edited by Anthony McElligott, Professor of History and Director of the Centre for Historical Research, University of Limerick, and Tim Kirk, Lecturer in European History at the University of Newcastle, the book covers numerous issues and furthers the debate on how Nazi Germany operated. These include the legacy of the world wars, the female voter, propaganda, occupied lands, the judiciary, public opinion and resistance. Gone are the post-war stereotypes of a monolithic state driven forward by a single will towards war and genocide. Instead, there is a more complex picture of the regime and its actions, one that shows the instability of the dictatorship, its dependence on a measure of consent as well as coercion, which recognizes the constraints on political action, the fickleness of popular attitudes and the ambiguous nature of acclamation and opposition alike.

The chapters, together with their authors are:

1. Catastrophe and democracy: the legacy of the world wars in Germany – Richard Bessel, professor, twentieth-century history at the University of York, co-editor of the Journal of German History, and member of the editorial board of History Today.
2. Hitler-Goebbels-Strasser: a war of deputies, as seen through the Goebbels diaries, 1926-27 – Elke Frohlich, senior research fellow at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, where she is co-editor of the Biographical Sources on Contemporary History series.
3. Mobilising women for Hitler: the female Nazi voter – Helen Boak, associate dean (learning and teaching) in the Faculty of Humanities and associate head of the Department of Humanities at Hertfordshire University.
4. ‘Working towards the Führer’: charismatic leadership and the image of Adolf Hitler in Nazi propaganda – David Welch, professor of modern European history at the University of Kent, Canterbury, and director of the Centre for the Study of Propaganda.
5. ‘Viceroys of the Reich’? Gauleiters 1925-45 – Jeremy Noakes, emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter.
6. ‘Sentencing towards the Führer’? The judiciary in the Third Reich – Anthony McElligott, Chair of History at the University of Limerick and former visiting professor at the universities of Michigan and Hamburg.
7. Nazi masters and accommodating Dutch bureaucrats: working towards the Führer in the occupied Netherlands, 1940-45 – Bob Moore, reader in modern history at the University of Sheffield.
8. Working towards the Reich: the reception of German cultural politics in South-Eastern Europe – Tim Kirk, editor of this volume.
9. Assessing the ‘other Germany’: the Political Warfare Executive on public opinion and resistance in Germany, 1943-45 – Pauline Elkes, senior lecturer in European history at Staffordshire University, and founder and co-editor of the British International History Group Newsletter.
10. Beyond the nation state: the German resistance against Hitler, and the future of Europe – Hans Mommsen, former chair of modern European history at the Ruhr University of Bochum from 1968 until1996.

The book concludes with personal reflections on Ian Kershaw by John Breuilly, former chairman of the German History Society, and a bibliography of Ian Kershaw by Nadine Rossol, government of Ireland scholar and postgradu­ate student in history at the University of Limerick.

Working towards the Führer is a remarkable collection of essays by leading historians in the field and is essential reading for students and lecturers of modern German history.

History / Europe / Holocaust / Memoir

Wintergreen: Suppressed Murders by Anna Elisabeth Rosmus, translated from the German by Imogen Von Tannenberg (University of South Carolina Press)

After the Second World War, local officials in and around the German city of Passau were forced to mark the graves of some victims of Nazi terror in commemoration of the crimes committed by the nation. They chose the cheapest ground cover available – wintergreen. With bitter irony, the title Wintergreen refers simultaneously to the easy cover-up of these crimes in the collective memory of a people who were observers, bystanders, facilitators, and even participants.

With the same commitment to exposing Nazi crimes that has made her books Against the Stream and Out of Passau widely read, Anna Elisabeth Rosmus uncovers the wartime fate of foreign workers, their children, prisoners of war, and Jewish citizens in Wintergreen. Rosmus, the renowned human rights activist, recounts a horrific story of slave labor, forced abortions, and mass murder. Until Rosmus began her work, the citizens of the region had avoided acknowledging these atrocities for decades.

In Wintergreen, Rosmus documents the treatment of women from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and other Eastern European countries who were deported to Germany and put to work as forced laborers. When they became pregnant, often from rape, some were forced to have abortions. Doctors performed these abortions, at times without anesthesia, on these women despite the illegality of such practices for German women and strong opposition by the local and highly influential Roman Catholic Church. When others gave birth, the babies were either murdered or taken to so-called “children’s homes.” Rosmus describes the mistreatment of infants in these children’s homes, where they were intentionally fed spoiled food and the mortality rates were notoriously high.

With an impending German surrender, Passau and its environs witnessed additional carnage. Rosmus sheds light on the united effort of the Hitler Youth, secret police, militia, and German Wehrmacht to massacre thousands of Russian prisoners of war who were being held in the region. The Nazis and their sympathizers forced some prisoners to dig their own graves before being shot; others they threw into the Inn River to drown. In nearby Pocking-Waldstadt, Nazis murdered Jews held in a concentration subcamp, dumping some bodies from moving trains and placing others in hastily dug graves. As disturbing as these crimes are, just as unsettling is the local population’s ability to gloss over these acts or to believe that they never happened at all.

Rosmus's work is distinguished by her tenacity in digging up the history and in showing how most local residents were willing to ignore ugly facts both during and after the war. For example, the doctor responsible for some of the slave laborers' abortions was fined in a German court as an accomplice to wartime atrocities, but only a few years later she was able to set up a private practice. – Publisher’s Weekly

Rosmus trains her accusatory gaze and her activist sense of outrage once again on Germany, this time a cover-up in her Bavarian hometown. Ably translated by Imogen von Tannenberg, former director of translations at the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, current adjunct faculty at the University of Southern California, Wintergreen is disturbing but necessary, old-fashioned, solid history.

History / Military / World War II

With Utmost Spirit: Allied Naval Operations In The Mediterranean, 1942-1945 by Barbara Brooks Tomblin (The University Press of Kentucky)

Nineteen months before the D-day invasion of Normandy, Allied assault forces landed in North Africa in Operation TORCH, the first major amphibious operation of the war in Europe. Under the direction of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, AUS, Adm. Andrew B. Cunningham, RN, Admiral H. Kent Hewitt, USN, and others, the Allies kept pressure on the Axis by attacking what Winston Churchill dubbed "the soft underbelly of Europe." The Allies seized the island of Sicily, landed at Salerno and Anzio, and established a presence along the coast of southern France.

With Utmost Spirit takes a fresh look at this crucial naval theater of the Second World War. Barbara Brooks Tomblin tells of the U.S. Navy’s and the Royal Navy’s struggles to wrest control of the Mediterranean Sea from Axis submarines and aircraft, to lift the siege of Malta, and to open a convoy route to Suez while providing ships, carrier air support, and landing craft for five successful amphibious operations.

Examining official action reports, diaries, interviews, and oral histories, Tomblin, former teacher of military history at Rutgers University, describes each of these operations. She elucidates ship to shore movements, air and naval gunfire support, logistics, countermine measures, antisubmarine warfare, and the establishment of ports and training bases in the Mediterranean. Firsthand accounts from the young officers and men who manned the ships provide essential details about Mediterranean operations and draw a vivid picture of the war at sea and off the beaches.

Though the archived official after-action reports were crucial to Tomblin's research, she knew they wouldn't provide the whole story – they lacked the qualitative experiences and memories of wartime – the part of the past that she had learned to appreciate as a child, listening to her grandfather recount his adventures in the Navy. For Tomblin, history must capture this "unofficial" part of the story from veterans themselves. "Happily," she reports, "many of these vets are still alive and willing to share their memories or have even written them down for family members." In researching With Utmost Spirit, Tomblin also had access to wartime diaries, which were kept by many soldiers even though both the U.S. and the U.K. navies strictly forbade them. These contemporaneous personal accounts are typically more useful than retrospective interviews, since "They give us a fresh, often more accurate version of events."

Combining these and various other sources, Tomblin fleshed out a detailed picture of WWII operations in the Mediterranean. One burning question that she was able to answer was whether it was necessary for Allied forces to wait as long as they did to accomplish the landings in Normandy. After reading many reports and recollections of the war in the Mediterranean, Tomblin concluded that the Allies were simply not prepared to have landed in France earlier than June 1944. The complex nature of amphibious operations, required extensive development and preparation. According to Tomblin, "We did not have close-in naval gunfire techniques perfected, were not practiced in combat loading ships and in supporting ground forces over open beaches. We lacked trained boat crews, salvage craft, landing craft such as rocket LCTs, DUWKS, and other special craft, and other ways of keeping the beaches free of congestion and of providing gunfire support to our troops on the beaches prior to the arrival of the army's tanks and artillery."

To prepare for D-Day, what the Allied forces needed above all was practice – not just in using new equipment and employing advanced techniques, but in cooperating with each other. Beginning in 1942, the Allies undertook a series of major amphibious landings that effectively served as rehearsals for what would turn out to be a nearly flawless operation at Normandy in June 1944.

Outstanding! An extraordinary account of WWII naval history in Europe. Tomblin's judicious scholarship, dogged attention to detail, and thoughtful analysis provide an impressive and straightforward narrative. – Robert Love, U.S. Naval Academy
Tomblin's lifetime study of the naval war in the Mediterranean culminates in this definitive account of an important World War II campaign that tends to be neglected. Rich in operational under­standing and detail, Tomblin's book also is notable for presenting the human face of war by interweaving the firsthand observations of both enlisted and officer participants. She shows clearly how naval operations were integrated with military events ashore. Tomblin additionally demonstrates that the success of naval campaigns depended on effective Army-Navy and British­-American cooperation. – Dean C. Allard, Former Director of Naval History, U.S. Navy

With Utmost Spirit takes a particularly effective approach to military history that other recent WWII histories do not: it builds a complexly detailed operational and tactical history from a wide variety of information, relying more heavily on primary sources (like action reports and oral histories) than on already existing accounts. Tomblin portrays the strategy and execution of each operation with a combination of vividness and accuracy that C. S. Forester would have admired – but these events, unlike Horatio Hornblower's exploits, are real.

History / Europe / Military / Memoir

Nelson's Purse: The Mystery of Lord Nelson's Lost Treasures by Martyn Downer (Smithsonian Books) is the story of Lord Nelson's long-lost letters and personal effects.

The life of Britain’s famed colossus, Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson, has spawned a veritable publishing industry. Every facet has been examined in biographies incarnating the British hero at various times as a lover, naval strategist, politician, and above all,  supreme national icon. Nelson, whose glorious naval career ended at the Battle of Trafalgar, where the half-blind, one-armed Nelson, wearing a blood-stained purse, gave his life to secure Britain's supremacy for another century.

Yet Martyn Downer's surprise discovery of a treasure trove of Nelson's letters and personal effects puts existing accounts of the hero into question. This find provides an intimate look at the personal life of the brilliant commander through the eyes of his closest friend, Alexander Davison, the confidant not only of Nelson but also of his mistress Lady Hamilton and of his estranged wife Fanny. As Downer, former art director of Sotheby's London, reveals, Davison's correspondence with Europe's most famous love triangle is the key to a new interpretation of Nelson.

From their first meeting in Canada in 1782, Davison shares Nelson’s triumphs setbacks. Particularly after Nelson’s return from Naples in 1800 in the company of his mistress Lady Hamilton and her husband Sir William Hamilton – scandalizing all of Europe – Davison becomes the key figure in Nelson’s life. Davison manages every aspect of Nelson’s civilian and personal affairs, from the purchase of Merton Place to assuaging the charged emotions of a larger-than-life mistress and the spurned, tormented wife.

This is a truly riveting story, a culminating triumph of assiduous detection and fine scholarship that – even if it somewhat bruises the image of Admiral Nelson – adds fascinating detail to one of the most extraordinary love triangles ever known. Downer’s wonderful and newly revealed story is essential reading for those longing to know the human side of a great imperial hero. – Simon Winchester, author of The Day the World Exploded

From its first paragraph, Nelson's Purse is a wonderfully enjoyable and engaging read. Its vivid, well-shaped, and seductive narrative carries the reader along. With acute insight, Downer illuminates the behavior of the constellation of characters in the human drama of the break up of Nelson’s marriage. Not least, he reveals for the first time in coherent detail the rise and vertiginous fall of Nelson’s confidant, agent, banker, go-between, and Mr. Fixit – Alexander Davison. – Edgar Vincent, author of Nelson: Love & Fame

Nelson's Purse releases long-forgotten voices from never-before-published correspondence, as Land Hamilton, Lady Nelson, and Davison himself experience the turbulence of those final five years of Nelson’s life in London and at sea. Revealing Nelson’s human weaknesses, Nelson's Purse is an epic and tragic story, well told.

Downer’s hunt for the keys to unlock the mystery of a blood-stained purse lead straight to the Bank of Trafalgar. In the spirit of Susan Sontag, this extraordinary story offers historical sleuthwork at its best: a love story, a detective story, and an adventure story all in one.

Home & Garden / Parenting & Families

Miracle: A Celebration of New Life by Anne Geddes & Celine Dion (Andrews McMeel Publishers)

Millions of people worldwide have been thrilled and deeply touched by the soaring vocals of Celine Dion and the stunning photographic images taken by Anne Geddes.

Dion and Geddes say that they conceived Miracle as a way to express something deep within their hearts – babies enfolded in blooms, mothers embracing the life flowering within: Geddes's artistic eye capturing it all. Miracle celebrates the moving, tender, and unbreakable bond of love that exists between a mother and her baby. The images are wedded with the lyrics to all-new songs by Dion, created and performed on the book – accompanying CD in Dion's unmistakable style.
Geddes is an internationally renowned photographer highly respected for her successful depiction of childhood's magic and mystery; images of babies published in more than 50 countries, translated into as many as 16 languages, have sold more than 16 million copies worldwide. Dion is one of the most popular recording artists in history and has topped music charts since she began performing professionally in 1981. Album sales alone exceed 160 million copies and have earned her five U.S. Grammy Awards and seven World Music Awards in Europe along the way.

Now, in professional collaboration, these two talents blend their unique gifts to create a combination of music and images, the Miracle project. The 180-page book Miracle features more than 100 new photographs taken by Geddes, including dedicated studio photo shoots with Dion. With full production notes, the book is packaged with the complete Miracle audio CD and the making-of-the-book DVD.

Dion notes, "I've always been a huge fan of Anne Geddes. Long before I became a mother, I admired and appreciated the beautiful way she photographs babies. It's been wonderful to work with her on this very special project that honors children. The messages in Miracle are universal, and very personal at the same time."

"Each new life is truly a miracle," comments Geddes. "I photograph babies to portray and promote the absolute promise of a newborn, the powerful potential of a child to be an extraordinary human being. It was both a pleasure and a privilege to create the Miracle project with Celine, whose vocal artistry completely captures our shared love for children. Miracle came straight from our hearts."

Never before have two top artists created such a multimedia work to honor the unique and steadfast bond between mother and child. Miracle features more than 100 stunning new Geddes images, each frame reflecting the beauty and grace of both the photographer and her subject. While there have been questions about what happens when photographing infants in stocking-like sacs, the fears seem to be unfounded. Many mothers, grown children, and grandmothers will want to join this celebration.

Home & Garden / Crafts & Hobbies

Memory Quilts: 20 Heartwarming Projects With Special Techniques by Sandy Bonsib (Creative Publishing International) presents original quilting projects for remembering loved ones, celebrating milestones such as births and weddings, and capturing other memories from a sports team's big year or grandma's kitchen.

A memory quilt is any quilt with a bit of personal or group history attached to it – quite often literally attached. From photos and documents to a Christmas ornament or cap and gown, the sky is the limit when putting together such a personal, artistic creation. Memory quilting is popular for many of the same reasons as scrapbooking – both preserve and display memories, both may include photos that would otherwise be hidden away in a box, both are creatively exciting, and, most importantly, both help people cope with tough times and celebrate good times.

Memory Quilts, by Sandy Bonsib introduces 20 projects celebrating everything from a new baby in the family to a patriotic group quilt made in honor of the September 11th tragedy. The various techniques needed for memory quilting are clearly explained with tips from the author and step-by-step instructions. Color photos and illustrations elucidate the assembly process of all twenty examples, with sidebars to detail the fabric, materials, and techniques used, along with ideas for possible variations. There are also group projects for families, religious communities, quilt clubs, and children, plus how to organize a group quilt project.

Special techniques for memory quilting are introduced in Memory Quilts, such as how to attach heavy memorabilia, how to write on the quilt, and how to transfer photographs to cloth. Each project includes step-by-step instructions, photographs and diagrams, and ideas for adapting the design.

The photo transfer techniques used by Bonsib open up endless memory quilt possibilities, without damaging or destroying the original document or photos. Anyone with an inkjet printer can make old memories new by transfering them to a quilting project.

Quilters who want to preserve and celebrate memories of a person or time will be inspired by these innovative projects and techniques. Intended for advanced beginners or intermediate quilters, Memory Quilts touches readers with wonderful quilts that are both meaningful and innovative.

Home & Garden / Professional & Technical / Architecture

San Francisco Style: Design, Decor, and Archtiecture by Diane Dorrans Saeks, with photographs by David Duncan Livingston (Chronicle Books)

In an area where, historically, anything goes, San Francisco's design, decor, and architecture matches its reputation for unconventional lifestyles and innovations. San Francisco Style proves a picture is worth a thousand words and shows there is no single trademark look pegged to this renegade region. Luscious photographs depict tiny but cozy Marin County cottages with sunny decks that look out on sailboats; regal residences that sit lofty and high atop old-moneyed hills; and smooth, gray lofts filled with Eames chairs and Asian art. The few common threads that exist in this hilly tapestry are the spectacular West Coast light and the individuality and bravado exhibited in the personal style of Bay Area dwellers.

In this volume San Francisco style expert Diane Dorrans Saeks builds on the captivating approach of her previous work, San Francisco Interiors, incorporating the work of David Duncan Livingston, a professional interior photographer with 20 years of experience. Saeks, California editor for Metropolitan Home, the interior design editor for PaperCity, the San Francisco correspondent for W and Women's Wear Daily, opens the doors to some of the most exquisite residences in town, inviting us into chic city apartments, grand houses, light-drenched lofts, and cozy bungalows. Enter the graceful abode of San Francisco luminary Ann Getty, whose unique vision is reflected in a multitude of textures unrestricted by style or period. Visit designer Steven Volpe's South of Market loft, converted from a 1916 printing factory. A tour of Dr. Paul Turek's hillside home pays homage to classic contemporary Italian design (and the art of crafting the perfect surfboard). And on we go to villas surrounded by redwoods and views of Mt. Tamalpais; a one ­bedroom pink stucco confection built as a weekend cottage for Dr. Florence Nightingale Ward and boasting views of both the Golden Gate Bridge and Angel Island; an airy 1916 loft converted from a former printing factory; and a neoclassical Pacific Heights apartment with views of Grace Cathedral from every room which, to the amazement and envy of out-of-town visitors, becomes drenched in soft pink and gold sunlight in winter afternoons.

A stunning book, San Francisco Style features the most interesting residences of sophisticated art collectors, photographers, artists, and interior designers – people who travel and regularly pick up treasures throughout Europe, Asia, and beyond. San Francisco Style is their style: wildly eclectic and confident. With more than 200 inspiring color photographs, this collection captures the scope of homes and lifestyles that make the northern California region unique. In these pages, readers witness the design talents of such firms as Tucker & Marks; Mvra Hoefer Design; Fisher Weisman; Your Space, Inc.; and ShelterDesign, Inc., among others. And with Saeks's list of where to shop, view art, and truly get an inside look at the city notorious for stealing hearts, this is a great guide for interior designers, accomplished home stylists, and anyone looking to create San Francisco style.

Home & Garden / Animals & Pets / Arts & Photography

Greyhounds Big And Small: Iggies And Greyts by Amanda Jones (Berkley Books)

They're the fastest couch potatoes to wag a tail. When in full stride, these speedsters are impossible to catch; but when they're lounging on the bed, it's hard to imagine them moving at all.

Be they Iggies (Italian Greyhounds) or Greyts (Greyhounds), these elegant dogs have been the subject of the artist's gaze for over two thousand years. Sleek and slim they have the looks and bearing of canine supermodels – yet all it takes is a lopsided grin, a poke of the nose or a whimsical head tilt to see that they are playful clowns at heart. Greyhounds of all sizes bring gentleness and grace into the homes of those who love them.

Premiere animal photographer Amanda Jones captures these elegant animals in gorgeous duo-tone photographs. Greyhounds Big And Small celebrates these affectionate and beautiful creatures with more than sixty photographs that skillfully capture the essence of "greyhoundedness." This is a fantastic chronicle of a fantastic dog, Greyhounds Big And Small, the perfect gift for greyhound lovers.

Home & Garden / How-to & Home Improvements

Tools Rare and Ingenious: Celebrating the World's Most Amazing Tools by Sandor Nagyszalanczy (The Taunton Press) celebrates the world’s most amazing tools.

Craftsmen, over the centuries, have transformed inherently humble objects – drills, saws, planes, and levels – into works of art. Tools Rare and Ingenious expands on Sandor Nagyszalanczy's acclaimed book The Art of Fine Tools by offering a world tour of objects that rarely leave the private vaults of collectors.

A visual feast of the most beautifully crafted vintage tools ever made, Tools Rare and Ingenious offers engaging facts about their history, function, and manufacture. In more than 375 color photographs, the author presents tools ranging from calipers that mimic dancing ballerinas to a carved breast drill that's shaped like a violin and outfitted with a bow. Some tools glitter with silver and jewels, others are breathtakingly simple. Included in this history are maker's marks and logos, jewelry-like miniature tools, patent and prototype models, and elaborate presentation tools that were created as awards or gifts.

Nagyszalanczy is a professional furniture designer, freelance writer, photographer, and tool consultant. A custom furniture builder for over twenty-five years, he has also been a senior editor of Fine Woodworking magazine.

Chapters include:

• Primitive and Ancient Tools
• Decorated Tools
• Fine and Fancy Tools
• Ingenious Mechanisms
• Maker’s Marks and Logos
• Magnificient Miniatures
• Combination Tools
• Patent Models and Prototypes
• Presentation and Exhibition Tools
• Tools of Many Trades
• Craftsman-Made Tools

The collection of amazing tools presented in these pages comprise a sort of tool museum in print. I sincerely hope that seeing these remarkable toold and reading about their rich histories will enrich your appreciation of the toolmaker’s creative craft and art. – Sandor Nagyszalanczy

Tools Rare and Ingenious is a book to treasure. Collectors and craftsmen will relish the depth of historical and technical information that accompanies each picture. And anyone who has ever held a hammer or a saw, no matter how briefly, will marvel at these masterpieces of art and utility.

Home & Garden / Interiors

Camps and Cottages: A Stylish Blend of Old and New by Molly Hyde English, photography by Linda Svendsen (Gibbs Smith, Publisher)

From the burnt orange of Yosemite's sunsets to the cobalt blues and foam greens of the Pacific, Camps and Cottages invites readers to make a fresh, bold statement by combining the warmth and comfort of cottage living with a rustic blend of old and new.

The book combines of the rustic living style so prevalent prior to World War I and the more casual style that exploded onto the scene in the 1930s and 1940s, emphasizing excitement, color, and whimsical seaside living. As indicated in Country Home magazine, it has regained momentum and enthusiastic acceptance from those intent on recapturing the art of comfort and a sweeter and far less complicated lifestyle.

Although the coolness of white may have ruled in the 1990s, today's Camps and Cottages look is dedicated to color, using it as a tool of expression as well as a source of energy. According to Molly Hyde English, founder of Camps and Cottages, a retail store located in Laguna Beach, California, it also incorporates interchanging indoor and outdoor living without the traditional boundaries associated with harsher climates.

Whether the location is New England, mid-America, the Rockies, or the Pacific Coast, Camps and Cottages reflects the form and function of the heartland energized with the color and movement of our country's forests and seashores.

This book gives readers the chance to fight back against 21st century homogenized, disposable, department store style. With photography by Linda Svendsen, renowned photographer for more than thirty years, the book inspires a cozy, unique and distinctive look in any space. These spectacular photographs of homes throughout North America showcase how minimal color accents can add warmth to the ruggedness of a rustic retreat, how the key to cottage comforts can lie in the texture of reclaimed wood, and how vintage touches create a lived-in, familiar atmosphere. From antique furniture to checkered fabrics to kitschy baskets and collectibles, Camps and Cottages has plenty of do-it-yourself design ideas to inspire home decorators and anyone who wants a personal style that captures the carefree feeling of a less complicated lifestyle. With an emphasis on color, texture, and decorative whimsy that embraces familiar objects, the book provides endless possibilities for individual creative expression.

Home & Garden / Animal Care & Pets / Arts & Photography

Kingyo: The Artistry of Japanese Goldfish by Kazuya Takaoka & Sachiko Kuru, novella by Kanoko Okamoto (Kodansha International) allows readers to discover the cult of the goldfish through Japanese art, design and literature.

Goldfish as we know them today are said to have originated from a red-mutated funa (gibel carp) found in the wild in southern China over two thousand years ago. They were brought to Japan from China in 1502, and raised exclusively by the nobility as highly prized pets. In the 1800s, however, they became popular with the general public, and ultimately a unique culture of breeders, collectors, and connoisseurs came into being.

Kingyo combines graphics by Kazuya Takaoka, a graphic designer, who has received many outstanding awards, and photographs by Sachiko Kuru, a pioneering commercial photographer in the world of Japanese advertising and fashion since the 1980s. Included in the volume is a novella written by Kanoko Okamoto in the 1930s titled "A Riot of Goldfish" which tells of the impossible love of a breeder’s son for the daughter of a wealthy patron. As his love grows into an obsession, he attempts to create a goldfish that will capture and reflect her beauty. The story evokes life in Japan in the early twentieth century and sheds light on the aesthetics of goldfish appreciation.

An exquisite display of the fascinating Japanese cult of goldfish…Kingyo is the ultimate gift book for the season. – The Museum Store Magazine

Packed with photographs, Kingyo offers a delightful visual tour of goldfish in Japanese art and design, together with a description of the goldfish breeds that have developed in Japan over hundreds of years of meticulous cultivation. The stunning visual materials reveal the vast iconography of goldfish in the graphic and decorative arts of Japan, extending to textiles, ceramics, paintings, lacquer ware, toys, and even household items. This book will inspire designers, collectors, and anyone interested in Japanese art.

Literature & Fiction / Contemporary

The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble (Harcourt, Inc.)

Nimbly jumping across time and around the globe, Margaret Drabble’s The Red Queen introduces her readers to two women who have never come into contact but are now inexplicably joined by a bizarre twist of fate.
Drabble, author of several novels, the editor of The Oxford Companion to English Literature, writes of Barbara Halliwell, who, on a grant from Oxford, receives an unexpected package. The package contains the memoir of a Korean crown princess, written more than two hundred years ago. The book seems a highly appropriate gift for her upcoming trip to Seoul, but there is no evidence of who sent it. As Barbara reads the memoir on the plane, she becomes immersed in a world different from her own.

The Crown Princess Hyegyong recounts in extraordinary detail the ways of the Korean court and confesses the family dramas that left her childless and her husband dead by his own hand. Learning of the crown princess's family secrets as well as the ways of the Korean court, the story turns out to be one of great intrigue as well as tragedy. Though she and the crown princess seem extremely different from each other at first glance, as Barbara reads on she begins to wonder if her life is in fact moving in a parallel direction to that of the princess. Perhaps it is the loss of a child that resonates so deeply with Barbara . . . Was this manuscript placed in her hands for a reason, perhaps to explain some of the mysteries in her own life?

But Barbara has little time to think of such things; she has just arrived in Korea. She meets a certain Dr. Oo, a generous Korean doctor, and to her surprise and delight he offers to guide her to some of the haunts of the crown princess. As she explores the inner sanctums and the royal courts, Barbara begins to feel a strong affinity for everything related to the princess and her mysterious life.
After a brief, intense, and ill-fated love affair with a famous and charismatic Dutch anthropologist, beset by ghosts of his own, she returns to London. Is she ensnared by the events of the past week, of the past two hundred years, or will she pick up her life where she left it?

Engrossing and provocative: a scarlet narrative thread reminds us how magical the novel can be in telling stories and lives. – Kirkus Reviews (starred)

Like Drabble's other novels, this superb story shows signs of her fascination with connections – genetic, historical, and chance-met. – Library Journal (Highly Recommended)

The Red Queen is a beautifully told and ingeniously constructed novel, this is Drabble at her best. Vivid depicted, this suspenseful adventure artfully stitches together the disparate strands of both women's lives with "a scarlet thread... of blood and joy." In the end the story becomes an elegantly constructed meditation on memory, mortality, risk and reward.

Mysteries & Thrillers

Double Homicide by Faye Kellerman & Jonathan Kellerman (Warner Books) has a husband and wife, the “royal couple” of crime fiction, each with a slew of bestsellers, collaborating on a volume comprising two mystery novellas. Each stands on its own, with separate settings and separate pairs of homicide detectives.

Double Homicide – Santa Fe – Still Life

Set against the arid backdrop of Santa Fe's bustling arts community, Still Life skillfully captures the tensions and intrigue of a small-town murder.

It's Christmastime, and police officers Darrel Two Moons and Steve Katz are expecting the usual gang assaults, feuding spouses, and alcohol-related misdemeanors. Then a call comes in from the Historic District: the reported death of an art gallery owner whose bludgeoned body stretches across a bleached pine floor like a big, nasty still life.

Two Moons, an ex-army brat and former Marine, and Katz, a hard-boiled New Yorker with a troubled ex-wife, investigate the murder of a rich art gallery owner, Larry Olafson. No stranger to enemies, Olafson was engaged in a protracted court battle with a local elderly couple, but could they have pulled off the hit? As they work their way through the evidence, the detectives are plagued by a host of questions: why is Katz's ex-wife's name in the deceased's PalmPilot? And should Two Moons mention his own contretemps with the victim several months back? As the biting winds blow though Santa Fe, Two Moons and Katz enter a dangerous world where art and murder collide.

Double Homicide – Boston – In the Land of Giants

Into a bracing New England winter, the Kellermans plunge readers headlong into the bone-chilling Boston cold in In the Land of Giants.

More than anything, Detectives Dorothy Breton and Michael McCain want to spend a quiet Christmas holiday with their families. But as usual, the call of duty intrudes. Breton, still reeling from the discovery of a handgun in her teenage son's backpack, and McCain, alone in his frigid house after his wife leaves for vacation with their kids, console each other by attending Breton's son's college basketball game. But a routine evening turns into chaos when they get an emergency report of a shooting at a popular Boston nightclub – the same club where Breton's son has gone to celebrate his team's victory. The team's star forward is shot dead, and the medical examiner discovers a startling piece of evidence. Now the two detectives must brave Boston's freezing night air, pounding the pavement and asking questions that receive more than icy responses.

The prolific Kellermans jointly pen a pair of crisp, smart novellas. – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Double Homicide showcases what happens when two great mystery writers come together. The Kellermans, writing together for the first time, have created a wholly original crime work. These stories feature two engrossing tales of detective sleuthing, set at opposite ends of the country, giving barely a hint as to who wrote what, providing a tantalizing "real-life" mystery to the puzzlers on the page. Published as a reversible volume featuring two different covers and alternating top billing for each, Double Homicide combines the authors’ individual strengths as crime writers, while creating two distinct and compelling detective stories.

Outdoors & Nature / Environment / Water Resources Management & Policy

The Danube: Environmental Monitoring of an International River by Libor Jansky, Masahiro Murakami, & Nevelina I. Pachova (United Nations University Press) 

The Danube River is one of the world's greatest international freshwater resources. It stretches halfway across Europe and passes through 11 countries. Its catchment is shared by 17 nations, many of whom are new members of the expanded European Union.

Focusing on the dispute between Hungary and Slovakia over a hydroelectric project on the Danube, The Danube discusses environmental monitoring programs and their usefulness in resolving trans-boundary water conflicts, specifically the hydro-politics surrounding the disputed Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Project on the Danube. It examines the history and progress of the case from the International Court of Justice to the subsequent agreement to joint monitoring and assessment of the environmental implications.

Environmental monitoring is essential to resolving trans-boundary water conflicts. Authors, Libor Jansky, Professor of Land Management and Conservation, Senior Academic Programme Officer in the Environment and Sustainable Development Programme at the United Nations University, Tokyo; Masahiro Murakami, Professor of International Development at the Department of Infrastructure Systems Engineering, Kochi University of Technology, Japan; and Nevelina I. Pachova, Research Assistant in the United Nations University Environment and Sustainable Development Programme, Tokyo, discuss the extensive monitoring programmes implemented by the two countries. They also cover the regular meetings of technical experts to improve monitoring and optimize the programmes, attempts to link various causes and effects of the project, and how monitoring can help enhance public participation for sustainable solutions.

The Danube examines the opportunities and constraints of using environmental monitoring as a tool for decision-making in the sustainable management of shared freshwater resources in the context of international environmental conflict, and it proposes possibilities for optimizing the environmental monitoring of the middle reaches of the Danube. The authors conclude that in view of the recent eastward expansion of the European Union, the environmental monitoring programme developed in response to the Gabčíkovo­-Nagymaros Project should be integrated into the environmental management of the Danube River Basin to contribute to its sustainable development.

The Danube uses a multidisciplinary methodology combining approaches derived from natural resources management, geography, international relations, political science, and international law. Based on original documents and research, and including numerous maps, figures, and authentic appendices accompanying the study, The Danube is an essential resource on the applications of environmental monitoring and data sharing for improving the management of international waters. It will also serve as a useful reference about the Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros Project.

Outdoors & Nature / Hunting & Fishing

Hairwing Flies & Tube Flies for Salmon & Steelhead: A Comprehensive Guide for Anglers & Flytyers by Chris Mann (Stackpole Books)

They are simple to tie, robust in the water, and have tremendous fish-catching properties which are recognized by anglers on both sides of the Atlantic. Both North American and European salmon anglers and fly-tyers have much to learn from each others' hairwing fly patterns.

Hairwing Flies & Tube Flies for Salmon & Steelhead is an illustrated guide to hairwing and tube flies featuring:

• Over 500 different hairwing and tube fly patterns
• Clear illustrations of all the flies mentioned, in full color
• Their origins, distinguishing features, and tying details
• A catalogue of flies at the end of the book, with each fly is pictured in color
• The exact dressing for each of the flies

In addition to all the classic patterns and their many variants, this book includes flies devised by contemporary fly-tyers.

The world's leading fly tiers were invited to contribute their own unique flies, and their fly-tying advice to this international guide to the most widely used flies for salmon and steelhead. Chris Mann, a graphic designer and author, portrays the salmon flies. He selected over 500 of the best hairwing flies, based on those submitted by leading fly tiers from around the world. Mann's remarkable computer graphics convey the flies with clinical precision and color accuracy. In most cases Mann’s illustrations are based directly on the flies submitted by the fly-tyer contributors.

Hairwing Flies & Tube Flies for Salmon & Steelhead will inspire fly tiers to try a whole range of exciting new patterns, tying techniques, colors, and materials. It is a companion volume to Shrimp and Spey Flies for Salmon and Steelhead.

Philosophy / Religion & Spirituality

Caught in the Act: Reflections on Being, Knowing, and Doing by Toinette Lippe (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin)

We each hold deep-seated beliefs about three facets of our lives: what we do (and are not willing to do); what we know (and are certain that we don't know); and what we are (and are not). These are basic activities and we invest each of them with our life force. Yet we are so close to them we cannot see them clearly; they always slip through our fingers: Being, doing, and knowing come and go. 

According to Toinette Lippe, a longtime editor of spirituality books at Simon & Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf and founder of the imprint Bell Tower, we are often "caught in the act" of defining ourselves by what we do: when asked "what do you do", we respond by stating our profession. As a result, the answer to what we "do" – how we earn our living, the work we spend most of our day trying to complete – is perceived as the key to who we "are." Yet most of us are scarcely aware of the hundreds of small actions we take each day, and how each of these activities, performed almost unthinkingly, are invested with meaning. Lippe pays close attention to even the smallest details of her own daily living, deeply cognizant of the weight and meaning in each moment. By examining these forgotten and, at times, almost automatic actions, Lippe discovers who she is.

Ultimately, Caught in the Act is a journey of surrender. In its pages, we learn to give up the illusion of identifying with the thoughts and activities that we call "I" – a vital step on the spiritual path and in the search for an authentic life.

Toinette Lippe is a woman whose wisdom is as deep as it is unassuming. ... As you come to know her in a delightful intimacy, you come to know yourself from unsuspected perspectives. – Brother David Steindl-Rast, OSB, author of Gratefulness and A Listening Heart

Caught in the Act is literate and deeply learned meditation on how to recognize and invest oneself in the truly essential aspects of living. Lippe – with wit, a laser-sharp eye for detail, and a sense of the contemplative – brings us on a journey of awareness so that we perceive how being, knowing, and doing shape our daily existence. Lippe is well read and alludes over a wide range. Writing from a Buddhist perspective, she confesses that she has meditated for 40 years without really enjoying it. Such confessions reveal her honesty and faithfulness and make readers come to know and trust her in her journey of letting go.

Philosophy / Mind & Body

Philosophy of the Brain: The Brain Problem by Georg Northoff (Advances in Consciousness Research Series, Volume 52: John Benjamins Publishing Company)

Strange coincidence, that every man whose skull has been opened has a brain. – Ludwig Wittgenstein

"What is the mind?"

"What is the relationship between brain and mind?"

These are common questions. But "What is the brain?" is a rare question in both the neurosciences and philosophy. The reason for this may lie in the brain itself: Is there a "brain problem"?

In Philosophy of the Brain, Georg Northoff, Department of Neurology, Harvard University, demonstrates that there is in fact a "brain problem". He argues that our brain can only be understood when its empirical functions are directly related to the modes of acquiring knowledge, our epistemic abilities and inabilities. Drawing on the latest neuro-scientific data and philosophical theories, he provides an empirical-epistemic definition of the brain. Northoff reveals the basic conceptual confusion about the relationship between mind and brain that has so obstinately been lingering in both neuroscience and philosophy. He subsequently develops an alternative framework where the integration of the brain within body and environment is central. Philosophy of the Brain contains chapters such as: "brain problem" – hypothesis of "embedment" and neuro-philosophical model; neuro-epistemological account of the brain; and "philosophy of the brain" – empirical hypothesis of the brain, "epistemology of the brain" and "ontology of the brain". He replaces the traditional definition of the brain as isolated with a new idea of the imbedded brain. What results is a paradigm shift in neuroscience, epistemology, ontology and philosophy.

This novel approach plunges readers into the depths of their own brains. Fresh and innovative, the Philosophy of the Brain that emerges opens the door to a fascinating world of new findings that explore the mind and its relationship to our very human brain.

The series, Advances in Consciousness Research provides a forum for scholars from different scientific disciplines and fields of knowledge who study consciousness in its multifaceted aspects. Northoff, on leave from clinical and teaching duties, received the funding of the German Research Foundation to complete this research.

Politics / History / Biographies & Memoirs

A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience by Thai Jones (The Free Press)

In this family history, journalist Thai Jones traces the past century of American radical politics through the extraordinary exploits of his own family. Born in the late 1970s to fugitive leaders of the Weather Underground and grandson of Communists, spiritual pacifists, and civil rights agitators, Jones grew up an heir to an American tradition of resistance. Yet rather than partake of it, he took it upon himself to document it.

The dramatic saga of A Radical Line begins in 1913, when Jones's maternal grandmother was born, and ends in 1981, when a score of heavily armed government agents from the Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force stormed into four-year-old Thai's home and took his parents away in handcuffs. In between, Jones takes us on a journey from the turn-of-the-century western frontier to the tenements of melting-pot Brooklyn, through the Great Depression, the era of McCarthyism, and the Age of Aquarius.

Jones's paternal grandfather, Albert Jones, committed himself to pacifism during the 1930s and refused to fight in World War II. The author's maternal grandfather, Arthur Stein, was a member of the Communist Party during the 1950s and refused to collaborate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. His maternal grandmother, Annie Stein, worked closely with civil rights legends Mary Church Terrell and Ella Baker to desegregate institutions in Washington, D.C., and New York City.

His father, Jeff Jones, joined the violent Weathermen and led hundreds of screaming hippies through the streets of Chicago to clash with police during the Days of Rage in 1969. Then Jeff Jones disappeared and spent the next eleven years eluding the FBI's massive manhunt. He met his wife and Thai’s mother, Eleanor, a former law student at Columbia, while staying at a safe house in the Catskills. Thai Jones spent the first years of his life on the run with his parents.

Beyond the politics, this is the story of a family whose lives were filled with love honored and betrayed, tragic deaths, painful blunders, narrow escapes, and hope-filled births. There is the drama of a pacifist father who must reconcile with a bomb-throwing son and a Communist mother whose daughter refuses to accept the lessons she has learned in a life as an organizer. There are parents and children who can never meet or, when they do, must use the ruses and subterfuge of criminals to steal a hug and a hello.  

Thai Jones relates the lives of two families without much money or success in the usual sense but in which men and women tried to live by their political and ethical ideas no matter what the cost. Jones treats it all with sympathy and a sly irony. He has an exciting story to tell, and he tells it well. – Marge Piercy

A Radical Line is provocative, funny, heartbreaking, and touching in turn. Thai Jones combines a journalist's nose, an ethnographer's endurance, and a novelist's hand as he brings to life an array of memorable characters, each making his or her twisty way through the tempest of their times. The result is a finely crafted and expertly calibrated memoir of real literary merit that echoes down the decades as a fitting homage to those who lived their lives against the grain. – William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, and author of Fugitive Days: A Memoir

'The Personal Is Political,' wrote a feminist writer in 1969; Thai Jones's beautifully rendered account of his radical family's history helps us understand the complex meaning of that oft-quoted phrase. Alternately painful and inspiring, this is a story that will help a new generation understand why memories of the 1960s still divide Americans. – Dan T. Carter, author of Scottsboro and The Politics of Rage

A wonderfully readable, often harrowing, story of the Americans in two families who felt compelled to defy their government and how and why they did so. In a time of war and vile deception, this is a most powerful, timely story. I loved this book. – Gloria Emerson, author of Loving Graham Greene

The real Running On Empty. A look back across three generations of a committed family. Full of love and drama and patriotism in the best sense of the word. You need to read this book. – Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Running On Empty

Beautifully written and sweeping in its scope, A Radical Line is nothing less than a history of the twentieth century and of one American family who lived to shake it up. In it, journalist Jones chronicles three generations of his family's involvement in radical American politics. The result is a book of extraordinary reporting and narrative. Through extensive research and first-hand interviews with his parents and others, Jones renders a personal and thorough account of an extraordinary family's path through American history beginning three generations back. A Radical Line recreates the economic, political, and chance influences on the Stein and Jones families, describing what led them into radical politics – and what ideology each person was drawn to. Here, Jones also offers valuable examples of strong family bonds, mutual respect for ideas and opinions, ambition, will power, and pride. From revolution to repression, idealistic hope to crushed dismay, A Radical Line follows a family's path through American history.

Politics / Film & Media Studies

The Gordon File: A Screenwriter Recalls Twenty Years of FBI Surveillance by Bernard Gordon (University of Texas Press)

From the 1940s into the 70s, for twenty-six years, the FBI devoted countless hours of staff time and thousands of U.S. taxpayer dollars to the surveillance of an American citizen named Bernard Gordon. Given the lavish use of resources, one might assume this man was a threat to national security or perhaps a kingpin of organized crime – not a Hollywood screenwriter whose most subversive act was joining the Communist Party during the 1940s when we were allied with the USSR in a war against Germany. For this honest act of political dissent, Gordon came to be investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952, blacklisted by the Hollywood film industry, and tailed by the FBI for over two decades. In The Gordon File, Gordon, writer/producer of more than twenty motion pictures, including Battle of the Bulge, 55 Days at Peking, The Thin Red Line, Krakatoa, East of Java, Day  of the Triffids, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and Horror Express, tells the cautionary story of his life under Bureau surveillance. Drawing on his FBI file of over 300 pages, which he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, he traces how the Bureau followed him from Hollywood to Mexico, Paris, London, Rome, and even aboard a Dutch freighter as he created an unusually successful, albeit uncredited, career as a screenwriter and producer during the blacklist years.

Most Americans imagine, I think, that the government agencies charged with national security are at least well intentioned and reasonably competent, but this book will shatter their illusions on both counts. It might also cause them to think twice about some of the programs for collecting ‘intelligence’ and ‘information’ that have been proposed for the current ‘war against terrorism.’ Although The Gordon File tells a story that comes to an end around 1970, the lesson could hardly be more timely than it is today. – Fred Haines, a filmmaker whose credits include Ulysses and Steppenwolf

Bernard Gordon was the writer behind some of my favorite movies (but I never knew it). Now, he tells his most riveting story – that of his own colorful career, which spanned the darkest days of the blacklist through the exhilarating era of expatriate European co­production, with a dizzying supporting cast (backbiting moguls, petulant movie stars, and the Hustler himself, the ‘improbably prolific’ Philip Yordan. Fascinating! – Joe Dante, Director

Comparing his actual activities during that time to records in the file, Gordon pointedly and often humorously underscores how often the FBI got it wrong, from the smallest details of his life to the main fact of his not being a threat to national security. Most important, in The Gordon File Gordon links his personal experience to the headlines of today, when the FBI is again assuming broad powers to monitor political dissidents it deems a threat to the nation. "Is it possible," he asks, "that books like this will help to move our investigative agencies from the job of blackmailing those who are critical of our imperfect democracy to arresting those who are truly out to destroy us?"

Politics / Government

Bush's Secret World: Religion, Big Business and Hidden Networks by Eric Laurent, translated by Andrew Brown (Polity)

George W. Bush came into office only after a bitterly contested election result, and has proceeded to establish himself as one of the most powerful, and one of the most arrogant, of all American presidents. He has involved the USA in the invasion of two Islamic countries, seems determined to impose global American hegemony, and has launched a 'war on terror' which risks perpetuating an unremitting state of crisis. Yet the sources of this enormous power are still shrouded in mystery. He relies on fanatical ideologues, fundamentalist Christians, shady businessmen and right-wing extremists to a degree that will surprise even the most hardened observer.
Written by Eric Laurent, celebrated French journalist and author of the international bestseller La Guerre des Bush, which has been translated into more than fifteen languages, Bush's Secret World takes a look at Bush from outside the system. Chapters include: Toward Apocalypse, The ‘Heritage” Connection, The War of Ideas, Enter the Moonies, The Question of Israel, Hawks and Doves, The Middle East in Focus, The New Jerusalem?, The New Arms Race, Cheney and Company, and A Corrupt Administration? The book concludes by noting that everything has combined to confer on the current leaders the impunity they seem to enjoy. He quotes Norman Mailer on the evolution of American power: “It may be that empire depends on an obscenely wealthy upper-upper class who, given the in-built, never-ending threat to their wealth… If this insight is true…the disproportionate wealth which collected through the 90s may have created an all-but-irresistible pressure at the top to move from democracy to empire.” Then he quotes Bush’s response to the question – what if America finished by alienating the rest of the world? –  “At some point, we may be the only ones left. …That’s OK with me. We are America.”

What is new about Eric Laurent's book is that he puts names to the faces of those who haunt the corridors of the White House and lays bare the machinations that were set in motion more than thirty years ago, in the days following the Vietnam War, by certain multimillionaires who wanted to see the United States stripped of its image as a modern and open country and returned to an almost surrealist orthodox morality. – Dernier Heure

In this scrupulously researched book based on a wealth of documents, the current President of the United States comes across as nothing other than a man under the influence. – France Soir

“Only Christians have their place in paradise,” explained George W. to his own mother. If it is populated by people like him, then after reading this book one would rather go to hell. – Le Canard Enchainé

Bush's Secret World provides an up-to-the-minute exposé by French journalist Laurent – a specialist in world affairs – a scrupulously researched and at times deeply alarming account of a President who risks definitively alienating America from the rest of the world.

Popular Culture / Psychology & Counselling

Nudity: A Cultural Anatomy by Ruth Barcan (Dress, Body, Culture Series: Berg Publishers)

Nudity features regularly in all major media.

So why is it illegal to appear naked in public?

Nudity has always been paradoxical. In modern consumer culture, it is actively encouraged in some contexts, but criminal or deviant in others. Images of nudity are everywhere. Advertising uses nudity to sell everything from housing loans to appliances, perfume to cars. Nudity has, in fact, become the latest fashion. This is not surprising. Advertising and fashion need a constant stream of novelty and there's nothing so new as nudity, the oldest fashion of all. Aside from being big business, nudity is a legal and moral minefield, the object of psychological study, and a mundane fact of everyday life. We alternately think of it as a perversion and a state of absolute innocence. Why does nudity mean so many contradictory things, and why is it treated so differently in different contexts?

Drawing on a wealth of examples from popular culture, literature, philosophy and religion, as well as first-hand interviews, Nudity goes into the naked underworld to answer these questions. Ruth Barcan, Department of Gender Studies at the University of Sydney, encounters morticians, nudists, strippers, nurses, tattooists, artists and makers of pornography. She demonstrates that ordinary people, popular culture and high philosophy are all sources of wisdom about the naked body. Nudity is one of the most fundamental metaphors in the Western tradition – indeed, it is a metaphor for human nature itself – and yet this book is one of the first to explore its paradoxes in depth. Barcan's mission is to shine a light on a topic that has been largely ignored even within cultural studies, despite its ability to titillate, shock or entertain.

I've met a lot of folks that think a lot about nudity, but none understands it as well as Ruth Barcan. Nudity is a fascinating book about a fascinating subject, and the first of its kind. It goes deep inside nudity, picks it apart, unveils its mysteries, and shines light on its complexities. I was amazed. – Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D., Nude performer turned Sexologist

Ruth Barcan's brilliant study of the social meanings of nudity is at once learned, witty, and incisive. To be nude is never to be naked: this book ranges broadly across philosophy, religion, literature and popular culture to tell us why. – John Frow, University of Edinburgh

Lively, entertaining, and superbly written. The author claims that the book is rather "quirky" – and it is, indeed, distinctly offbeat. It is also incredibly illuminating of fundamental questions about humanity. – Joanne Entwistle, University of Essex and co-editor of Body Dressing

From pubic hair fashions through to a Royal 'full monty', Nudity is a fascinating blend of meaningful minutiae and big philosophical questions about the most unnatural state of nature in the modern West.

Professional & Technical / Law

Miranda: The Story Of America's Right To Remain Silent by Gary L. Stuart (The University of Arizona Press)

One of the most significant Supreme Court cases in U.S. history has its roots in Arizona and is closely tied to the state's leading legal figures. Miranda has become a household word; now in Miranda, Gary Stuart tells the inside story of this famous case, and with it the legal history of the accused's right to counsel and silence.

Ernesto Miranda was an uneducated Hispanic man arrested in 1963 in connection with a series of sexual assaults, to which he confessed within hours. He was convicted not on the strength of eyewitness testimony or physical evidence but almost entirely because he had incriminated himself without knowing it – and without knowing that he didn't have to. Miranda's lawyers, John P. Frank and John F. Flynn, were among the most prominent in the state, and their work soon focused the entire country on the issue of their client's rights. A 1966 Supreme Court decision held that Miranda's rights had been violated and resulted in the now-famous "Miranda warnings."

Stuart, nationally recognized author and lecturer on trial advocacy, ethics, and professional responsibility, personally knows many of the figures involved in Miranda, and in Miranda he unravels its complex history, revealing how the defense attorneys created the argument brought before the Court and analyzing the competing societal interests involved in the case. He considers Miranda's aftermath – not only the test cases and ongoing political and legal debate but also what happened to Ernesto Miranda. He then updates the story to the Supreme Court's 2000 Dickerson decision upholding Miranda – a Court with two former Arizona lawyers, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor – and considers its implications for cases in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the rights of suspected terrorists. Interviews with 24 individuals directly concerned with the decision – lawyers, judges, and police officers, as well as suspects, scholars, and ordinary citizens – offer observations on the case's impact on law enforcement and on the rights of the accused.

There could not be a more important time to remind our people, our lawyers, and our courts of the fundamental constitutional rights that distinguish us as a nation. Gary Stuart thoughtfully explains how the Miranda case became a signature of American democracy known all over the world and its impact on related constitutional issues up to this very day. – Roberta Cooper Ramo, Past President, American Bar Association

In the wake of 9/11, and with the ongoing debate about the rights of suspected terrorists, the timeliness of this book cannot be overstated. Gary Stuart's Miranda should be required reading for all law students, practicing attorneys, and anyone involved in the shaping of American public policy. – U. S. Senator John McCain

Fast moving and illuminating, Miranda makes complex legal points crystal clear. Law students as well as criminal justice students should profit from this book, and everyone who takes the time to read it will be reminded of the rights we as a society hold dear.

Professional & Technical / Education

Appraisal And Prediction of School Violence: Methods, Issues, And Contents edited by Michael J. Furlong, Michael P. Bates, Douglas C. Smith, and Paul M. Kingery (Nova Science Publishers, Inc.) comes out four years after the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Of the more than 350 school associated homicides that has occurred in the United States since 1992, the time when systematic tracking began, the tragic events of that day caught the attention of the American public more than any other single school shooting event. The deadly magnitude of that day in a stable, predominately white (more than 90%) suburban high school was a wakeup call for many and was given extensive media coverage.

The events of April 20, 1999, and the search for information to help understand how it could have happened led many to wonder if it could have been prevented. As more information was gathered, it became known that Dylan Kleibol and Eric Harris had already made a previous death threat to a fellow student, had expressed suicidal thoughts, and had been involved with the juvenile authorities. They had even participated in a mandatory anger management intervention. Despite this close adult contact, various reports concluded that: "Eric is a very bright young man who is likely to succeed in life," and "He is intelligent enough to achieve lofty goals as long as he stays on task and remains motivated." Similarly, Dylan was described as having "... earned the right for an early termination.... He is intelligent enough to make any dream a reality but he needs to understand hard work is part of it". Hindsight allows us to wonder whether, had those adults working with these two young men had access to better information about the risk of aggression, this tragedy might have been avoided.

After the events of Columbine, researchers and clinicians began to explore methods and procedures that might guide schools and communities efforts to become more sensitive to potential signs of violence potential in youth. Appraisal And Prediction of School Violence, in fact, is an extension of a preliminary effort to provide information about the assessing aggression and violence in school settings. In addition, the most notable of other efforts were those provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Secret Service. The contributions to this volume provide overviews of these reports. Most notably, the contribution by Dewey Cornell and his colleagues shows how some schools have actually operationalized the guidelines suggested in the FBI report. Notable too is the contribution of Van Dyke and colleagues in the Dallas Independent School District, who have been implanting and refining a school based threat assessment procedure as long as any other school district in the United States. These efforts are not just abstract discussions about implementing school based threat assessment procedures, but pragmatic efforts that are attempting to accommodate the real world context of schools.

Appraisal And Prediction of School Violence does not examine the broader issue of violence risk assessment as carried out by forensic psychologists. It is the aim of the volume to provide school psychologists and other educators with information that will guide them to take to embed concern of aggression by students into their day-to-day efforts to crate safe and effective schools. Without this leadership, educators may run the risk of having others guide the process.

Chapters include:

1. Ethical Considerations Regarding the Prediction of Violent Behavior in Schools – Jill D. Sharkey, Michael P. Bates and Michael I. Furlong
2. Guidelines for Responding to Student Threats of Violence: Field Test of a Threat Assessment Approach – Dewey Cornell, Peter Sheras, Sebastian Kaplan, Andrea Levy, David McConville, Lela McKnight, and Julea Posey
3. The Dallas Independent School District's Threat Assessment Procedures: Summary of Findings after Four Years of Implementation – Russell Van Dyke, Kim Rvan Arredondo, Bert Rakoivit and Jose Luis Torres
4. Threat Assessment, School Crisis Preparation, and School Crisis Response – Shane R. Jimerson and Stephen E. Brock
5. Disciplining Students with Disabilities: Rules and Regulations – Kenneth Firling
6. School Discipline Indices and School Violence: An Imperfect Correspondence – Gale M. Morrison and Russell Skiba
7. Safety, Diversity, and Disability: "Goodness of Fit" and the Complexities of the School Environment – Peter E. Leone and Matthew J. Mayer
8. What It Takes to Stop Bullying in Schools: An Examination of the Rationale and Effectiveness of School-Based Interventions – Ken Rigby
9. The Accuracy of School and Non-School Risk Behaviors as Predictors of School Weapons Possession – Michael J. Furlong, Michael P. Bates, Jill D. Sharkey and Douglas C. Smith
10. Best Practices in School-Based Assessment of Youth Anger and Hostility – Douglas C. Smith, Michael J. Furlong, Lisa Jai and Kristie Nakada
11. Improving the Accuracy of School Violence Surveys – Mark B. Coggeshall, Paul M. Kingery and Kathleen F. Berg
12. Examining the Incidence of Weapon Carrying in America's Schools – Paul M. Kingery, Kathleen F. Berg and Mark B. Coggeshall

As noted in several of the chapters, there are significant ethical and methodological issues involved in any attempt to conduct targeted threat assessments. This is not a process to be implemented without careful consideration and detailed accountability.

Appraisal And Prediction of School Violence will help schools continue to enhance their efforts to reach out to and support all students in need.

Professional & Technical / Health Care Professions / Religion & Spirituality

Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness: An Introductory Guide for Health Care Professionals edited by Siroj Sorajjakool & Henry H. Lamberton (The Haworth Press, Inc.) explores the principles of spiritual care as applied to clinical practice.

Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness guides readers in understanding when and how to address spiritual issues in health care with patients for whom illness creates a crisis of faith. It highlights not only the importance of health care professionals in providing emotional, mental, and spiritual care, but the necessity for them to address their own spirituality as well. The book is edited by Siroj Soraijakoos, assistant professor of Religion and Program Director for the MA in Clinical Ministry for the Faculty of Religion; and Henry Lamberton, Associate Dean for Student Affairs at the School of Medicine and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and in the Faculty of Religion, both at Loma Linda University; it includes the experiences and case studies of skilled authorities, mostly from the Judeo-Christian or Judaic tradition.

Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness provides readers with detailed information on:

• "Ministry healing" – a model of wholeness and healing that incorporates an integrated view of humanity.
• The physiological impacts of humor and hope on mood, the neuro-endocrine hormones, and the immune system.
• Spiritual coping with trauma – an overview of the research literature and how to address the coping needs and concerns of patients.
• The role of faith in providing meaning to illness and the role of the health care professional in understanding, and assisting the patient in their struggle.
• The components of spiritual care to increase the efficacy of spiritual caregivers.
• The bereavement process with regard to religious, cultural, and gender variations, and the role of the healthcare professional in providing support.

This book shows health care professionals not only how to meet the spiritual needs of patients from a diversity of faith traditions, but how to overcome challenges to their own spirituality, such as "difficult" patients and patients whose cultural outlook is so different from their own it causes discomfort.

A marvelous collection of theoretical and practical approaches to caring for the whole person-mind, body, and spirit. . . . – Winston E. Gooden, Ph.D., Dean, School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary
Excellent guide for clinicians and should be adopted by everyone who wants to integrate spiritual care into their medical practice. – Dana King, M.D., Associate Professor of Family Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina; author of Faith, Spirituality, and Medicine

Exploring the principles of spiritual care as applied to clinical practice, including perspectives on the theology of healing, this book offers practical suggestions on how to apply these principles throughout the healing process. With chapters that begin with objectives and end with guided questions, the textbook provides a framework that will aid health care facilities in addressing spiritual needs and help faculty in mentoring students in the field. Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness will also be of help to professionals who want to bring spirituality into their medical, dental, nursing, occupational therapy, or physical therapy practice.

Professional & Technical / Medical-Surgical Nursing

Medical-Surgical Nursing: Assessment and Management of Clinical Problems (Sixth Edition) by Sharon Mantik Lewis, Margaret McLean Heitkemper & Shannon Ruff Dirksen, with section editors Patricia Graber O-Brien, Jean Foret Giddens, & Linda Bucher (Mosby, Inc.) is a package including Medical-Surgical Nursing Single Volume text and Virtual Clinical Excursions 2.0.

The sixth edition of Medical-Surgical Nursing has been thoroughly revised to incorporate the most recent medical-surgical nursing information in an attractive, easy-to-use format. More than just a textbook, it is a comprehensive resource containing essential information that students need to prepare for lectures, classroom activities, examinations, clinical assignments, and comprehensive care of patients. In addition to the readable writing style and full-color illustrations, the text includes many special features to help students learn the medical-surgical nursing content, including patient and family teaching, gerontology, collaborative care, cultural and ethnic considerations, nutrition, home care, evidence-based practice, nursing research, and much more.

The content is organized into two major divisions. The first division, Section One (Chapters 1 through 11) discusses general concepts related to adult patients. The second division, Sections Two through Twelve (Chapters 12 through 67), presents nursing assessment and nursing management of medical-surgical problems.

The various body systems are grouped to reflect their interrelated functions. Each section is organized around two central themes: assessment and management. Chapters dealing with assessment of a body system include a discussion of the following:

1. A brief review of anatomy and physiology, focusing on information that will promote understanding of nursing care.
2. Health history and noninvasive physical assessment skills to expand the knowledge base on which decisions are made.
3. Common diagnostic studies, expected results, and related nursing responsibilities to provide easily accessible information.

Management chapters focus on the pathophysiology, clinical manifestations, diagnostic study results, collaborative care, and nursing management of various diseases and disorders. The nursing management sections are organized into assessment, nursing diagnoses, planning, implementation, and evaluation. To emphasize the importance of patient care in various clinical settings, nursing implementation of all major health problems is organized by the three levels of care: (1) Health Promotion, (2) Acute Intervention, and (3) Ambulatory and Home Care.

The three authors are: Sharon Lewis, Margaret Heitkemper and Shannon Dirksen. Sharon Lewis has more than 30 years of teaching experience in associate degree, baccalaureate, master's degree, and doctoral programs in Maryland, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Mexico. and Texas. She has been actively involved in clinical research for the past 20 years. Margaret Heitkemper is Professor and Chairperson, Department of Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Systems, and Adjunct Professor, Division of Gastroenterology, at the School of Medicine, University of Washington. She is also Director of the National Institutes of Health – National Institute for Nursing Research-funded Center for Women's Health Research at the University of Washington. Shannon Dirksen, has 16 years of teaching experience at Edith Cowan University – Western Australia, Intercollegiate College of Nursing – Washington State University, University of New Mexico, and Arizona State University. For the past 18 years, she has been actively involved in oncology research.

The three section editors are: Patricia O’Brien, Jean Giddens and Linda Bucher. Patricia O'Brien retired from Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute, a community college, in 1993, and continues to teach part-time in the College of Nursing at the University of New Mexico, and work part-time as a clinical research coordinator at Lovelace Scientific Resources in Albuquerque. Jean Giddens is a certified clinical specialist in medical-surgical nursing and currently teaches nursing at the University of New Mexico, having also has taught at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado, the University of Texas at El Paso, and Eastern New Mexico University at Roswell. Linda Bucher has 22 years of teaching experience spanning in-service and patient education, and teaching in associate, baccalaureate, and graduate nursing programs in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. She holds a joint appointment as a Nursing Research Facilitator for Christiana Care Health Services and associate professor at the University of Delaware, both in Newark, Delaware.

Classic features of Medical-Surgical Nursing include:

• Patient and family teaching is an ongoing theme throughout the text.
• Home care/community-based care is also emphasized in this edition.
• Nutrition is highlighted throughout the book.
• A separate chapter on complementary and alternative therapy addresses timely  issues in today's health care settings related to nontraditional therapies.
• Nursing research encourages application of research into clinical practice.
• Cultural and ethnic considerations information is integrated into the text and risk factors and other important issues related to the nursing care of various ethnic groups are highlighted.
• Ethical Dilemmas boxes promote critical thinking for timely and sensitive issues.
• Tables outline the emergency treatment of health problems most likely to require emergency intervention.
• Common Assessment Abnormalities tables in assessment chapters alert the nurse to frequently encountered abnormalities and their possible etiologies.
• Nursing Assessment tables summarizes the key subjective and objective data related to common diseases. Subjective data are organized by functional health patterns.
• Health History tables in assessment chapters present key questions to ask patients related to a specific disease or disorder.
• Student-friendly pedagogy includes:
  • Learning Objectives and Key Terms.
  • Review Questions at the end of each chapter, and answers in an appendix.
  • Critical Thinking Exercises appearing at the end of nursing management chapter.
  • Resources at the end of each Chapter.

New Features of this sixth edition of Medical-Surgical Nursing include:

• Six new and expanded chapters:
  • Culturally Competent Care (Chapter 2)
  • End-of-Life Care (Chapter 10)
  • Addictive Behaviors (Chapter 11)
  • Genetics and Altered Immune Responses (Chapter 13)
  • Nursing Management: Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia (Chapter 58)
  • Nursing Management: Musceloskeletal Traunra and Orthopedic Surgery (Chapter 61)
• Complementary and Alternative Therapies summarize nontraditional therapies such as herbal remedies, acupuncture, and biofeedback.
• Selected nursing care plans incorporate NIC (Nursing Interventions Classification) and NOC (Nursing Outcomes Classification) to show how NIC, NOC, and NANDA nursing diagnoses can be linked.
• Evidence-Based Practice boxes present the use of evidence (results from research) to improve patient outcomes and the implications in nursing practice.
• A special Culturally Competent Care heading in selected Nursing Management sections highlights expanded cultural and ethnic content.
• Genetics in Clinical Practice boxes highlight the genetic basis, genetic testing, and clinical implications for genetic disorders that affect adults.

The Ancillary Package includes, for the student:

·        The Student CD-ROM packaged with this text contains these learning aids:

·        Forty disorder monographs, including disorder overview, case study, and a variety of interactive learning activities, provide immediate feedback.

·        Glossary of key terms and definitions, available as one comprehensive glossary and organized by chapter.

·        Patient and Family Instruction handouts in both English and Spanish to be printed and distributed to patients.

·        The Virtual Clinical Excursions CD-ROM and workbook to accompany this text is an exciting learning tool – described below.

·        The Clinical Companion to Medical-Surgical Nursing presents approximately 200 common medical-surgical conditions and procedures in a concise, alphabetical format for quick clinical reference. Designed for portability, this reference includes the essential, need-to-know information for medical-surgical nursing practice.

·        The Study Guide contains extensive review and testing material that has been thoroughly updated to reflect the revisions. It features a wide variety of clinically relevant exercises and activities, including fill-in-the-blank worksheets, anatomy identification review, true-false questions, critical thinking activities, crossword puzzles, case studies, matching exercises, word scrambles, and multiple-choice questions in NCLEX format. Answers are included.

·        The Evolve website features valuable learning aids including:

o       Concept maps

o       Glossary of key terms and definitions.

o       WebLinks for each chapter

o       Chapter summaries

Teaching Supplements for the Instructor

·        The Instructor's Resource Kit includes a comprehensive set of instructor's materials available, containing suggested lecture strategies for each chapter, including teaching/learning objectives, chapter outlines, classroom strategies, and collaborative/active learning activities with critical thinking questions. And a test bank with approximately 1500 questions with coded answers and text references (also available on CD-ROM in computerized format)

·        The Electronic Image Collection contains more than 400 full-color images from the text for use in lectures and to import into PowerPoint.

·        New to this edition, over 1600 PowerPoint text slides or­anized by diseases and disorders.

Virtual Clinical Excursions by Jean Giddens (Mosby) accompanies Medical-Surgical Nursing.

Virtual Clinical Excursions is a simulation in a workbook/CD-ROM package that guides students through a multi-floor virtual hospital to provide them a hands-on learning experience. This tool sends students into a virtual clinical setting to meet a series of patients at Canyon View Regional Medical Center, each with their own diverse health problems, medical histories, families, cultural backgrounds, and personalities. Via the workbook exercises, students actively interact with and assess these patients, access and review their charts, lab data, and medication administration records, monitor daily changes when their nurses take their vital signs and perform a variety of tests, formulate nursing diagnoses, and plan interventions. Essentially, students can practice making all of the key clinical nursing decisions, on their own schedule and at their convenience.

This CD-ROM package gives students access to the virtual hospital, while the workbook guides students through the Pediatrics Floor, Surgery Department, Intensive Care Unit, and Medical-Surgical/Telemetry Floor. They learn communication, documentation, assessment, critical thinking, and other essential skills. They are also called on to collect information, make decisions, and set priorities.

Each lesson has a reading assignment from Medical-Surgical Nursing, as well as activities that call on students to "visit" the patients in Canyon View Regional Medical Center. The workbook exercises provide the optimal environment in which they can practice what they are learning from the textbook. The result is a uniquely hands-on way to master essential nursing knowledge.

Medical-Surgical Nursing contains all the information that nursing students need to prepare for patient care, succeed on classroom exams, and pass the state board exams. The comprehensive and accurate content, special features, attractive layout, and student-friendly writing style combine to make this the number one medical-surgical nursing textbook, used in more nursing schools around the county than any other medical-surgical nursing textbook. The book has retained the strengths of the first five editions, including the use of the nursing process as an organizational theme for nursing management, and numerous new features have been added to address the rapid changes in practice.

Professional & Technical / Law

State Failure, Sovereignty And Effectiveness: Legal Lessons from the Decolonization of Sub-Saharan Africa by Gerard Kreijen (Developments in International Law Series, Vol. 50: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Brill Academic Publishers)

State Failure, Sovereignty And Effectiveness, a comprehensive study of State failure, supports the proposition that the collapse of States in sub-Saharan Africa is a self-inflicted problem caused by the abandonment of the principle of effectiveness during de-colonization. On the one hand, the abandonment of effectiveness may have facilitated the recognition of the new African States, but on the other it lead to the creation of States that were essentially powerless: some of which became utter failures.

Written by Gerard Kreijen in a provocative and unorthodox style and using convincing arguments, this study casts doubt on some of the most sacred principles of the modern doctrine of international law. It establishes that the declaratory theory of recognition cannot satisfactorily explain the continuing existence of failed States. It also demonstrates that the principled assertion of the right to self-determination as the basis for independence in Africa has turned the notion of sovereignty into a formal-legal figment without substance.

The book begins, as it should, with the facts of the 'failure' situations. Gerard Kreijen casts his net widely for sources. In these days of over-specialization it is interesting to note that, for example, he relies heavily on writers such as Margery Perham, an acclaimed expert on the relevant period of African history; it is refreshing to read a work on international law that cites authorities other than other international lawyers.
State Failure, Sovereignty And Effectiveness is about failed States – for example, Somalia, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone. It takes a close look at some key international law concepts: statehood, sovereignty, independence, recognition of states, de-colonization, effectiveness, membership of the UN, and self-determination. Such concepts of international law are inescapably relevant to the problem of State failure: it is also the fact that the study of them in the context of State failure provides a revealing test of the meaning, the working, the adequacy and the limitations of these basic notions. A main message of State Failure, Sovereignty And Effectiveness is that “international law as it currently stands could do with some realism.” The basic thesis underlying this study is that State failure, as it is presently witnessed in sub-Saharan Africa, is the result of a normative revolution that caused a sudden swing from effectiveness to legality in the laws governing statehood.

Kreijen, who was awarded ‘cum laude’ from Leiden University for his thesis on which this book is based, is concerned mainly with the actual facts and the actual law. But he does not shirk a careful examination, in Chapter 4, of theories of international law, which have some responsibility for the sad state in which inter­national lawyers now find themselves. Those interested in theories will find a minute and enlightening examination of Hans Kelsen's contribution to the separation of law from the realities on the ground.

The tendency of international lawyers to prefer form to substance is mirrored in the changing theories about the law of recognition which came to be seen by some as "a mere cordial cognitive act", thus surrendering a powerful political tool to facile convenience. Then there was the parallel emergence of self-determination, which was no longer to be merely a useful political idea (as it was in President Wilson's 14 points) but a 'right' in international law. The theory was no doubt that there was 'a people' waiting to get its right of independence as a people. On the ground it might well be rather different: two or more groups of politically ambitious and probably ruthless individuals, determined to take power. According to Kreijen, the Soviet Union was the main instigator of the incorporation of the principle into the UN Charter, which was to be the decisive move for the development of self-determination from a political principle to a legal right.

A major difficulty with self-determination as a right is that there is no clear idea of what it is that is in law to be self-determined. As Kreijen points out, the French idea of the healthy development of a colonial territory was not at all preparation for separate independence but "for assimilation into the metropolitan community".

There is no great mystery about the nature of the malady of failed States: but what to do about it? The lack of an effective local government must frustrate most normal attempts to do anything, whether by other governments or by an international Agency. International law itself simply assumes that if there is a State there is an answerable government. Kreijen considers a number of imaginable ways: and the weaknesses of each one. There is no clear or sufficient solution. It is one of the several basic and urgent international problems to which international law has no satisfying answer to offer. This is not surprising for international lawyers have tended to keep away from these 'black holes' in the system where the basic assumptions, and even the policies of the law have parted from reality. It is to Kreijen's credit that in Chapter 6 he looks squarely at the possibilities and at the impossibilities.

Based on a doctoral study completed at Leiden U. (the Netherlands), this study searches for the causes of state failure in Africa in the legal revolution of decolonization. Beginning from the international relations theory developed by Robert Jackson in Quasi States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World the author argues that the newly independent states of sub-Saharan Africa swung from basing the legal justification of the state on effectiveness to international legality. State failure, then, is essentially a self-inflicted wound caused by discarding the principle of effectiveness. – Book News

State Failure, Sovereignty And Effectiveness is not only a good book but an important book. It is a plea for more realism in international law. Pensive pessimists in the tradition of Hobbes will love it. Idealists in the tradition of Grotius may hate it, but they will find it very difficult to reject its conclusions. State Failure, Sovereignty And Effectiveness therefore should be studied not only by those particularly interested in failed States and what to do about them but also by anyone wanting to understand more deeply the meaning and uses of the basic concepts of international law and by those interested in international law’s future.

Religion & Spirituality / Poetry / Inspirational

The Poems And Prayers of Helen Steiner Rice compiled by Virginia J. Ruehlmann, with a foreword by Patsy Clairmont (Revell, Baker Publishing Group) is the first, largest, and most complete Rice collection to date.

Helen Steiner Rice rose beyond tragedy and disappointment to inspire millions. Over eight decades, she penned thousands of poems and prayers to give comfort and hope through some of history's darkest moments. In the process, she became one of the first American women to introduce faith into the workplace and popular culture. From the 1920s and beyond her death in 1981, Rice has been an unofficial poet laureate of optimism, and her books have sold more than seven million copies. There's probably not one American family that hasn't been touched by some form of Helen's work. And today her writings continue to inspire a new generation online, in gift books, and through note cards.

Virginia J. Ruehlmann of Cincinnati, Ohio, continues the legacy through the Helen Steiner Rice Foundation, compiling more than fifty volumes of Helen's inspirational verse and poetry including Awake My Soul and Sing: Poems Inspired by Favorite Hymns.

The Poems And Prayers of Helen Steiner Rice includes nearly four hundred poems – sixteen of them rare and previously uncollected, and one never-before-published prayer discovered in the Rice Foundation archives. Organized by topic, the book features subjects Helen returned to again and again – from musings on heaven and the beauty in nature to odes of love for friends and family.

Written with wit, sensitivity, passion, and wisdom, The Poems And Prayers of Helen Steiner Rice is a treasure for every household. A definitive volume, it is packed with hope for generations to come. With more poems and prayers than there are days in a year, this book provides inspiration, encouragement, and comfort.

Science / Cognitive Psychology

The Mind: Its Nature and Origin by Christiaan D. van der Velde (Prometheus Books)

In 1923 Freud predicted that future scientific study would show that all mental experiences originated in the brain.

In spite of extraordinary advances in neuroscience and brain-imaging technologies during the last three decades, the nature and origin of the mind remain unresolvable mysteries, fascinating medical doctors, psychiatrists, and others alike. These advances have highlighted the fundamental role of the brain in mental events, but the nature of this role has yet to be clarified. In The Mind, psychiatrist Christiaan D. van der Velde investigates the phenomenon of cognition and begins to unravel the enigma surrounding the mind.

According to van der Velde, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut Health Center, all mental activities – thinking, remembering, judging, anticipating, planning, and conceptualizing – involve two distinctively different components: (1) a sense of knowing, or a sense of having experienced previously, and (2) a cognitive content, or what it is that we know, think, remember, or plan. Each thought, memory, or idea has its own specific content that remains fairly constant when reproduced in our minds. Ample evidence implies that the cognitive content of any mental experience or activity is determined by the patter – or gestalt – of images within the mind, which stem from specific brain functions. In contrast, there exists no imaginable primary brain function that suggests a cerebral origin of our sense of knowing. It is inconceivable, however, that we could experience a sense of knowing without cognitive content and vice versa. Therefore, van der Velde concludes, our sense of knowing is inseparably associated with our experience of cognitive content.

The Mind proposes that our sense of cognition may evolve as a consequence of our experiencing cognitive content and thus is an empirical – or purely experiential – product. According to this scenario, our capacity for cognition springs from an inextricable combination of a cerebral process responsible for the activation of the mind's images whose gestalts cause us to experience cognitive content and an empirical process that emanates from this cerebral experience and, in turn, imparts its content as an empirical quality of having experienced before. In other words, our sense of knowing is an empirical epiphenomenon that arises from our experiencing cerebrally produced internal images.

Is there such an empirical process that causes us to experience our internal images with a sense of knowing? According to van der Velde, we continually develop groups of two notions that reflect sets of two opposing events – one event is caused by a given quality whose absence causes the occurrence of its opposite. Yet we conceive these events as interconnected because we cannot realize one event without realizing the other – for example, our notions of day and night. As van der Velde explains in chapter 2, these inseparable ideas are called dialectical notions, and their underlying events dialectical events. Although we have yet to discover how electro-chemical activities in the brain produce or convert into mental events, van der Velde concludes that mental representations (1) are not the products but the constituents of the mind and (2) enable us to explain the psychodynamics of all mental functions.

Professor van der Velde has been preparing a lifetime to put into print his highly creative ideas about cognition and mental mechanisms. As with a good wine, the time now seems right for its release, given the explosion of new knowledge providing impetus to the field of neuroscience. – Javier I. Escobar, MD, Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Senior Adviser, Office of the Director, National Institute of Mental Health

Ambitious and deeply thoughtful, The Mind explores the relationship between the brain and the mind, drawing on current medical and psychological research. Van der Velde's cerebral-empirical rationale of our capacity for cognition offers a valuable new approach to our understanding of the origin and nature of our mental experiences. This cogent, incisive analysis by a leading psychotherapist and researcher in cognition provides much to ponder and many insights into the nature of the mind.

Science / Nature & Ecology

Frozen Oceans: The Floating World Of Sea Ice by David Thomas (A Firefly Book) invites readers to discover and explore worlds containing unexpected life.

There are some places on Earth so remote and strange as to be almost otherworldly.

Pack ice, found on the polar oceans and also in the Baltic, Caspian and White Seas, is sea water that freezes in the extreme cold of these regions. (Icebergs, in contrast, are comprised of fresh water.) In the Southern Ocean, pack ice covers eight million square miles, an area as big as North America. At its maximum extent, pack ice covers 13% of the Earth's surface, making it one of the planet's major habitat types as well as a feature that plays a vital role in determining global climate. Frozen Oceans explores this unique environment, explaining in detail how the ice develops in all of its various forms and colors, and surveying the kinds of life it supports.

As inhospitable as it may seem, pack ice is not barren, but teams with life. There are microscopic plants and animals, including specialized species such as microalgae, a unicellular organism that photosynthesizes like a plant. There are crustaceans and fish, and six-foot-tall sponges which may be as much as 10,000 years old. And there are better-known polar creatures such as polar bears, penguins (displayed in large color photos), seals and whales. It is easy to see why explorer Fridtjof Nansen, writing in the 1890s, observed that "Mother Earth has a strange ability to produce life everywhere." All of pack ice's varied life forms are examined in Frozen Oceans, including explanations of how they live and the role each plays in maintaining the biodiversity of the polar seas. Topics include:

• The nature of pack ice
• Pack ice regions of the world
• Life within a block of ice
• Microbiology inside the ice
• Mammals, birds and ice.

While mostly concerned with current knowledge, Frozen Oceans includes a most interesting chapter on the history of polar exploration, and the experiences of sealers, whalers and others who have journeyed to these waters for profit. Among other historic photographs is one of Shackleton's Endurance caught just before she sank beneath the Weddell Sea in 1915.

Even with today's sophisticated ships, and equipment, exploring these frozen environs is not easy. For that reason, scientists augment on-site exploration with measurements taken from satellites, thus arriving at sounder judgments about the extent and thickness of the ice and its behavior over the seasons and through the years, than would otherwise be possible. Frozen Oceans makes this latest data available to readers, facilitating understanding of pack ice and the life it breeds.

A final chapter deals with those forces that threaten pack ice. These include pollution, oil spills, the introduction of non-native organisms, and even the intrusion of man.

Author David N. Thomas, a marine biologist who has conducted four expeditions to the Antarctic and two to Arctic pack ice, calls the regions he studies places of hostile beauty. Sea ice and the organisms that live within it are, he says, "good analogues for life on extraterrestrial systems, and also for previous periods in Earth's history when ice caps covered most of the Earth's surface." The study of pack ice, so well detailed in Frozen Oceans, can thus illuminate the past, the present – and, perhaps, the future as well.

In this non-technical book by a leading expert, the extraordinary secrets of pack ice are unlocked. Color photographs enhance the journey of discovery. This is the first book to explain in non-technical terms and show with color photography the abundance of life on, in and under the ice. Anyone who has wondered what it is like to journey to one of those places will find Frozen Oceans a fascinating book. Writing in a lively style, the author takes readers on a journey of discovery – introducing the complex structure of the ice itself and describing its role as a major global habitat. Frozen Oceans is a must for anyone with an interest in the polar regions, marine biology and the Earth's environment.

Science / Medicine

Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug by Diarmuid Jeffreys (Bloomsbury)

Americans take 80 billion aspirin each year, little dreaming that these seemingly ordinary pills are one of the most amazing creations in medical history. Aspirin is a drug so astonishingly versatile that it can relieve headaches, ease aching limbs, lower temperature, and treat some of the deadliest human diseases, preventing everything from heart attacks to cancer to strokes. And the history of the drug is surprising.
Rich in dramatic twists and discoveries, the story of Aspirin begins in ancient Egypt, and embraces wars, epidemics, espionage, an Oxfordshire vicar, a forgotten Jewish scientist, the Industrial Revolution, a common tree, the Treaty of Versailles, the world's most powerful pharmaceutical companies, Auschwitz, a mercurial advertising genius, and more. Bringing alive a compelling cast of characters in a dazzling journey across centuries, author Diarmuid Jeffreys reveals how chance and design brought the drug into being as we know it at the end of the nineteenth century, and how intrigue, greed, and ambition combined to make aspirin one of the most commercially successful products of all time.

We take aspirin for granted. Sure, we may pop two when we're feeling under the weather, or when we've had one drink too many the night before, but the amazing properties of aspirin are still being discovered, a century after it was first introduced. From heart attacks and strokes to Alzheimer's and cancer, the power of aspirin is still making headlines today. Jeffries, a British writer, journalist, and television producer who has made numerous current affairs and documentary programs, reveals the history of the drug, fascinating and complex as its many medical uses. This history takes us through amazing accidental discoveries, ancient Egyptian scrolls, driving personal ambition, shameless corporate greed, ground-breaking marketing geniuses, and even the evils of Auschwitz.

Well-documented... [Aspirin's] colorful history includes drama, pathos, plot twits, humor, intrigue and even a handful of scurrilous and despicable characters. – Booklist starred review

Extraordinary ... a well-told and intriguing story with surprising twists and turns. –  Kirkus Reviews

Aspirin was discovered during the same period as heroin, but scientists thought heroin would have many more uses. An estimated one trillion aspirin pills later, they were clearly wrong. From the drug's origins to its subsequent exploitation by the pharmaceutical conglomerates, Aspirin reveals how intrigue, greed, and ambition combined to make it one of the most commercially successful products of all time. In Aspirin, Jeffreys presents a lively, accessible, and well-documented look at the history of a drug that has changed our world. It is fascinating reading.

Social Sciences / Archaeology

Household Chores and Household Choices: Theorizing the Domestic Sphere in Historical Archaeology edited by Kerri S. Barile & Jamie C. Brandon (University of Alabama Press) presents a variety of archaeological and historical case studies on daily life in a wide range of settings and circumstances.

Because archaeology seeks to understand past societies, the concepts of "home," "house," and "household" are important. Yet they can be the most elusive of ideas. Are they the space occupied by a nuclear family or by an extended one? Is it a built structure or the sum of its contents? Is it a shelter against the elements, a gendered space, or an ephemeral place tied to emotion? We somehow believe that the household is a basic unit of culture but have failed to develop a theory for understanding the diversity of households in the historic (and prehistoric) periods.

In an effort to clarify these questions, Household Chores and Household Choices examines a broad range of households – a Spanish colonial rancho along the Rio Grande, Andrew Jackson's Hermitage in Tennessee, plantations in South Carolina and the Bahamas, a Colorado coal camp, a frontier Arkansas farm, a Freedman's Town eventually swallowed by Dallas – to define and theorize domestic space. The essays devolve from many disciplines, including architectural history, American studies, and feminist theory.

All approach households from an archaeological perspective, looking at landscape analysis, excavations, reanalyzed collections, or archival records.

Contributors include:

Nesta Anderson, Jamie C. Brandon, Suzanne Spencer-Wood, Kerri S. Barile, James M. Davidson, Leslie C. Stewart-Abernathy, Whitney Battle, Maria Franklin, Margaret C. Wood, Mary C. Beaudry, Mary Jo Galindo, Mindy Bonine, and Efstathios J. Pappas.

This collection of papers does a fine job of illustrating the shortfalls of projecting normative views of household structure, organization, composition, and spatiality into the past. – Laurie Wilkie, University of California-Berkeley

Edited by Kerri S. Barile, principal investigator with SWCA Environmental Consultants in Austin, Texas, and Jamie C. Brandon, Visiting Instructor with the University of Arkansas and an archaeologist with the Arkansas Archeological Survey, the essays in Household Chores and Household Choices present a body of knowledge that takes the identification, analysis, and interpretation of households far beyond current conceptions.

Social Sciences

Contemporary Social Theory: Investigation and Application by Tim Delaney (Pearson Prentice Hall)

Because of the large number of thinkers in the contemporary era, theorists who share similar interests or perspectives are grouped together into "schools of thought." Consequently, contemporary sociological theory has become dominated by "schools of thought" rather than by single theorists. This is either good or bad depending on one's perspective. Nonetheless, it is the reality of current sociological social theory. Furthermore, there are those who place a great emphasis on paradigm distinctions. Paradigms represent collective schools of thought that can be lumped together. Ever since Thomas Kuhn published his The Structure of Scientific Revolu­tions the topic of paradigm distinction has remained in popular discourse. Unfortunately, there are nearly as many paradigm classifications schemes offered by individuals, as there are schools of thought. As a result, author Tim Delaney, assistant professor of sociology at State University of New York at Oswego, focuses Contemporary Social Theory on the major schools of thought. The primary focus is to describe, explain, and articulate these specific theoretical formats and the relevant social thinkers equated with each school of thought.

Contemporary Social Theory begins with an examination of social theory and is followed by a review of the major schools of thought. Chapter One provides an in-depth analysis and examination of social theory and its relevancy to social society in general, and sociology, specifically. In each of the chapters on the major schools of thought (2-11) a review of the basic tenets is provided along with a discussion of some of the major theorists found in each school, their influences, and their concepts and contributions to social theory. Each of these chapters concludes with a relevancy section which serves to review the theory, assess the school of thought, and apply select concepts to the relevancy of contemporary society. Chapters 12 and 13 are dedicated to the works of two of the more brilliant theorists of the contemporary era, George Ritzer and Jonathan Turner, respectfully. Additionally, Chapter 14, "Applying Social Theory to Future Society," attempts to apply many of the established social trends that have existed for the past five centuries and show their relevancy to future society. In this chapter, Delaney introduces a number of his own concepts and theories including the Honian Species Convergence Theory and the Five Horrorists (an updated version of Malthus's Four Horsemen). His pessimistic conclusion – the human species must learn to solve the problems presented by the Five Horrorists and the emerging threat of global terrorism. If all the diverse cultures of the world refuse to accept the lifestyles of others, the “survival of the fittest” doctrine will prevail. Stu­dents, and professors alike, should find this chapter of particular interest.

Contemporary Social Theory is a holistic overview of the major contributors to social theory including reductionism, functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism, social exchange theory and other modern and post-modern theorists. It is an ambitious attempt to condense major theoretical schools of thought into one volume, which includes investigation and application of the theories. Delaney clearly subscribes to Darwinism in the face of globalization.

Social Sciences / Gender Studies

Feminism with Men: Bridging The Gender Gap by Steven P. Schacht & Doris W. Ewing (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.) asserts that it is not necessary to experience the world as a woman in order to develop a feminist understanding or to hold a feminist vision for the future.

According to authors Steven P. Schacht and Doris W. Ewing, patriarchy harms both men and women, although in different ways, while feminism offers an ideology for creating a more meaningful and life-affirming way of being in the world.

How can men participate in feminism as full and equal partners, respecting gender differences yet sharing a common vision with women for an oppression-free future?

Feminism with Men explores the ways men can examine and change their relationships with both men and women through discussions of the limits of gender-exclusive movements, the role of homophobia in maintaining sexist structures, and the difficulty of establishing radical alliances across gender differences. Authors Schacht, who died in 2003, former professor in the Department of Sociology at Plattsburg State University of New York and Ewing, professor emerita of sociology at Southwest Missouri State University, provide both male and female perspectives.

Feminism with Men begins by noting the general beliefs in the public mind that being a feminist means experiencing the world as a woman, that only women can be feminists, and that the social category of "men" is the enemy to women seeking gender equal­ity. Such an outlook was of vital importance in the founding of the feminist movement. Unfortunately, however, much of feminism has continued to focus on gender exclusivity and to have a conceptualization of men as the enemy – this has kept many men and women from identifying as feminists. Schacht and Ewing argue that the continued exclusion of men may explain why feminism is at present a stalled revolution.

Of course, the foremost reason for limits on feminist successes is the misogynist policies and practices of a male-dominated society. The conservative backlash that began in the early 1980s, often grounded in religious fundamentalism, has also served to dampen the feminist message. Schacht and Ewing recognize that problems have arisen when feminist women have tried to join forces with some self-identified (pro)feminist men. The fact remains that, as long as the feminist movement continues to be viewed by the general public as just one more narrow special interest group, largely promoting the needs of just women, few men or women involved with men will embrace its cause. As the authors argue throughout Feminism with Men, the only way feminism will be able to bring about the widespread changes in society it envisions is to find fruitful ways to enter into partnership with men in the pursuit of an oppression-free future. They end chapter 1 arguing that feminist values are neither female nor male in focus and benefit but are ultimately part of a broader ethical outlook that enables all people to live and prosper in a world without the harms of present forms of oppression.

In chapters 2 and 3, Schacht and Ewing separately offer their disparate personal journeys for coming to feminism, noting the unnecessary harms that result from oppressive masculine practices. They individually explore the numerous ways they have personally benefited from embracing a feminist worldview and why they believe feminism is a necessary ideology for survival in the future.

Chapter 4 explores why old patriarchal prescriptions and solutions are no longer adequate to address the pressing problems of the present. Today many Americans feel a general sense of "dis-ease" in that their lives are out of control, that much of what they do has little meaning beyond survival, immediate pleasures, and fleeting satisfactions. Similarly, many people feel alienated from their work, families, communities, and even themselves. They argue that feminism has much to offer women and men who are interested in creating a more meaningful and life-affirming way of being in the world.

Chapter 5 explores the four pillars of masculinity and manhood – sex, money, power, and violence – in terms of their unrealistic expectations and how, on the surface, most men would be considered manhood failures. Schacht and Ewing then explore some of the masculine venues that late capitalist patriarchy has created so that men who would otherwise be losers can experience, manhood "successes": pornography, televised sports, gambling, video games, and alcohol. The chapter argues that men hoping to realize a feminist way of being must acknowledge the empty, promises and demands of the manhood-making machine, and then go on to explore what sort of life they want to live.

Much has been written about the process women follow to become feminists. Since much of a feminist consciousness has been conceptualized as ultimately grounded in women's experiences of being oppressed, Schacht and Ewing argue in chapter 6 that men must travel a different path to feminism wherein they acknowledge that their role in contemporary gender relations is that of the oppressor. Writing specifically for the man who is just beginning a feminist journey, they outline several important trailheads for men on the way to becoming a (pro)feminist.

Noting the difference between becoming and being something, chapter 7 explores  additional considerations that men who make a commitment to feminism often have to address – homophobia and misogyny often keep men from expressing a feminist outlook, especially in the presence of other men. Feminism with Men suggests effective ways in which men can "be" feminists in relation to women and men. Then chapter 8 explores ways in which men can learn to be feminist parents.

The final chapter (10) explores how the oppressively harmful masculine practices of the United States have become a global phenomenon. Under this lens, the 9/11 terrorist attacks are examined as predictable and inevitable outcomes of present masculine politics on a world scale. Schacht and Ewing argue that the time has come to end the insanity of the exploitive practices that jeopardize the continued survival of Mother Earth. Feminism with Men ends with an argument for the creation of a fourth wave of feminism wherein both the oppressed and the oppressor forge partnerships across difference to reverse the destructive direction in which we are now headed as a species and as a planet.

By interweaving their own personal stories, and grounding these stories in feminists theories and research, Schacht and Ewing demonstrate the main thesis of their book: Not only is feminism still alive, it holds the potential for transorming the world, through a committed partnership between women and men. – Michael A. Messner, University of Southern California

Feminism with Men represents the authors’ struggle to take their gender differences and make them strengths for realizing a feminist future for both women and men. While there are no clear roadmaps, Schacht and Ewing offer academic insights and practical suggestions for (pro)feminist men seeking new ways to increase mutual understanding and to create cooperative efforts with feminist women.

Sociology

Understanding Intercultural Communication by Stella Ting-Toomey & Leeva C. Chung (Roxbury Publishing Company) offers a comprehensive look at the foundational concepts of intercultural communication.

Through its dynamic theme of flexible inter­cultural communication, in Understanding Intercultural Communication, authors Stella Ting-Toomey, professor of human communication at California State University at Fullerton; and Leeva Chung, associate professor at the University of San Diego, bridge the gap between inter­cultural communication theory and practice. The text is distinctive because of its balance between cross-national intercultural communication issues and U.S. domestic diversity issues.

It offers strong coverage of topics such as the process of ethnic and cultural identity change, cul­ture shock and intercultural adjustment, intercultural verbal communication styles, conflict facework interactions, romantic relationships and raising bicultural children, global identity challenges, and decision-making choices in intercultural ethics.

Highlights include: Diversity Jeopardy boxes, Double-Take personal narratives and stories, Know Thyself mini-assessments, Quick Poll reaction polls, Picture This intercultural-interethnic poems, and Snapshots illustrating cultural diversity and culture shock. In addition, dialogue scenes, global news clips, practical intercultural toolkits, and checkpoints reinforce student learning.

The Instructor's Manual/Testing Program provides chapter outlines and tips for managing challenging issues in the classroom. In addition, original exercises, activities, self-assessments, fun quizzes, and reflective discussion questions keep students on an active-learning track. A dedicated Website is also available as well as an Interactive Student Study Guide.

This student-centered text engages undergraduates through its presentation and discussion of key concepts by examples, questions, stories, and activities. The authors provide `food for thought' and the `proper utensils' for handling the material.... This textbook is fresh because it contains many stories and examples that students will connect with. – Armeda C. Reitzel, Humboldt State University

The authors write clearly but with a sense of sophistication and depth, so that lower-division students can easily grasp the material – but senior students can be pushed to engage concepts, terms, and theories. – Fernando Delgado, Arizona State University West

One of the outstanding features of this text is the integration of innovative topics that are not included in other intercultural texts.... The student-centered pedagogical approach in this text is the best I've encountered! – Candice Thomas-Maddox, Ohio University, Lancaster

Targeted at undergraduates, written in a conversational style, Understanding Intercultural Communication presents up-to-date, identity-based frameworks and fresh approaches. By integrating current empirical research with lively intercultural examples, the authors ask thought­provoking questions throughout the text and pose intercultural ethical dilemmas for students to ponder.

Sports

One Day at Fenway by Steve Kettmann (Atria Books)

Saturday, August 30, 2003 – Yankees versus Red Sox, Fenway Park. Not just a special day in a great rivalry but also a unique one in the long tradition of baseball writing. On that day, Steve Kettmann, baseball writer, worked with a team of top reporters to chronicle everything that happened, from the point of view of everyone involved. So here are Red Sox owner John Henry and CEO Larry Lucchino, privately second-guessing Grady Little's managing moves during the game; here is Joe Torre, the Yankees skipper, worrying on the bench about his closer, Mariano Rivera, who can't find home plate; here's Theo Epstein, Red Sox General Manager, playing guitar until his fingers bleed the night before the game; here's Hideki Matsui, Yankees slugger, surprised that no Japanese reporters turn up to greet him at the ballpark; and here's Bill Mueller, Red Sox third baseman, driving to the game, hoping he can get a hit to help Boston win.
But it's not just the famous voices we hear. One Day at Fenway introduces readers to Theo Gordon, who's told his girlfriend, Jane Baxter, forty-five lies, and allows readers to watch as Marty Martin does what all good Red Sox fans should do, only to find himself thrown out of the ballpark.

No rivalry in sports is as intense as the Red Sox and Yankees, and no year in that rivalry was as intense as 2003. In One Day at Fenway, Steve Kettman has picked out the season's quintessential game and reconstructed it so vividly that you feel like you're right in the dugout with the players, hanging on every pitch. Whether you're a fan of good baseball or just good storytelling, this is a book you'll want to read. – Jonathan Cohn, Senior Editor, The New Republic

Steve Kettmann's kaleidoscopic rendering of a single Yankees-Red Sox game makes a fascinating narrative even for those who know little about the sport. With its cast of dozens of acutely interested characters, One Day at Fenway is the Black Hawk Down of baseball. – Madison Smartt Bell

For less than what you normally would pay to park, you get to sit in the good seats, the bad seats, the dugout itself.... You squint and watch the action for a couple of innings through a hole in the scoreboard. All this and it's the Yankees and it's a hell of a game and...just start reading. You won't be disappointed. This is the ultimate Fenway experience. – Leigh Montville, author of Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero

I was blown away. Baseball books usually bore me, but Steve grabbed my attention with every page. … Steve not only captured the intensity on the field but also the layers of interest that surround the greatest rivalry in sports. – Billy Beane, General Manager, Oakland Athletics

Taken together, in One Day at Fenway, the myriad of voices and multiple points of view reveal a day in the life of baseball unlike ever before, showing in this unique project the human side to America's pastime. Kettermann, with his a great eye for detail, makes this a riveting book.

Sports / Biographies

Sunday Morning Quarterback: Going Deep on the Strategies, Myths & Mayhem of Football by Phil Simms, with Vic Carucci (HarperCollins)

We’re sick and tired of all the football clichés: "Their offense is too predictable," or "They've got to win the turnover battle," or "They didn't make any halftime adjustments." Perhaps we've heard them so often that they’ve come to sound like obvious truths.

Phil Simms, after an illustrious career as a Super Bowl-winning quarterback and a CBS broadcaster, is here to tell readers in Sunday Morning Quarterback that these – and many other blanket statements taken as gospel – are all myths, and whoever says them has no idea of what they're talking about.

Drilling deep into the core of football, Simms, who led the New York Giants to two Super Bowl championships and retired in 1993 with 15 NFL seasons under his belt, also shows the hidden signs that players look for that can determine the outcome of a game. Whether it's discovering how a linebacker positions his feet before he blitzes or how to react if the safety is eight or nine yards from the line of scrimmage, knowing these "dirty little secrets" gives players and their coaches a tremendous advantage.

In addition, Simms shares his insights into the enormous challenges coaches face in today's game, evaluating the top coaches and what makes them successful. He takes a look at some of the greatest players he's played with and against, and what he misses most about the game – waking up Monday mornings feeling beat up and sore. He looks at the next generation of football players – his son, Tampa Bay's Chris Simms, among them.

Through it all, Simms shares stories from his playing days with Bill Parcells and the New York Giants, and the inside access he's had as an announcer for one of the top NFL broadcasting teams in football.

An in-depth and surprising look at the game, Sunday Morning Quarterback will dramatically change the way readers watch football. Fun and lively, the book should be required reading for anyone who loves football.

Travel / History / Africa

In Search of King Solomon's Mines by Tahir Shah (Arcade Publishing)

King Solomon, the Bible's wisest king, possessed extraordinary wealth. He covered the grand temple he built in Jerusalem in gold, from the porch to the inner sanctum, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. Long before H. Rider Haggard's classic adventure novel King Solomon's Mines unleashed gold fever more than a century ago, many had sought to find the source of the great king's wealth.

In his latest wild adventure, In Search of King Solomon's Mines, Tahir Shah, the Indiana Jones of travel writing, tries his hand at the quest for King Solomon’s gold.

Intrigued by a map he finds in a shop not far from the site of the temple, Shah assembles a multitude of clues to the location of the mines. Some come from ancient texts, including the Septuagint, the earliest form of the Bible, and some from geological, geographical, and folkloric sources. All point across the Red Sea to Ethiopia, the land of the Queen of Sheba, Solomon's lover, who bore Solomon's son Menelik and founded Ethiopia's imperial line.

Shah alights in Addis Ababa and immediately hires Samson, taxi driver and former gold miner, to be his guide and translator – Samson rapidly also becomes historian and companion. Tired of various modes of travel, they hire a car, whose driver chews qat, a narcotic leaf that manifests itself in the form of erratic driving, and results in an impressive amount of road-kill. Shah and Samson switch to more ancient but safer transportation, trekking by camel caravan and later by mule train. Further transportation switches have Shah on a jeep belonging to the late emperor Haile Selassie, traveling to the gold-bearing corners of this storied and beautiful country. He journeys to a remote cliff-face monastery where the monks hoist visitors up on a leather rope, to the ruined castles of Gondar, and the churches of Lalibela, hewn from solid rock. He interviews the hyena man of Harar and a priest who claims to be the custodian of Sheba's treasure. In the south he encounters an illegal gold mine of biblical proportions, where thousands of men, women, and children dig with their hands. But the hardest leg of the journey is to the accursed mountain of Tullu Wallet, where legend says the devil keeps watch over the entrance to an ancient mine shaft... .

Shah is so entertaining, most readers won't real­ize that while walking on the wild side, they've also just done a quick course in Ethiopian history. – Publishers Weekly

Imagine a travel narrative written by Miguel de Cervantes, featuring Indiana Jones and Monty Python, and you get a sense of the writings of Tahir Shah. – Huntsville Times

Every page of this book is a delight as well as an eye-opener. – Peter L. Bernstein, author of The Power of Gold

Tahir Shah's talent for inventive and outrageous traveling and his gift for blending humor and thorough research in a rollicking tale are fully evident in In Search of King Solomon's Mines. As the European edition of Time magazine wrote, "His storytelling is simple and elegant, his manner subtly self-deprecating and often hilarious.... The book [is] worth its weight in gold."

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