SirReadaLot.org

January 2005, Issue #69

Guide to this Issue's Contents

Page Contents: Fashion, Managing Motivation, Playing to Win, Cooking with Children,  The Relationships of Children, Archeology for Children, Children's Atlas of War, Computer Graphics, Skillet Cookery,  Movie about Music Legend Ray Charles, Supervision Counseling, When Gambling becomes a Disorder,  Psychoanalytic Work in a Public Clinic, A Southern Black Community, 9/11 Memoir, American Bunkers, Populists And Progressives, Gardening Orchids, Making Beaded Jewelry, The Extraordinary Potential of Pigs! Vernacular Buildings, Racist Fiction, American Dreams Transmogrified, Colombian Theatre in the Vortex, Benefits of Carnivores, Spirituality of Aloneness, More Open Society, Scalia Dissents, Economic Hit Men, Reading Food Labels for Nutrition, Atherosclerosis, Max Wertheimer Gestalt, Between Brain and Culture,  Reading Skills ESL, Writing Skills, Literary Terms Glossary, Collisions at Sea, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on Religion, Creative Kabbalah, Postmodern Christianity, Celtic Moon Goddess, Judaism and Christianity Origins, Astronomy, Weighing the Soul, Martial Arts, Golf In the Southeast, Automobiles: Hummer, Gloria Trevi's Cult Problems, Women's Rights in America? Readings about Women in Western Culture 

Arts & Photography / Fashion

Fashion: A Canadian Perspective by Alexandra Palmer (University of Toronto Press)

Canadian fashion does exist.

Although Canadian fashion may be sympathetic and reliant upon the United States and Europe, Canadian fashion identity does exist beyond northern exposure.

Fashion takes a sweeping look at what Canadians have worn for the last three centuries, and what those choices have done to draw attention to Canadian fashion at home and abroad. Covering a broad range of topics – such as the iconic Hudson Bay blanket coats, garment factories of the late 1800s, specific Canadian fashion couturiers – i.e., Lida Baday, Hilary Radley, Alfred Sung – whose influence has reached international stages, as well as the contemporary role of fashion journalists and their effect on trends.

Author Alexandra Palmer, the fashion and costume curator at the Royal Ontario Museum and an adjunct professor in the graduate program in art history at York University and the art history department at the University of Toronto, gathers together some of the top curators, designers, fashion writers, historians, and artists in the country to create a truly dynamic and thought-provoking collection of essays.

Contributors include: Christina Bates, Katherine Bosnitch, Gail Cariou, Susan Turnbull Caton, Cynthia Cooper, Barbara M. Freeman, Deborah Fulsang, Barbara E. Kelcey, Peter J. Larocque, M. Elaine MacKay, Jan Noel, Alexandra Palmer, Lydia Ferrabee Sharman, Elizabeth Sifton, and Eileen Stack.

This book is important, timely, and immensely relevant. Alexandra Palmer has put together a rich and varied col­lection that will contribute to Canadian cultural history and undoubtedly initiate further projects and debates. The content of each essay is excellent and the collection is outstanding in its complementary diversity. – Janice Helland, Department of Art and Department of Women's Studies, Queen's University

Fashion is an intriguing and readable historiography that links past to future, couture vision to trade trends, and heritage costuming to Fashion Television. Controversial and unconventional, this collection breaks new ground in examining Canada, fashion and national identity.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership

100 Ways to Motivate Others: How Great Leaders Can Produce Insane Results Without Driving People Crazy by Steve Chandler & Scott Richardson (Career Press) is the culmination of many years of successful leadership coaching and training by best-selling author Steve Chandler and attorney Scott Richardson, and the natural follow-up to Steve's two previous best-sellers – 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself and Reinventing Yourself.

Covering concepts such as "Don't manage people, manage agreements," 100 Ways to Motivate Others draws on the success of live workshops, seminars, and personal coaching programs on communications and leadership. This book inspires tough-minded leadership that gives the gift of clarity and vision to every person following the leader.

The first step in motivating others is for readers, assuming they are the leaders wanting to motivate followers, to realize that "if there's a problem, I'm the problem." Once they truly get that, then they can use these 100 ways. After readers have learned to motivate themselves, Chandler and Richardson will help them learn:

• How to slow down and enjoy a new level of focus.
• Why multitasking is a myth, not a strength, and keeping life simple and straightforward is the goal.
• The power of building on their people's strengths.
• How to avoid the damaging inclination to obsess about people's weaknesses.
• A simple and creative way to hold people accountable.
• How to enjoy cultivating the art of supportive confrontation.

It's hard to believe that so much powerful, practical wisdom can be packed into such an easy-to-read book. It's a voyage into the pure essence of what really works. I've already ordered it for my entire staff. – Ron Hulnick, President, University of Santa Monica

Chandler and Richardson in 100 Ways to Motivate Others have crafted a vital, user-friendly, inspirational guide for executives, managers, and professionals ... and those aspiring to reach that level. The seminars, done for such organizations as Banner Health, General Dynamics, Scripps Hospital, Wells Fargo Banks, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and M&I Banks, and this book which came out of the seminars, will appeal to managers, teachers, parents, CEOs, and coaches.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership

Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win? by George Stalk & Rob Lachenauer (Harvard Business School Press)

It's time to play hardball, to create losers.

There are two extremes in business competition today. Companies can play softball, relying on weak tactics that look like strategies, but do little more than keep the company in the game. Or, they can play hardball, employing tough strategies designed to rout, not simply beat, competitors. Which of today's companies are playing hardball? What strategies are they using to win?

In Hardball, veteran strategists George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer argue that business is about winning and losing, not about "playing nice." For too long, companies have focused on soft issues like customer relations and corporate culture while ignoring the killer strategic instinct that has been the hallmark of winning since business competition began. Stalk and Lachenauer show that hardball winners exercise soft management, but in the context of classic hardball play, rallying talent and building culture through focus on the few issues most critical to success. These companies play rough, but they never break the rules and keep their promises to customers, shareholders, and employees.

In their "hardball manifesto," authors George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer of the leading strategy consulting firm, The Boston Consulting Group, show how hardball competitors can build or maintain an enviable competitive edge by pursuing one or more of the classic "hardball strategies": unleash massive and overwhelming force, exploit anomalies, devastate profit sanctuaries, raise competitors' costs, and break compromises.

Stalk and Lachenauer show how hardball companies move beyond mere competitive advantage to achieving decisive advantages that neutralize, marginalize, and even punish rivals. Through examples that take leaders deep inside the world of hardball competition, Hardball reveals the classic hardball moves who uses these strategies, under what circumstances and in which industries each strategy is most effective.

Every leader must teach the next generation how to compete. Hardball  shows us the way to play and win. – Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO, General Electric

With so much cynicism over greed and lapsed ethics in the boardroom, Hardball offers a refreshing way to start over. –Matthew Winkler, Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg News

Hardball throws you directly into the uncomfortable truth that companies are always either hunting or being hunted. Physical and cerebral at once, this book clears the air. – Tom Hout, coauthor of Competing Against Time

Hardball is already causing a stir. – The Economist
The authors' message, eminently worth the read, is that you can succeed by competing relentlessly, intelligently and, yes, fairly. – The Wall Street Journal

Today's global marketplace may be the toughest and most unforgiving playing field business has ever seen. Hardball redefines and reinterprets the meaning of competition in this new era – and outlines the classic strategies today's companies must use if they're in the game to win it.

Children’s / Cooking

DK Children's Cookbook by Katharine Ibbs, with photography by Howard Shooter (DK) provides everything young readers need to know to make delicious meals and sweet treats.

Focusing on favorite meals and snacks to inspire young chefs who are ready to learn new skills, the DK Children's Cookbook is loaded with accessible recipes. Children learn to enjoy preparing food safely as they experiment with new flavors and have fun in the kitchen. Katharine Ibbs, an experienced home economist and food stylist, brings her fresh approach to cooking to the DK Children's Cookbook. A passionate believer in the importance of learning about cooking from an early age, Ibbs has taught cooking classes for kids and contributed to numerous children's cookbooks.

Readers can start with an easy-to-make Fruit Smoothie for breakfast, have Pasta Salad for lunch, and then serve Barbecue Chicken and Mandarin Cheesecake for dinner. Some more samples from the various sections of the book:

• Breakfast: Breakfast omelet, Blueberry pancakes
• Light Meals: Pesto toast, Cheese melt with poached egg, Falafel with tzatziki, Sushi rolls
• Main meals: Mashed-potato pies, Lamb kebabs, Roasted vegetable lasagna
• Desserts: Mandarin cheesecake, Fruit crisp, Tropical fruit meringues
• Baking: Banana squares, Noon bread, Orange crunch cookies, Vegetable tart

Each step-by-step recipe is easy to follow, with straightforward instructions and colorful "look-as-you-cook" pictures of each dish. Every recipe comes with hints and tips so readers can adapt them and make food that they like.

Readers learn to mix, blend, baste, roast, steam, and bake with this guide. With illustrated explanations of cooking terms, equipment, and techniques, and preparation tips and advice about healthy eating, the DK Children's Cookbook has everything readers need for making delicious dishes that will have their friends and family coming back for more.

With over 50 mouthwatering recipes, DK Children's Cookbook has something for everyone. One thing we especially like about this cookbook is that, although there are a number of meat recipes, there are plenty for vegetarians too. Whether readers want to learn how to cook or are already budding chefs, this book would make a good choice.

Children’s Books (Ages 4-8) / Archeology

A City Through Time by Steve Noon, Phillip Steele (DK) takes young readers on a journey to discover the exciting history of a city.

From early Green settlement to industrial metropolis, readers watch a fictional town grow and see how its citizens lived through the centuries.

Written by Philip Steele and illustrated by Steve Noon, illustrator of the award-winning A Street Through Time, A City Through Time, begins as a place where farmers come to trade. Thousands of years later, huge jetliners fly over a sprawling city that is home to millions of people.

Great cities of the world don't become great overnight. As readers travel through the centuries, they see how cities change and grow to become teeming centers of civilization, where something is always happening. From Greek soldiers on the march to commuters on a crowded rush-hour subway, A City Through Time shows readers how people from each era go about their lives.

Readers will find incredible panoramic pictures showing each stage of the city's history, and features focusing on key buildings and the people who live and work in them. The book shows Roman citadel with its bathhouse, the medieval city with its mighty castle, and the modern metropolis with its gleaming skyscrapers. Every picture is packed with color and detail – illustrating, through the lives of citizens and slaves, lords and peasants, factory workers and tourists, how a city transforms itself over the 2,500 years of its history.

Illustrator Noon, in A City Through Time, vividly brings to life the history and growth of a city in this stunning, oversized picture book. Beginning with the birth of a Greek colony and ending with a modern metropolis, A City Through Time is a captivating journey through 2,500 years. Every page puts readers into the heart of the urban hustle and bustle.

Children’s / Reference / History / Military

Atlas of American Military History by Stuart Murray (Facts on File)

From the Battle of Bunker Hill to the Battle of Midway, from Vietnam to the War in Iraq, from George Washington to Douglas MacArthur, Atlas of American Military History covers the full span of America at war, exploring the personalities, methods, strategies, and historical contexts of each conflict. Following a loose chronological framework, Atlas of American Military History examines every significant military campaign and war in which the United States has been engaged, both domestically and internationally.

Stuart Murray, freelance writer and the author of several books on military history, begins the story as European warfare came to North America. It was 1565 when as age-old hostility between France and Spain brought siege, pillaging, and massacre to Florida. When the Englishman, Sir Francis Drake, sacked Spanish St. Augustine in 1586, the colonial wars were under way. Through the 1600s, native peoples and colonists also often matched strength, and the colonists did not always win. During the mid-1700s, native peoples were important allies of the warring British and French, but when the newly independent United States expanded at the end of the century, the Indians were the losers. The War of 1812's battles intermingled with aggressive operations to remove the native peoples of the Old Northwest and South.

According to Atlas of American Military History, a few decades later, America's belief in her "Manifest Destiny" to con­quer the continent brought Texas and much of Mexico under the Stars and Stripes. In 1861, the War Between the States tore the nation in two, but from civil war rose a United States that was stronger than ever, industrializing and on the move. The last decades of the century saw the conquest of the West, with the Indians forced onto reservations.

After defeating Spain in 1898, the United States entered the 20th Century as a colonial empire, an aspiring Great Power that came to the fore during the First World War. Then came World War II, from which the United States emerged the most powerful nation on earth, leader of the "Free World," and bastion of liberty. Next, the adversary was the totalitarian Soviet Bloc, with intrigue, subversion, and the threat of nuclear destruction as the chosen weapons. Near the end of the 20th Century, this "Cold War" dissolved into a confusion of new adversities, dangers, and tensions.

Global politics were now often defined by the hunt for oil reserves, a quest complicated by the resolve of some aggrieved peoples to strive for their rights. Awesome martial technology dominated the conventional battlefield, but the guerrilla fighter – whether patriot or fanatical terrorist – struggled on against immense odds. Thus, the 21st Century opened with the greatest militaries ever known attempting to combat clandestine networks of shadowy enemies who were willing to die for causes they held sacred.

More current and accessible than any similar title on the topic, Atlas of American Military History provides bountiful full-color maps accompanied by an insightful textual narrative. The maps and text are well integrated and complement each other nicely, giving readers access to information on important topics in a comprehensive and authoritative manner. Full of fascinating information that will interest students and general readers alike, and with a wide range of topics that receive detailed treatment in both text and maps, Atlas of American Military History offers a thorough, fascinating account of all aspects of U.S. military history.

Computers / Interactive Multimedia / Graphic Design

Introduction to Computer Graphics – Design Professional by Daniel Bouweraerts (Design Professional Series: Course Technology / Thomson)

Part of the Design Professional Series, Introduction to Computer Graphics provides a solid overview of the applications and software used in print and digital media. Readers learn about the most commonly used applications in computer graphics with this introductory text from the Design Professional Series, each volume of which provides guides to today's hottest multimedia applications. In separate sections dedicated to both print and digital media, Daniel Bouweraerts, graphic communications professor at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada and former business graphics designer, presents a comprehensive overview of design concepts, the main software applications, and production technologies.

Introduction to Computer Graphics:

• Builds a foundation in the theories and concepts of design.
• Provides an introduction to the tools that have revolutionized computer graphics, including software, production and reproduction technologies, and electronic publishing and proofing.
• Engages visual learners with a full-color interior and eye-popping graphics.
• Helps readers build their understanding of print and digital media concepts with numerous exercises and projects.
• Contains images created by professional designers from across the country.
• Is accompanied by extensive Instructor Resources to facilitate use in the classroom.

There are many levels of tech­nology to learn. Many step-by-step books exist that go into depth on individual applications, but Bouweraerts felt the need for a text that presents an overview of the available applications for both print and digital media. Once students understand the context of each application and have learned the basic skills presented here, they can move on to more in-depth application study.

Introduction to Computer Graphics builds a foundation in design theories and concepts to foster student creativity. This text is organized into two sections – one dedicated to print media and the other to digital media. Within these sections, the chapters introduce the tools that have revolutionized computer graphics, including software, production and reproduction technologies, and electronic publishing. Design tips and sidebars address topics related to chapter content.

• What You'll Learn bullet and graphic are provided at the beginning of every concept.
• Chapter Introduction lays the groundwork for the concepts that follow, giving a brief historical perspective on the chapter topic and/or explaining relevant terminology and processes
• Software Overview explains the uses of each package, briefly comparing their major features, and dis­plays a screen of each one.
• Software Discussion and Instructions contains commands, within the text, for completing some basic software procedures using some typical tools. These instructions give readers brief, hands-on experience that lets them view the software package's basic capabilities and appreciate the program's strengths.
• Summing It Up page provides a short summary of the major points covered in the chapter and design samples that illustrate the concepts and skills covered.
• Projects includes a variety of end-of-chapter material for additional practice and reinforcement. The chapter concludes with four projects: two Project Builders, one Design Project, and one Gallery. The Project Builders require students to apply the concepts and software skills they have learned in the chapter to create a project. The One Step Beyond and Two Steps Beyond features extend knowledge further into the concepts. In the Design Project, readers create a project from scratch with less guidance. The Gallery features real-world work by professional designers and asks students to evaluate the works based on how they illustrate the concepts discussed in the chapter.

The Instructor Resources CD-ROM puts the resources and information needed to teach and learn effectively into the instructor’s hands. Resources include:

• Instructor's Manual, available as an electronic file.
• Syllabus, allowing instructors to prepare and customize their courses.
• PowerPoint Presentations
• Figure Files
• Data Files for Students
• Solutions to Exercises
• Test Bank and Test Engine, ExamView, a powerful testing software package that allows instructors to create and administer printed, com­puter (LAN-based), and Internet exams. ExamView includes hundreds of questions that correspond to the topics covered in this text, enabling students to generate detailed study guides that include page references for further review. The computer-based and Internet testing components allow students to take exams at their computers, and also save the instructor time by grading each exam automatically.

Introduction to Computer Graphics is designed to appeal to the creative spirit and to speak directly to the multimedia and design community. This book gives students the solid foundation necessary to becoming successful in graphic design by striking a balance between design theory and technology. With the technology growth over the years, it has been an increasing challenge to keep students focused in both areas, and this book maintains that dual focus.     - Anna Washington, M.A.T., M.Ed.
 

Cooking, Food & Wine

The Sensational Skillet Cookbook: Create Spectacular Meals With Your Electric Skillet by Wendy Louise (Champion Press Ltd.)

Wendy Louise, the author of the Complete Crockery Cookbook – Create Spectacular Meals with Your Slow Cooker, has had a life-long interest in cooking. Coming from a heritage of good cooks, she has learned from the best – the women in her family. Authoring her second cookbook, Louise has again included many family-inspired favorites, along with specialties gleaned from friends and "comfort foods" she remembers from childhood. Her recipes and wisdom have been featured in newspapers throughout the United States, and she has appeared on many radio programs from WLRQ Light Rock 99.3 in Melbourne, Florida to the K.C. Caldwell morning show in Oregon.

The Sensational Skillet Cookbook encourages readers to move beyond the ordinary with main entrees, side dishes, desserts and more – all prepared in the electric skillet. Each recipe includes a Secret for Success to expand readers’ cooking knowledge, plus informative tidbits and recipe descriptions. The book features over 180 recipes, from traditional to innovative.

Presenting real food, from real kitchens, for real families, Louise walks readers through recipes as complicated as Chicken Kiev to as simple as Lorraine's Swiss Steak, Veal Marsala to Mother's Monday Hash, Aunty Mae's Southern Fried Chicken to Vegetarian Chili, Mrs. Larson's Swedish Pancakes to Baked Apples. An extensive chapter called "Outside the Pan" offers an array of non-cook, assembled sides, salads and condiments to be prepared while dinner is cooking. The Sensational Skillet Cookbook includes a temperature chart and full glossary to maximize skillet preparations.

Louise cooks up a storm with her electric skillet; and, in The Sensational Skillet Cookbook, readers find the same quality recipes that Louise is noted for. This cookbook provides solutions for busy folks who don’t have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen.

Entertainment / Movies

Ray: A Tribute to the Movie, the Music, and the Man foreword by Taylor Hackford, preface by Jamie Foxx (Newmarket Pictorial Moviebooks Series: Newmarket Press) is a tribute hardcover gift book and full-color companion to that amazing film – the never-before-told life story of American music legend Ray Charles – directed by Taylor Hackford, starring Jamie Foxx.

Just meeting the man was life changing ... Ray Charles leaves us with so much. His fingerprints are forever a part of our culture.... I am forever his student. – Jamie Foxx, from his Preface

Having overcome the monumental obstacles he'd faced in his life, Ray Charles exuded a confidence that can only come from a self-made man. He trusted his instincts more than anyone I've ever known, and working with him was a major life experience for me ... He was the best of what America is, and it was impossible not to be inspired by him. – Director Taylor Hackford, from his Foreword

Bold in invention, unmatched in talent, human in frailty, indomitable in spirit: musical genius Charles was a true American original. Born Ray Charles Robinson into rural poverty along the Georgia/Florida border, witness to his brother's death at the age of five and blind at seven, orphaned, Charles knew adversity early and first-hand. Yet he found his redemption in music, hitting the road at a young age to sing and play piano as he struggled to formulate his signature sound.

The soulful singer exploded with worldwide fame when he pioneered a style incorporating gospel, rhythm and blues, country, orchestral, and jazz influences that would eventually be called “soul.” But, as music writer Christopher John Farley puts it, Charles defies such tidy labels: “He didn't add sex to church music – he just stopped denying it was there.” But he was more than a soul provider. Throughout his career, he explored a variety of genres, including jazz and country, imbuing each with his singular grit and charm ... Whatever the style, in his greatest performances Charles explored melancholy and then beat it back with pounding piano playing and his broad-shouldered baritone.

As he revolutionized the way people appreciated music, he simultaneously fought segregation in the very clubs that launched him and championed artists' rights within the corporate music business.

Ray features the complete screenplay illustrated throughout with movie stills, historical photos, storyboards, and commentary by friends, musicians, and historians, as well as complete cast and crew credits, and original introductions by director Hackford and actor Foxx. In addition, Ray showcases a special 16-page tribute section on Charles, created after his death, with excerpts of articles and eulogies. As realized by Hackford and filmmakers, Charles' story is ennobling, yet historically faithful, the story of a troubled, yet inspired man: a father to eleven children by various women, a heroin addict for twenty years who kicked the habit, and a universally lauded twelve-time Grammy' winner.

The book tells some great stories on Charles as well as on Foxx. For example, Producer Stuart Benjamin recalls Charles' enthusiastic dedication to the project: “We had some old songs in the movie that Ray had performed when he was starting out but he had never recorded. We were talking about perhaps bringing in a music arranger and Ray said to us, ‘Baby, you've got Ray Charles here, why would you bring in somebody else? I'll do the music for you.’ And he did.”

Another is about Foxx, a talented musician himself, having attended university on a piano scholarship, but as director Hackford remembers, to get the part he had to pass the most difficult audition of his life – in front of the master himself: “When I introduced Jamie Foxx to Ray Charles and told him that Jamie was an accomplished pianist, Ray immediately demanded that they sit down at two pianos and jam.... Jamie instantly took the bait, sitting down to play a little funk and gospel. Ray matched him for a while and then started playing Thelonius Monk ... Jamie didn't have Ray's jazz background so he was in trouble with Monk's complicated figures, and Ray didn't let up on him. He said, ‘Come on, man, it's right under your fingers, come on, man.’ The pressure was almost embarrassing ... However, Jamie didn't wilt. He stayed with it until he'd mastered Monk's intricate phrasing. At that moment, Ray jumped up and hugged himself, saying, ‘This is it! This kid can do it. He's the one.’”

By any measure, the story of Ray Charles is the quintessential American dream. Despite adversity, he rose to the pinnacle of his profession, revolutionized American music, and became the first recording artist to own his master recordings, a feat that not even Frank Sinatra was able to negotiate. Charles owned and operated a multimillion-dollar recording business and traveled millions of miles during his lifetime to perform for kings and queens around the world. When he died in the summer of 2004, he was among the most respected and revered musicians of his time.

Ray provides an unflinching portrait of Charles' musical genius as he overcomes personal demons while transforming into a legend. This is the book for anyone interested in the filmmaking process, the evolution of a great American icon, or the healing grace of music. Illustrated with 200 color movie stills, historical images, storyboards, and behind-the-scenes photos, this pictorial moviebook explores the film's fascinating and unflinching account of Ray Charles' life – the moving and ultimately uplifting story of one of this country's most beloved performers.

Health, Mind & Body / Psychology & Counseling / Parenting & Families

Children's Friendships: The Beginnings Of Intimacy by Judy Dunn, with a foreword by Jerome S. Bruner (Understanding Children's Worlds Series: Blackwell Publishing) explores the nature of young children's friendships.

Children's Friendships demonstrates in children’s voices that important relationships with other children begin very early. Judy Dunn, Professor of Developmental Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, notes that less attention has been paid to the close relationships of children within individual pairs or triads of friends than to other types of relationships. But it important to study children’s friendship because friends matter to children – we are missing a major piece of what excites, pleases, and upsets children, what is central to their lives even in the years before school, if we don't attend to what happens between children and their friends. The pleasures, but also the betrayals, the jealousies and tangled intrigues, make friendships key to the quality of children's lives. The focus of most research on children's social development until relatively recently, though, has been either on their relationships with their parents, or on their relations with the group of classmates at school – their popularity or isolation in the classroom or playground – as the major players in children's development.

According to Dunn, it is also important to study friends because young friends can be important as emotional supports. Many small children spend major parts of their days outside the family in day care or nurseries, in the company of other children. The issue of what kind of social relationships they have with these others is of increasing social significance – reflected in a recent surge of research on children in childcare settings. If we are to understand the full impact of these experiences we need to know what kinds of relationships children form with other children, and what these relationships imply developmentally.

But a close look at children in the context of their friendships does more than illuminate the early stages of an important relationship. It gives us a new window on children's cognitive and social development – their understanding of their social world – and on how their friendship experi­ences influence the development of that understanding, and vice versa.

Why should a focus on children with their friends be so revealing? Children's Friendships says it is because of the distinctive features of young children's friendships that we gain this window on what children know and understand about the social world. Children care about their friends, and they are often highly motivated to stay friends, in spite of disagreements and tensions. They want to sort out quarrels with their friends – whereas with their siblings they often don't bother or don't care (or even enjoy the power play, if they win). A friendship is often the first relationship in which children begin to care about and try to understand someone else, and to respond to the feelings, needs and troubles of another.

Another feature of friendship is that it marks the beginning of a new independence from parents. Children throughout our evolutionary history, and currently in many cultures other than those of North America and Europe, grow up not in isolated nuclear families, but within a wider world of others, including children – sisters, brothers, playmates, loose-knit gangs of children. This world of other children means opportunities for friendship, enmities, gang life, leaders and followers. It means opportunities for working out the intricate balance of power and status between people, for sharing imaginative experiences, for understanding and manipulating the feelings and ideas of others, for a range of relationships that differ greatly from those of parents-with-children.

Eavesdropping on children talking, as Dunn does in the book, also teaches us nor to be sentimental about children's friendships. The birth of intimate relationships outside the family can mean the growth of jealousy and insecurity and new experiences of rejection and loss. Understanding someone well is no guarantee of kindness and support. It can also mean a new dimension to teasing and bullying. One group of psychologists, struck by the viciousness of some of the behavior they recorded in a careful observational study of young children at school, described the classroom as more the source of criminal behavior than a nursery of morality.

Children's Friendships is firmly based in the real world of children. Dunn draws on studies of children growing up in the US, in the UK, Italy, Israel. All the quotations of children talking to their friends, or about their experiences are real children speaking. The pleasures and conflicts, excitements and difficulties that their conversations reveal illustrate the arguments of the book, which are based on systematic, quantitative studies of children with their friends and families.

To pull together the three themes of Children's Friendships:

• The first theme concerns the nature of children's developing relationships with other children, and what has been learned from a close look at what happens between children. This attention to early friendships shows us how much friends can matter to young children, that young children's friendships are in an important sense real relationships, not just the sum of two individuals' acts, and that their relationships differ from those of parents-and-children or siblings.
• The second theme is that our understanding of the nature of children's cognitive and emotional development can be illuminated by studying them within these relationships: the first intimate relationships outside the family. A close look at young friends shows us the link between caring about someone, and understanding them – a two-way connection that underlies all our important relationships, as adults as well as children. It is this combination of emotion and understanding that makes friendship a relationship of great potential influence on children's development – influence for good or for problems in adjustment. Friends can foster each other's development or get them in deep trouble. The intensity of what children can feel about their friends, coupled with their familiarity and intimacy, means that this can be a relationship of great power in influencing the development of their social understanding, their self-confidence, and their later relationships.
• The third theme, then, is that the nature of this developmental influence depends on the quality of the friendship, and that individual differences in the various dimensions of friendship are key. To assess developmental impact we need to understand how friendships differ in terms of affection and support, of intimacy and sharing secrets, of the ‘meeting of minds’ evident in connectedness of communication and play, of power dynamics and control.

Children's Friendships is based on the recent research interest in young friends, but its argument is illustrated also by drawing on the biographies and autobiographies of writers who have illuminated the part that friends played in their childhood experiences and their imaginative growth, and the power of the emotional quality of friendships in early childhood (so hard for psychologists to capture).

Friendships are formed in a particular a particular social world. Differences in time, place and culture mean that children have different opportunities to make friends; the forms and culture of friendships may well differ too. For children in the inner city ghettos, in  the rural Appalachians, and in the prep schools of middle England, the opportunities for developing close relations with other children differ. What friends do together will differ in some ways too. The significance of friendships for children's development and their well-being will differ too, with time and place. In the extreme case of the children growing up in the concentration camps of the holocaust, or the homeless children of bombed cities in the Second World War, close friendships were a crucial source of emotional support and security. For children growing up today in ordinary families, friends are less likely to be such key security figures, at least in the early years of childhood; yet the increasing number of children spending much of their early years in day care or preschool, in a world of other children rather than their close families, raises the question of what kinds of close relationships they have with these others, and what developmental impact such child-child relations may have.

The excitement, the pleasures, problems and humor, the compelling intensity of these relationships with friends (and enemies) in writers' early lives and their fiction are interwoven in Children's Friendships with the present-day examples from the children in Dunn’s research and that of others. The message is that the excitement and dramas of children's changing worlds of friends can not only amuse and move us, but greatly enlighten us about ourselves, our families and friends.

Judy Dunn has the happy knack of helping us to look afresh at the children we thought we knew – including our own ... We glimpse children at their best in this delightful book. – Professor Paul L. Harris, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Drawing on close observation of toddlers, pre­schoolers and school children, this magical book will intrigue parents and inform the practice of professionals who care for young children. – Kathy Sylva, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Oxford

Judy Dunn, one of our most astute chroniclers of children's social lives, provides a fascinating glimpse into the often neglected world of children's friendships ... Parents, as well as professionals will learn much from this timely and readable volume. – Ross D. Parke, Director, Center for Family Studies, University of California Riverside

Dunn, a leading international authority on childhood development, provides in Children's Friendships a beautifully written account of children's early friendships. Drawing on evidence from studies on both sides of the Atlantic, it considers the nature and significance of such relationships for children's development and well-being. The book concludes by drawing out the practical implications of research for parents, teachers and those who care for children, including how to manage friendships at different developmental stages, how to help children with friendship difficulties, and what to do about ‘trouble-making’ friendships and bullying.

Health, Mind & Body / Psychology & Counseling

Training Counselling Supervisors: Strategies, Methods and Techniques edited by Elizabeth L. Holloway & Michael Carroll (Counselling Supervision Series: SAGE Publications) highlights the crucial themes intrinsic to the supervision process, and offers a varied selection of methods for educating supervisors.

Elizabeth Holloway, professor at the Department of Counselling Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and  Michael Carroll, consultant to a number of organizations in private practice, both international trainers, describe how they teach supervision and outline their models for teaching in the context of their practice.

Training Counselling Supervisors covers a wide range of topics including: contracting, reflective processes, supervision in group and multicultural contexts, and evaluation. The text brings continuity across the elements addressed, and heightens awareness of educational methods. Each topic is conceptually described, theoretically discussed, and case studies and exercises are provided.

Training Counselling Supervisors is not a full curriculum in a formal training course in supervision. It focuses on educating supervisors in crucial themes at the core of the supervision process. Each of these authors uncovers one critical factor in the teaching of supervision, and they describe their teaching models within the context of their practice.

Each chapter starts with a brief description of the author's focus in their work as trainers. The topic is then discussed theoretically and described conceptually. Finally, case studies and exercises are provided. Holloway and Carroll designed this text to be one that trainers can use in the design their own teaching strategies and to stimulate their creativity.

In Chapter 1, Holloway overviews supervision training. Her Systems Approach to Supervision (SAS) model is a comprehensive view of supervision within the context of organization and relationship, emphasizing case conceptualization and strategies for supervisory intervention. Chapter 2 focuses on the tasks of supervision. Using his research, Carroll brings readers through each of the tasks of supervision, outlining how trainee supervisors can be coached in each of them. In Chapter 3, Julie Hewson looks at how supervisors can be trained in ‘contracting’ in supervision, using not just theory, but her own gift for the visual. In Chapter 4 Susan Neufeldt posits supervision as a ‘reflective’ process and analyses what that means: she provides frameworks for helping supervisors develop skills of reflection and for teaching these skills to the supervisees. In Chapter 5, Willem Lammers takes a multi-professional approach to examine team and group supervision within ever-widening dimensions. Training for multi-cultural supervision is described by Hardin Coleman in Chapter 6, illuminating the competencies needed. Maria Gilbert and Char­lotte Sills in Chapter 7 tackle how supervisors can be trained in the difficult task of evaluation, and in Chapter 8 Francesca Inskipp provides a model for educating supervisees in how to use supervision effectively. Shoshana Hellman describes in the final chapter the use of a portfolio system for supervisors that is a self-instructional and peer collaborative used with supervisors in Israel.

Intended to encourage trainers in the creative design of their own teaching strategies, Training Counselling Supervisors offers practical, accessible and informed guidance. It will be of immense value to supervisors and supervisees in training in counseling and counseling psychology and across the psychotherapies.

Health, Mind & Body / Psychology & Counseling

Pathological Gambling: Etiology, Comorbidity, and Treatment by Nancy M. Petry (American Psychological Association) provides an overview of problem and pathological gambling from a psychological perspective.

Pathological Gambling examines the prevalence and consequences of problem gambling as well as approaches to treatment. In this comprehensive book, Nancy M. Petry clarifies the current understanding of gambling as a disorder, including its levels of intensity; possible origins in biological, neurological,. developmental, and environmental spheres; and special issues surrounding populations that seem to be more susceptible to problem gambling, including youth, ethnic minorities, and those with comorbid affective disorders such as depression. Petry, professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut Health Center, reviews treatments commonly used for pathological gambling. Petry then presents her own brief cognitive-behavioral approach whose success is empirically proven in the largest known study of psychosocial treatments of problem gamblers.

In Pathological Gambling, Petry reviews theories and data regarding the causes, correlates, and treatments of disordered gambling. She describes clinical manifestations of problem and pathological gambling, and details methods for assessing and diagnosing the disorder. She also presents prevalence rates from studies conducted worldwide and investigates risk factors associated with the development of gambling disorders. One explanation is biological in nature, and thus she reviews the evidence for a genetic basis for pathological gambling. Other possibilities include developmental, cultural, psychological, and cognitive perspectives. She reviews evidence regarding a cognitive component to gambling and describes the relationship between understanding probabilities and belief in control over chance events and their association with gambling. Another explanation is related to access – the percentages of people experiencing gambling problems seem to have increased with the spread of legalized gambling. A shift in demographic characteristics among individuals developing gambling problems has paralleled this increase in gambling opportunities.

In the second half of Pathological Gambling, Petry focuses on treatment strategies. Most problem and pathological gamblers do not seek formal treatment, and many appear to recover from gambling problems on their own. She reviews these data, along with the use of more formal interventions. Controlled clinical trials evaluating treatments are sparse, but she presents both the rationale for and the outcomes of treatment studies. She reviews eight forms of treatment: (a) Gamblers Anonymous, (b) pharmacotherapies, (c) family-marital therapies, (d) psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches, (e) behavioral therapy, (f) cognitive therapy, (g) cognitive-behavioral therapy, and (h) brief and motivational approaches. Throughout Pathological Gambling, Petry presents case descriptions of gamblers to depict the issues confronted by clinicians treating this disorder.

In an area in which opinion often masquerades as fact, Petry has carefully and scientifically examined the important conceptual and clinical issues associated with disordered gambling and its consequences. This text is for every opponent and proponent of gambling and all those in between; it gives open-minded readers a new and emerging scientific literature so they can debate facts rather than fiction. Petry has provided both a cogent and a thorough text that will serve as the foundation on which many future gambling-related programs of research, prevention, and treatment will rest. It is essential reading. – Howard J. Shaffer, Associate Professor and Director, Division on Addictions, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA

One of the leading researchers in problem gambling has written a gem of a tome. There is nothing in the field that compares with this work. The book is based on solid science and is full of clinical insights. Many of the chapters provide landmark reviews of their topics. Treatment providers take notice: eight chapters in this volume focus on intervention approaches and strategies, including Petry's very promising cognitive-behavioral therapy chapter. – Ken C. Winters, Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

In Pathological Gambling, Petry reviews what we currently know about problem gambling and analyzes promising treatment approaches, making it an invaluable, comprehensive resource for both therapists and researchers in the field of pathological gambling. Pathological Gambling is designed to serve as a guide for both new and experienced clinicians who encounter individuals with gambling problems. It synthesizes the available data across a range of domains associated with psychological aspects of disordered gambling. The concepts and ideas reviewed in the book will influence a new generation of research in this field as more researchers and clinicians begin developing interests in this area.

Health, Mind & Body / Psychology & Counseling / Psychoanalysis

The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class, and Culture through a Psychoanalytic Lens by Neil Altman (Relational Perspectives Series, Volume 3: The Analytic Press, Inc., Publishers) addresses the social context of psychoanalytic work by focusing on the public clinic and its dynamics and interdisciplinary relationships as a part of the psychoanalytic field.

With a systemic perspective, author Neil Altman highlights how the dynamics of society regarding race, culture, and class, the dynamics of an inner-city public clinic, and the dynamics of a therapeutic dyad within such a clinic reflect one another. In this way, Altman, postdoctoral student at New York University, brings together, within an overarching perspective, the social and the psychological, the individual and society, bureaucracy and the clinical interaction.

The Analyst in the Inner City begins with a series of vignettes to set the stage for the discussions in later chapters. Altman’s intention is to give readers a "feel" for the inner-city public clinic, in the context of the community, the intrastaff relationships within the clinic, and the clinical work that takes place.

In Chapter 2, he presents multifaceted background material to orient readers to later discussions. This chapter begins with a history of psychoanalysis in the public sector, along with factors that have led analysts to avoid the public sector in general. Next, he presents a theoretical frame of reference that draws heavily on contemporary relational and neo-Kleinian perspectives, well suited for the work of integrating social and psychological factors in inner-city therapy. Further, a projective-introjective framework provides a model for conceptualizing the psychic functions served by categorizations based on race, culture, and social class. Finally, he gives an introduction to postmodern currents in psychoanalysis that inform his perspective.

In Chapter 3, Altman looks at race, culture, and social class in detail. His concern in this chapter is both theoretical and clinical. Theoretically, his goal is to place these social phenomena within a psychoanalytic framework. He shows how the social system and the individual psyche reflect each other. This project entails a consideration both of the ways in which social class, race, and culture imprint themselves on the individual psyche and of the ways in which psychic operations are reflected in how society is structured. He demonstrates how these social phenomena make their appearance in the clinical interaction, with examples of implications for practice. He uses a three-person psychoanalytic model, in which the third term refers to the social context in which the analytic work takes place. With this third term, one is able to take account of such factors as the social system that structures both psyches in the analytic situation and that is necessary to understand such phenomena as racial prejudice.

In Chapter 4, he applies his projective-introjective, three-person psychoanalytic model to a social issue at the core of the concerns in The Analyst in the Inner City: the private-public split in capitalist society, as reflected in the bifurcation of public from private practice in psychoanalysis. "Public" and "private" come to have psychic significance; for example, in the United States, the public sector comes to represent what is devalued: poverty, difference, strangeness, and so on. Here he uses psychoanalytic understanding to put a social phenomenon into a fresh perspective, to show how the social is inherent in the psychological and how the psychological is inherent in the social.

In Chapter 5, he turns the lens onto the public clinic, seeking to integrate the social with the psychological by considering the dynamics of a public clinic, with its interdisciplinary relationships, for example.

Finally, in Chapter 6, he offers some thoughts on the future of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis offers a humane and complex-minded response to human suffering at a time in history that is marked by increasing degrees of dehumanization and a search for "quick-fix" solutions to problems. According to Altman, the age of "managed care" threatens the survival of psychoanalysis but also makes its survival, essential as a counterforce, an alternative vision of psychological treatment. These goals are served by exposing, grappling with, and countering the elitism of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, as labor-intensive as it is, can never be undertaken with large numbers of people. This fact does not make psychoanalytic elitism inevitable; it is addressable by bringing racial, cultural, and class differences within the psychoanalytic domain and by being active in the public sector, as therapists and consultants, so as to bring the psychoanalytic vision to bear on work with people from a wider variety of backgrounds.

Altman addresses the complex social issues revolving around race, culture, and social class in inner city public clinics, arguing that social divisions reflect the splits that accompany the consolidation of an individual sense of self. He presents vignettes illustrating the work within an inner city clinic, traces the history of psychoanalysis in the public sector, and offers insights on the future of psychoanalysis in the age of managed care. – Book News, Inc.

With a candor and political sophistication rare in the profession, Neil Altman challenges analysts to face issues of race, class, gender, and community in the context of the profession's history of moral concern. He does all this and, never losing his analytic focus, provides intriguing case material that demonstrates the entanglements of politics, history, and treatment, all the while giving the reader a sense of possibility and hope in these difficult times. Altman's lively prose brings to life a recent psychoanalytic idea – that of a three-person psychology – in a way that will persuade and enlighten. It is inspiring that an analyst could write such a book at this time in our nation's history. The Analyst in the Inner City will become a classic, and deservedly so. – Philip Cushman, author, Constructing the Self, Constructing America

Acutely poised between hope and despair, this is a courageous and probing book, full of compelling clinical examples. The Analyst in the Inner City is of practical significance to the clinician working in the inner city, and at the same time, it concerns itself with what we can learn about psychoanalysis and its theory by taking analytic work into the inner city. Altman intertwines the practical with the theoretical in a way that highlights the inseparability of the two. By linking these two projects in one book, Altman offers his own source of inspiration, his own way of finding meaning in this stressful and often frustrating work at the margins of society, theory, and practice.

History / Social Sciences / African American

Rooted in Place: Family and Belonging in a Southern Black Community by William W. Falk (Rutgers University Press)

Throughout the twentieth century, millions of African Americans, many from impoverished, historically black counties, left the South to pursue what they thought would be a better life in the North. But not everyone moved away during what scholars have termed the Great Migration.

What has life been like for those who stayed? Why would they remain in a place that many outsiders see as grim, depressed, economically marginal, and where racial prejudice continues to place them at a disadvantage?

Through oral history William Falk in Rooted in Place tells the story of an extended family in the Georgia-South Carolina lowcountry. Family members talk about schooling, relatives, work, religion, race, and their love of the place where they have lived for generations. In “Colonial County” and the town of “Yvonne”, blacks historically enjoyed a numerical majority as well as deep cultural roots and longstanding webs of social connections. Falk, professor and chair of the department of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, finds that these factors more than outweigh the racism they face and the economic disadvantages they suffer.

Falk did not want to write a book just for academicians, but accessible to a general readership, in part because "the story" would intrigue them. He knew much about the huge scholarly literature on the "great migration". So, who stayed and what were their lives like in a place that so many people, including social scientists, assumed was so bad?

His plan was to pursue this question with census data. But because he also wanted to write a readable book, he thought it would be helpful to visit some historically black counties and collect people's stories about their lives there. Falk says he envisioned visiting three counties – one in the Mississippi Delta (the most widely catalogued and written about part of the Black Belt), one in the central South (running across the middle of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi), and one in the Lowcountry (the coastal marshy area of South Carolina and Georgia).

Falk simply wanted to spend a little time chatting with local people to find out what their lives had been like in this historically black place, and why, more specifically, they had never left, as so many others did. His great stroke of luck was being introduced to someone from Colonial County, an African American student at a regional university. She expressed a willingness to assist him, by introducing him to her grandparents. After several conversations with them, it was clear that her grandfather, a man called “AC”, was very knowledgeable about the county and willing to help. He represented the age group in which Falk was interested (people over sixty years old) and could introduce him to the generation who had made a choice to stay rather than leave when leaving was a very common thing to do.

Falk arrived in January 1996. Initially, he spent three months in Colonial County. Subsequently, he returned at least once a year for several years. He traveled every road, paved and unpaved; visited in people's homes; went into many of the stores, city hall, and other similar places. He read every publication he could find about the county and the region, all at the local public library. He also read the local newspaper, mostly on microfiche, back to its beginning, over one hundred years ago.

His "sample" of local people was definitely not random but, rather, pur­posive. AC introduced him to many of his relatives, including his siblings, children, and former wife. Through AC, he also got access to elected officials and others in the county. Falk spoke in passing with other people – black and white, young and old – as he made his way around the county and neighboring counties. The impressions he formed were based on all these, but mostly from time with AC's family and especially AC. His voice is heavy in Rooted in Place.

Falk asked local people what kinds of questions they would ask if they were him. He listened carefully and took good notes. He did all of his own transcribing and reviewed his notes at the end of each day. He noted the most significant things learned, and then asked, in subsequent meetings, about those things. The story told in the voices of local people. It is also told, as much as possible, exactly as it was told to Falk. Many African Americans in the Lowcountry have a pronounced dialect, called sometimes "gullah," sometimes "geechee" – he former refers most often to the dialect of South Carolina, the latter to that of Georgia. He renders it in a way that allows readers to hear what he heard, believing strongly that it is an important part of the story being told.

Falk came to the place in search of information on processes related to migration. Not only did he find myself challenged methodologically, but he also found himself pondering the utility of various sociological concepts. "Place" was something onto which he stumbled. He knew nothing about its literature until his time in Colonial County forced him to make sense out of his experience, floundering around in a new, interdisciplinary literature. In so doing, he saw "place" as a historically situated social construction. Without strict adherence to phenomenological principles, he let the "essence" of the story arise from the actors. He listened to what they told him, and from that he strung together individual stories to create a larger sense of what had been most meaningful.

Rooted in Place brings the texture of a southern family epic and the sociological imagination together with intellectual courage and intimacy. Absorbing and original. – Carol Stack, author of All Our Kin and Call to Home

Rooted in Place is highly readable. Falk depicts life in a generally overlooked place; a place (representative of all historically black counties) that has given birth to a large part of the American population; a place inhabited by Native Americans before the Pilgrims; a place so unique and so much a part of American history that it is hard to believe that it is nearly undiscovered, and little understood, by most social scientists and the general public; a place that begs for our attention even while remaining overlooked; a place (like most rural places) off the interstate and so mostly off the map for most of us. This "conversational ethnography" argues that an interconnection between race and place in the area helps explain African Americans' loyalty to it. Rooted in Place will encourage others, especially sociologists, to undertake similar ventures or, more accurately, adventures.

History / Biographies & Memoirs

And the War Came: An Accidental Memoir by David Wyatt (Terrace Books / University of Wisconsin Press)

On the day of the terrorist attacks, a man begins writing down things said by his family and friends. The trauma appears to have marooned diarist David Wyatt, professor of English at the University of Maryland, in a shell-shocked present tense. But as he experiences all of the emotions of that fall, he is visited by deep memories that transform his daily journal-keeping into an "accidental memoir." So the narrative, And the War Came, reaches a surprising and moving conclusion on Thanksgiving Day.

Juggling the roles of English professor, restaurant owner, husband, father, son, and friend, Wyatt, finds sustenance at the core of ordinary American life, resources at once so available and so elusive.

David Wyatt focuses our attention on the ripple effects of a stone tossed into a pond – a private pond, and a public pond, as well: as the circles widen and disappear, we remember and re-imagine the initial tossing of the stone, and re-examine our own lives in the context of the choices we’ve made, and the decisions that have been made for us, individually and as a nation. – Ann Beattie, author of The Doctor's House and Perfect Recall

Instinctively finding moments in which people are revealed for their true essence, Wyatt places the September 11 events on a human, domestic level, and shows how they touch everybody's lives. – Brian Bouldrey, author of The Boom Economy

This is truly astonishing storytelling, an unprecedented combination of autobiography and reflective essay, written with a startling clarity that evokes the vivid immediacy in our lives. There will be much journalism and historical commentary about September 11 – but none can possibly match the emotional dimensions, the bewildered humanity, the day-to-day feel of things, how our inner lives are suddenly made turbulent, how we seek solace in the familiars of love and family. And the War Came is humbling, sad, and inspiring. I am tremendously grateful for this marvelous book. – Howard Norman, author of The Bird Artist and The Haunting of L

Passionate about people, books, food, and landscapes present and lost – and absolutely unheroic – the voices summoned in And the War Came counter the sanctimonious and the sentimental. Wyatt’s elegantly understated memoir reveals how the events of September 11 affected ordinary people and presents this anthology of thoughts, feelings, and interactions in a frank and immediate voice.

History / Military

Fortress America: The Forts That Defended America 1600 to the Present by J. E. Kaufmann & H. W. Kaufmann, illustrated by Tomasz Idzikowski (Da Capo Press)

From the earliest colonial settlements to recent Cold War bunkers, thousands of forts and fortress structures have been built on the North American continent.

As told in Fortress America by J.E. and H.W. Kaufmann, with the help of technical illustrator Tomasz Idzikowski, seacoast forts were the primary means of strategic defense for the United States from the 1790s until World War II. Almost every seaport on both coasts had at least one of these buildings to protect it at one time or another. Early inland forts were constructed to defend against attacks by Native Americans, as well as by the English, French, and Spanish. In the eighteenth century, the strategy and outcome of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution revolved around these very fortifications.

During the nineteenth century, hundreds of defensive structures were built, some to protect coastal and inland waterways, others to garrison troopers on the Great Plains. In fact, so many sprang up during the century that today there are few places in the continental United States more than fifty miles from a fort.

The latter half of the twentieth century ushered in a decidedly new type of fortification – the subterranean concrete bunker equipped with modern electronic equipment. These defenses helped protect the U.S. from hostile missile attack and at the same time guarded the country's own mobile weapons of mass destruction.
Despite their prominence and importance, there has never been – until now – a single volume devoted to American forts and homeland fortification defense. As in their previous and very successful books, military experts Kaufmann and Kaufmann include never-before-published photographs, extraordinary drawings, cut-aways, and diagrams to illustrate Fortress America. The book is a comprehensive account of North American fortifications and defense structures from colonial times to the twentieth century, supplemented by plenty of visual support materials.

History / U.S.

Representative Americans: Populists And Progressives by Norman K. Risjord (Representative Americans Series: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.) gives readers a glimpse into the tumultuous turn of the twentieth century.

Norman K. Risjord brings together brief biographies to explore the political, social, and cultural dimensions of the period from 1890 to 1920. Populists And Progressives begins by personifying the rise of big business and the early struggle between capital and labor with profiles of John D. Rockefeller and Mother Jones. Risjord, professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and general editor of the American Profiles series, compares William Graham Sumner and Lester Frank Ward to illuminate the intellectual debate over social Darwinism. The Great Plains' form of Populism comes to life through the story of William Pfeffer, while Louis Brandeis represents the Wilsonian variety of Progressivism. A portrait of Carrie Chapman Catt provides a window into the women's suffrage movement, and sketches of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Richard Harding Davis, and John Hay explore the shaping of American policies and politics. Finally, John Muir, W. E. B. DuBois, and Margaret Sanger represent individuals ahead of their time and mark the transition from Progressivism to the liberal thought of the latter half of the twentieth century.

Like the others in the series, Populists And Progressives focuses on a particular time period, utilizing the life stories of individuals to explore the political, social, and cultural dimensions of that era. This volume treats people whose principal contributions fell in the period roughly from 1880 to 1920. The dates are necessarily inexact; three of the individuals studied, Carrie Catt, W. E. B. DuBois, and Margaret Sanger, lived and worked un­til mid-century.

The selections are not ‘representative’ in the sense of average or common. Instead, they are chosen to illuminate and personify historical developments.

Norman K. Risjord's volume succeeds well in illustrating the importance of the era of Populists and Progressives. His approach is through biographies of important and interesting figures, but the context he develops for each figure illuminates all the major issues and controversies of the period. Highly readable, it will serve well in courses within the period as well as in the American survey. – Robert F. Himmelberg, Fordham University

Populists And Progressives, like others in the series of Representative Americans, makes history human; it puts some tissue on the skeletal framework of names and dates. By using a biographical approach, Risjord makes the past more concrete and vivid to recover a heritage that today's readers can feel and experience. The book offers a fascinating glimpse into life at the turn of the twentieth century.

Home & Garden / Gardening & Horticulture

Understanding Orchids: An Uncomplicated Guide to Growing the World's Most Exotic Plants by William Cullina (Houghton Mifflin)

Orchids are the largest family of plants in the world. With 30,000 known species, readers could acquire a different orchid every day for eighty years and still not grow them all. With improved tissue-culture techniques making orchids more affordable, and the Internet making them readily available to consumers, growing orchids is more popular than ever.

William Cullina's widely acclaimed books Wildflowers and Native Trees, Shrubs, and Vines firmly established him as a gardening authority whose knowledge and style make him a valuable friend to beginners, experienced gardeners, and experts alike. With Understanding Orchids, Cullina returns to his first horticultural love with a comprehensive guide to growing these popular yet mysterious plants. Cullina has been passionate about orchids since he was a child – at one point he had a nursery of a thousand miniature orchids, a number of them collected on trips to South America.

In his easy-to-understand style, Cullina, the nursery director and propagator for the New England Wild Flower Society, advises readers on how to choose the right orchids for each level of gardening experience, and which species are best suited to grow on windowsills, under indoor lights, or in a greenhouse. Using Understanding Orchids readers can find the orchids that are right for them, and they can pinpoint the species within a particular genus that are the best ones to start with. Once readers select their orchid, Cullina's guide explains what to do to keep it alive and healthy. Featuring more than two hundred color photographs, Understanding Orchids covers everything readers need to know to grow orchids successfully.

Understanding Orchids reflects the same blend of clarity, humor, direct experience, and judiciously expressed opinion that has made Cullina's first two books so popular with gardeners. – Wayne Winterrowd, author of A Year at North Hill

Cullina ... is extremely well versed in his subject and a skilled writer. His lively text, with its clear instructions will make orchid growing as irresistible to readers as it is to Cullina. – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

With more than three hundred full-color photographs, a detailed encyclopedia of more than seventy-five orchid genera, and Cullina's expert personal tips, Understanding Orchids is the must-have guide for anyone who has ever wanted to grow these sometimes intimidating exotics. For beginners, experienced growers, and experts, this is the book orchid fans have been waiting for.

Home & Garden / Crafts & Hobbies

Exquisite Beaded Jewelry: Use Basic Techniques to Create Distinctive Designs by Lynda S. Musante (Krause Publications) explores a wide range of jewelry-making techniques and builds readers’ skills.

Exquisite Beaded Jewelry contains 30 projects for creating gorgeous earrings, necklaces, bracelets, pins and more, ranging in difficulty from beginner to advanced. The book prepares beginners by offering plenty of food for thought before actually starting the beading process. Explained are bead sizes, shapes and types, tools, wire types, clasps, earring findings and how to create findings, select wire and getting started stringing. Each project is designed to challenge the crafter while teaching new techniques and encouraging creativity. Clear, step-by-step instructions for several bead stitches, including brick and basic, double and tubular peyote stitches. She also provides projects for lariats and cuff and amulet bag necklaces along with fantastic photos and illustrations guide the reader through each project.

Author Lynda Musante shares her ten years of experience to challenge readers to develop their skills as a bead artist. She encourages readers to stretch their imagination in their quest for distinctive jewelry to wear or give as gifts.

The book features

• 30 projects and variations

• Detailed step-by-step instructions

• Helpful how-to photographs

• Techniques for simple stringing, bead stitching, and wirework

• Gallery of inspirational jewelry by top bead artists

A resource guide in the latter part of Exquisite Beaded Jewelry includes information on where to find crafting materials, books, magazines and classes on beading.

The variety of projects included demonstrate the versatility of beading uses, and readers will be inspired by the photo gallery of top beaders’ projects – this is a fantastic guide to creating jewelry with beads, which will intrigue crafters of all skill levels. The finished beaded pieces are nothing short of exquisite.

Home & Garden / Pets / Biological Sciences / Animals

The Whole Hog: Exploring the Extraordinary Potential of Pigs by Lyall Watson (Smithsonian Books)

Not all animals are created equal.

For a start, pigs have it, sheep don't; that is, that special quality of intelligence, a sense of play – creatures more like us than any other animal. Pigs are engaging and mysterious, gregarious and misunderstood from the moment humans invited them into the farmyard. Their basic design has changed very little during the past 40 million years, but something interesting has happened inside their heads, something that sets them apart from all other hoofed animals. They have captured the hearts, minds, and stomachs of almost every culture on earth and taken center stage in art, literature, and religion. Fans of Babe, and readers of Charlotte's Web or Animal Farm know the central place pigs have taken in our lives since long before Toby the Sapient Pig wrote his autobiography.

In The Whole Hog, best-selling naturalist Lyall Watson explores the stunning results of more than 40 million years of porcine evolution and embeds himself in pig culture – the amiable, accommodating societies that pigs form among themselves. Within each of this book's four sections, he studies pigs both ordinary and extraordinary, from the boars of Berkshire to the Babirusa of Indonesia. In bush or barnyard, the variety of pig behavior in every species confirms a surprising intelligence.

Watson, who grew up in Africa with a pet warthog and holds degrees in geology, botany, zoology, and anthropology, suggests that the curiosity and easy company of pigs present a real challenge to the status dogs now enjoy as "man's best friends." He wallows in pig lore both sacred and secular, from Celtic boar cults to surgeons working on the frontiers of transplant technology. He follows pig tracks through several continents, encountering truffle hunters and head hunters, pig stickers and pig herders, pet swine and students of animal behavior. His wide experience contributes to a new awareness of the role that pigs have played in human and natural history.

The Whole Hog surveys the world's pigs, looking at all the evidence and concludes that, when it comes to intelligence and nascent consciousness, pigs should be seen as worthy members of that select company that includes elephants, dolphins, and the great apes.

Anthropology, biology, geography, psychology are all here in a clearly written, amiable text peppered with trivia tidbits (Josephine Baker used perfumed dancing pigs in her stage act) and lots of photos. Even those who read but a handful of these pages will find their opinion of pigs much rosier. – Publishers Weekly 

After reading Lyall Watson's splendid celebration of the pig, if anyone calls me a swine I shall take it as a compliment. – Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape

Pig lovers, natural historians, and aficionados of informative and funny literature will appreciate this scholarly but never pedantic celebration of pigs worldwide. This very accessible work treats pigs from classical literature to the contemporary classic Miss Piggy. Covering all species of pigs, he writes with affection and respect about the latest research into animal consciousness. – Don Wilson, editor of Mammal Species of the World

The Whole Hog is a lyrical, lively natural history and illustrated guide to the wonderful world of...pigs. Watson takes a delightful look at the occasionally amusing, often instructive, and completely admirable qualities of pigs in this indispensable book, not only for everyone interested in natural history but also for fans of Piglet, gourmands, folklorists, and, of course, believers in meaningful interspecies communication. The book is filled with both realistic and fanciful illustrations of pigs that illuminate everything readers could possibly want to know about the extraordinary family of Suids, from their origins and evolution, rich social lives, and combat strategies to their special relationship with truffles, popularity in art and literature, and increasing use today in cutting-edge medical transplant technology.

Home & Garden / Professional & Technical / Architecture

Built by Hand: Vernacular Buildings Around the World by Bill Steen, Athena Steen, & Eiko Komatsu, with photography by Yoshio Komatsu (Gibbs Smith, Publisher) is a celebration of what is so uniquely diverse and yet similar in the buildings of different cultures around the world. The book is the most extensive documentation ever published of traditional ("vernacular") buildings.

Leaving modern architecture and its conventions far behind, Japanese photographer Yoshio Komatsu and his wife Eiko, have traveled to some of the remotest regions on earth, compiling a photographic collection of vernacular or indigenous buildings. The text is a combined effort of Yoshio's wife Eiko, who is his regular travel/work partner, and Athena and Bill Steen, who are active in community building programs that teach low-income families how to build their own shelters, and known for their efforts to incorporate artistic techniques based on local and natural materials into the world of modern construction.
Beginning with the most basic ways that human beings have sought shelter – beneath the trees and stars, under the protection of a rock cliff or cave – Built by Hand traces the transformation of materials such as earth, stone, wood or bamboo into shelters that are both stationary and moveable. It tells the story of a disappearing world of buildings that have been constructed by ordinary people who, as builders and homesteaders, have given artistic, modest and sensible form to their daily needs and dreams. With examples from nearly every continent, sometimes accidental, often asymmetrical, and utilizing materials that are naturally close at hand, these buildings with their molded curves and softened lines convey a beauty that is both personal and human. Quietly and almost without notice, they outwit the might of modern machinery with simple tools and materials that welcome, encourage and amplify use of the human hand.

The final chapter takes a look at the need for a modern vernacular, not the type that seeks to duplicate and imitate the examples in this book, but rather one that is inspired by finding a responsive and sensitive balance between the know-how and wisdom of the past with that which is sustainable and modern.

[Built by Hand] is the most comprehensive and groundbreaking documentation of hand-made architecture ever published. – Prarie Avenue Bookshop
more than just a collection of amazing photos – The Last Straw Journal

This stunning and amazing collection of photographs by Japanese photographer Yoshio Komatsu celebrates traditional/vernacular architecture around the world. Built by Hand offers insights into the world of vernacular building, along with potential solutions to many of the problems that plague modern architecture. It is a must-have collection that preserves and documents the rich cultural past of each structure and its community, and offers inspiration for those looking to build in a way that is motivated by something larger than speed, efficiency, and economic profit.

Literature & Fiction / Historical

The Sins Of the Father: A Romance Of the South by Thomas Dixon, with an introduction by Steven Weisenburger (University of Kentucky Press)

To a twenty-first century audience, Thomas Dixon is anathema in conversations about race, feminism, and economic policy. But in the early part of the twentieth century, Dixon had the distinction of being one of the most popular writers in America. Born in North Carolina, Dixon was the author of twenty-eight novels including The Clansman (1905), which ultimately became the basis for D. W. Griffith's groundbreaking 1915 feature film The Birth of a Nation, and the newly reissued The Sins Of the Father (1912). Inspired by what he called "the Negro problem," Dixon set out to write what he deemed "accurate" sequels to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).
It was The Sins Of the Father that Dixon regarded as the most aesthetically satisfying child of his Ku Klux Klan saga. In this novel he telescopes the trilogy’s sprawling historical canvas into one tightly scripted narrative. A bestseller in 1912, the novel’s themes of interracial sex and incest outraged many upon its publication.

Nearly a century later, Dixon’s work is undergoing a critical reevaluation.

The Sins Of the Father revolves around themes of interracial sex that cut daringly close to the author's own family history. At the center of The Sins Of the Father is war-torn Confederate veteran Dan Norton, a newspaper editor and North Carolina KKK leader with an invalid wife. To manage his household, Norton hires an octoroon nurse named Cleo, who is ultimately characterized as a 'racialized' temptress. Major Norton is drawn to Cleo, and the novel explores the consequences of their relationship.

Steven Weisenburger's introduction provides valuable insight into the historical issues treated in the text and locates Dixon's place in the traditions of the American literary canon. Additionally, Weisenburger, Mossiker Chair in Humanities at Southern Methodist University, examines the factors that helped shape Dixon's ideologies and provides analysis into the historical ramifications of the controversial Southern writer.

Encapsulating the historical breadth and thematic depth of Dixon's earlier novels but with a notable twist on the trilogy's radical sexual politics, The Sins Of the Father is a startling look at the politics and history of race formation in twentieth-century America. The book stands firmly in the tradition of American novels such as Lydia Maria Child's A Romance of the Republic (1867), Pauline Hopkins' Of One Blood (1902), and William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (1936) that explore the historically charged issues of miscegenation and incest.

In addition, Dixon's complex social and political views have led to a recent resurgence in historical and cultural scholarship examining his work. A number of new books attempt to locate the controversial writer's place in American thought, including American Racist: The Life and Films of Thomas Dixon (Kentucky, 2004); America's Culture of Terrorism: Violence, Capitalism, and the Written Word (North Carolina, 2003); and Race, Rape, and Lynching: The Red Record of American Literature, 1890-1912 (Oxford, 1996). These books not only examine Dixon as a "racist," but they also explore new interpretations of Dixon, such as his relationship to terrorist practices.

Literature & Fiction

Please Don't Come Back from the Moon by Dean Bakopoulos (Harcourt)

The summer Michael Smolij turns sixteen, his father suddenly disappears. One by one, other fathers in his Detroit neighborhood follow suit, vanishing from their families, homes, and blue collar jobs for destinations unknown. One man props open the door to his shoe store and leaves a note. "I'm going to the moon," it reads. "I took the cash."

In this debut novel, author Dean Bakopoulos, a former bookseller, offers a portrait, equally heartbreaking and humorous, of one working-class neighborhood buffeted by the harsh reality of the unfulfilled American dream.

In Please Don't Come Back from the Moon, the left-behind families strive for a sense of normalcy in a world turned upside down. The wives drink, brawl, and sleep around, gradually settling down to make new lives, while the sons grow into a manhood for which they have no example. Unable to leave the neighborhood their fathers abandoned, Michael and his friends stumble through their twenties and into their uneasily settled thirties, when the restlessness of the fathers blooms in them, threatening to carry them away.

A beautifully smart, comic, and moving narrative about the fathers who disappear and the sons who take their place, Please Don't Come Back from the Moon is somehow both realistic and visionary ... This is a wonderful book. – Charles Baxter, author of The Feast of Love

Families, heartbreak, political and social comedy – there is little that Dean Bakopoulos doesn't grasp in an articulate, wittily per­ceptive, and soulful way, before he hands it back to the reader as literary art. Please Don't Come Back from the Moon is an original and brilliant first work of fiction. – Lorrie Moore, author of Birds of America

Haunting, sorrowful, and full of humanity, this beautiful novel is an elegy to loss itself. It will stay with me for a long time. – Ann Packer, author of The Dive fom Clausen’s Pier

Bakopoulos doesn't make a single wrong move, seamlessly integrating the magic realism elements into the rest. A dazzling debut. .. – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Part fable and part gritty realist chronicle ... [a] gentle and moving tale. – Publishers Weekly

Please Don't Come Back from the Moon is an extraordinary novel, both a gritty tale of second-generation Americans and an evocative story of restrained longing. This is a haunting, unforgettable debut novel for anyone who has ever been left behind. It signals a bright new voice in contemporary fiction.

Literature & Fiction / Drama

Colombian Theatre in the Vortex: Seven Plays edited by Judith A. Weiss, with an introductory essay by Maria Mercedes Jaramillo (Bucknell University Press)

The plays in this collection date from 1966 through 1997.

The plays in Colombian Theatre in the Vortex are chronicles of three decades of social and political turmoil, even disintegration, in a nation marked by violence, paradoxes, and hyperbole, a country both blessed and cursed by its wealth of natural resources, its culture, and its strategic location in the western hemisphere. According to Judith A. Weiss, Professor of Hispanic Studies at Mount Allison University in Canada, and director of English-language productions of plays from the Hispanic repertoire, the seven plays, selected from among the most significant works of the modern Colombian theatre, reveal the historical, economic, and social roots of Colombia's tragic circumstances. The works offer the national perspective and the sophistication of widely traveled playwrights of international renown, adding the depth of historical experience to complement the flood of information from official sources and foreign media. They are vehicles of critical analysis for making sense of both the causes and the consequences of the violence, as they examine the role of the army, the roots of the drug wars, the situation of women and victims of conflict, and the poisoning of a common ethos.

Translations of the following seven plays are included in Colombian Theatre in the Vortex: Soldiers, by Carlos Jose Reyes et al.: Old Baldy, by Jairo Anibal Nino; Lucky Strike, by Santiago Garcia: Roadhouse, by the Teatro La Candelaria (collectively); Pilot Project, by Enrique Buenaventura; Femina Ludens, by Nohora Ayala et al.; and The Orgy, by Enrique Buenaventura.

Colombian Theatre in the Vortex is a collection offering a rare opportunity to hear the voices of Colombians whose vision and analysis of their situation rarely reach the English-speaking world. The personal narratives and social types contained in these works are both unique and universal: the fictional characters confront life-and-death issues that have plagued Colombian society throughout its history but they also echo the stories of other regions of the world. The translations and introductory notes make the works and their subjects equally accessible for staging in the theatre and for reading and discussion by groups interested in Latin American Studies.

Outdoors & Nature / Professional & Technical / Conservation

People and Predators: From Conflict to Coexistence edited by Nina Fascione, Aimee Delach, & Martin Smith, with a foreword by James A. Estes (Island Press)

Carnivores provide innumerable ecological benefits and play a unique role in preserving and maintaining ecosystem services and function, but at the same time they create serious problems for human populations. A key question for conservation biologists and wildlife managers is how to manage the world's carnivore populations to conserve this important natural resource while mitigating harmful impacts on humans.

In People and Predators, leading scientists and researchers offer case studies of human-carnivore conflicts in a variety of landscapes, rural, urban, and political. Based on the conference 'Carnivores 2002: From the Mountains to the Sea' in Monterey, California with more than 800 scientists, activists, and educators, the book covers a diverse range of taxa, geographic regions, and conflict scenarios. Put together by the conference’s hosts, Defenders of Wildlife, including Nina Fascione, vice president; Aimee Delach, program associate, and Martin E. Smith was until 2003 a carnivore biologist, each chapter deals with a specific facet of human-carnivore interactions. Chapters provide background on particular problems and describe how challenges have been met or what research or tools are still needed to resolve the conflicts.

The authors chose to focus on conflicts between carnivores and humans: the causes, possible solutions, and the relevance of conflict and resolution to the successful persistence of carnivore populations. Finding ways to resolve issues that occur when humans and carnivores overlap in habit and habitat has been a critical need in the recovery and conservation of wolves, bears, otters, and other species.

Throughout the centuries, predators have always held a unique place in the human psyche. Images of carnivores are diverse, but whether the emotions are positive or negative, carnivores fill our imagination in ways that are larger than life. For some people, carnivores elicit fears of child-snatching, bloodthirsty killers; others see heroic images used as symbols of cultural traditions, emblems in sport, and powerful automobiles. Carnivores also play a unique role in our ecosystems, serving as keystone species that help regulate the environment around them in beneficial ways. Yet predators can have more tangible, sometimes detrimental, impacts on humans. Wolves (Canis lupus) and grizzly bears (Ursus arctos), for example, do occasionally kill livestock, and grizzly bears and mountain lions (Puma concolor) have injured and killed humans in North America. Urban carnivores such as raccoons (Procyon lotor) can be considered a nuisance or transmit disease. So a basic question remains: How do we manage the world's carnivore populations to conserve this important natural resource while mitigating any harmful impacts?

People and Predators examines these complex human-carnivore relationships and investigates how humans can work to preserve this group of animals while protecting human lives and livelihoods. The key question facing wildlife managers and legislators is how to manage rare, as well as common, carnivores while addressing the needs of both predators and people. The key questions facing society are whether we will make room for predators and whether we will tolerate them. The dilemmas can be classified generally as "ways in which predators threaten humans and our livelihoods" and "ways in which hu­mans threaten predators and their livelihoods."

Another way to examine the issue is through the various landscapes in which we coexist with predators. People and Predators, divides these landscapes into rural, developed, and political. The three chapters in Part 1, "Coexistence in Rural Landscapes," discuss the challenges of maintaining predator populations in rural areas. Through case studies from the Great Lakes, the northern Rockies, and western Canada the authors ascertain the damage large carnivores can inflict on farming and ranching interests by preying on livestock and propose solutions to predation problems through innovative preventative technologies and livestock management practices that reduce, and in some cases help eliminate, livestock depredation.

Part 2, "Coexistence in Developed Landscapes," examines how the human-carnivore relationship changes as the landscape becomes more developed. In these landscapes, the conflicts are diverse and include problems caused by predators, as well as problems caused by humans. The first obvious challenge in a developed landscape is maintaining enough habitat to support viable predator populations. However, many carnivores can survive in developed landscapes, and residing in such close quarters to humans can provide for a wide variety of conflicts. The authors examine such issues as how humans can share the landscape with mid-sized terrestrial carnivores and urban birds of prey; how human-introduced invasive species can negatively impact native carnivores; how designing wildlife corridors can greatly reduce the negative impacts of habitat fragmentation; and how we can conserve declining species despite human impacts.

Part 3, "Coexistence in Political Landscapes," offers insight into some of the sociopolitical factors impacting carnivore conservation. The challenges faced in the political, legal, and economic arenas may be the toughest to overcome. The four chapters in this final section provide case studies of management challenges for wolves and mountain lions, and suggest recipes for solutions.

Clearly, more research and discussion are necessary for finding additional solutions to these global, complex challenges. In addition to funds, solving these issues will require all-inclusive stakeholder input, dissemination of research findings through education and outreach, and constant evaluation of our ethical responsibilities. Because technology continues to improve and new technologies are continually developed, there will always be a need to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of new tools for managing large predators. Additionally, cultural values and ethics are constantly changing, triggering a need to frequently examine our goals and desires for conserving carnivores.

Though they are complex and often a management challenge, carnivores serve a key role in North American ecosystems and cultural heritage, and both humans and predators deserve to share our continent's wildlands, as well as our rural farmlands and urban parks.

The editors of People and Predators have carefully selected case studies that describe the conflicts between carnivores and humans in a variety of environmental settings. Reading these chapters provides a broad knowledge of one of the most difficult conservation issues we face, and leaves readers with many new ideas about how to advance toward ecological and political solutions to the carnivore-human conflict. – Michael L. Morrison, Great Basin Institute, University of Nevada, Reno, and author of Wildlife Restoration

For many years, conservationists worldwide have maintained that the future of large carnivores in an increasingly human-dominated world depends largely on tolerance informed by science-based management. Paradoxically, those predators once regarded as threats to our survival are now a test of how likely we are to achieve sustainability and coexistence with the natural elements that sustain us. People and Predators cogently and unabashedly addresses that challenge in an important and timely series of instructive chapters by scientists, activists, and educators. I am optimistic that this unusually broad-minded and collaborative effort by improbable colleagues is symbolic of society's increased understanding and acceptance of large predators. – Paul C. Paquet, faculty of environmental design, University of Calgary, and World Wildlife Fund-Canada

People and Predators will helps readers to better understand issues of carnivore conservation in the 21st century, and provides concrete, practical tools for resolving many of the problems that stand between us and a future in which carnivores fulfill their historic ecological roles. The volume promotes a continuing discussion between wildlife professionals and the interested public.

Philosophy / Religion & Spirituality

The Value Of Solitude: The Ethics And Spirituality Of Aloneness In Autobiography by John D. Barbour (Studies in Religion and Culture Series: University of Virginia Press)

Most people feel ambivalent about solitude, both loving and fearing it depending on how they experience being alone at certain points in their lives. Whether encountered through physical distance or mental disengagement, solitude has historically provoked disparate reactions amongst those who have written about it.

In The Value Of Solitude, John Barbour explores some of the ways in which experiences of solitude, both positive and negative, have been interpreted as religiously significant. Barbour, Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College, also shows how solitude can raise ethical questions as writers evaluate the virtues and dangers of aloneness and consider how social interaction and withdrawal can most meaningfully be combined in a life.

Barbour's work differs from previous books about solitude in two ways: it links solitude with ethics and spirituality, and it approaches solitude by way of autobiography. Barbour ranges from the early Christian and medieval periods to the twentieth century in examining the varieties of solitary experience of writers such as Augustine, Petrarch, Montaigne, Gibbon, Rousseau, Thoreau, Thomas Merton, and Paul Auster. For many authors, the process of writing an autobiography is itself conceived of as a form of solitude, a detachment from others in order to discover or create a new sense of personal identity. Solitude helps these authors to reorient their lives according to their moral ideals and spiritual aspirations.

This is a powerful, comprehensive, and highly original book, impressive in terms of both its breadth and its depth of insight.... The Value Of Solitude is a work of mature scholarship and probing critical reflection. – Eugene Stelzig, SUNY at Geuesco, author of The Romantic Subject in Autobiography

The Value Of Solitude both traces the persistence and vitality of the theme of solitude in autobiography and shows how the literary form and structure of autobiography are shaped by ethical and religious reflection on aloneness. The work will appeal to scholars in the fields of religious studies and theology, to literary critics and specialists in autobiography, and to readers interested in the experience of solitude and its moral and spiritual significance.

Politics / Civil Liberties

The Open Society Paradox: Why the Twenty-first Century Calls for More Openness – Not Less by Dennis Bailey (Brassey’s)

• How do we ensure security and, at the same time, safeguard civil liberties?

• Has the institution of privacy put America at risk for another terrorist attack?

• Has the government's desire for secrecy undermined the war against terrorism?

Timed to coincide with the congressional debate over intelligence reform and the renewal of the Patriot Act, The Open Society Paradox challenges the conventional wisdom on both sides – leaders who want unlimited authority and advocates who would sacrifice security for individual privacy.

Uniquely qualified to address these issues, Dennis Bailey, information technology consultant, argues that the solution is not to create a police state that restricts liberties but, paradoxically, to embrace greater openness. Through new technologies that engender transparency, including secure identification, biometrics, facial recognition, and data mining, society can remove the anonymity of the ill-intentioned while revitalizing the notions of trust and accountability and enhancing freedom. Bailey, who helps the State Department manage private personnel data, explores the impact of greater transparency on our lives, our relationships, and our liberties.

A magnificent addition to the ongoing discussion about the proper balance between privacy and transparency. Bailey’s comprehensive and thoughtful review of current practices and his provocative proposals for the future are sure to stir debate. This book should be in the library of everyone concerned with civil liberties and the post-9/11 age. – Paul Rosenzweig, Senior Legal Research Fellow, The Heritage Foundation

Dennis Bailey's book offers a truly original approach to our thinking about the relationship between the society and the individual in an age of rapidly expanding technological surveillance. The book opens new vistas, and is thought provoking even for those who have long inhabited the many fields of study that the book encompasses. – Amitai Etzioni, author of Limits of Privacy

Dennis Bailey’s analysis of privacy and society is comprehensive, lively and persuasive. Whether you are a citizen concerned about freedom or a seasoned privacy advocate, buy this book. The dialogue it offers concerning liberty and technology in the post-9/11 world is important and engaging. – Sonia Arrison, Director of Technology Studies, Pacific Research Institute

The Open Society Paradox is a brave exploration of how to realign our traditional assumptions about privacy with a twenty-first-century concept of an open society. It offers a provocative, timely, and original alternative, suggesting that while the very openness of American society has left the United States vulnerable to today's threats, only more transparency will make the country safer and enhance its citizens' freedom and mobility.

Politics

Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court's Wittiest, Most Outspoken Justice by Kevin A. Ring (Regnery)

Since his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1986, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia has been described by some as colorful or tenacious and by others and visionary. He is perhaps the best-known justice on the Supreme Court today and certainly the most controversial. Yet most Americans have probably not read even one of his several hundred Supreme Court opinions. In Scalia Dissents, Kevin Ring, former counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Constitution Subcommittee, a self-proclaimed "Scalia expert", lets Justice Scalia speak for himself. Ring examines the most important constitutional issues of our time while showcasing the Court's most controversial Justice, and provides a window into an extraordinary legal mind at work. Ring provides the quotable Justice's opinions on issues ranging from abortion to the death penalty, democracy to free speech, religion to homosexuality, revealing his philosophy.

This volume showcases Scalia’s take on many of today’s most contentious constitutional debates, including:

• Life and Death – "It would not make much sense to say that one may not kill oneself by walking into the sea but may sit on the beach until submerged by the incoming tide."
• The Supreme Court – "This Court seems incapable of admitting that some matters – any matters – are none of its business.
• "Affirmative Action – "In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American."
• Religious Freedom – "A priest has as much liberty to proselytize as a patriot."
• Abortion – "It thus appears the mansion of constitutionalized abortion law, constructed overnight in Roe v. Wade, must be disassembled doorjamb by doorjamb…"

Justice Scalia's jurisprudence is the clearest articulation of the constitutional duty, each judge undertakes, to uphold and defend that sacred document, not their own trendy read on it. We are indebted to Kevin Ring for putting these splendid passages of what the law is, and should be, in easily usable and organized form. This is a very important book. – Loren Smith, Senior Judge, United States Court of Federal Claims

Antonin Scalia is a man of clear, powerful, and frequently witty words. So, too, is Kevin Ring as he conducts readers on an enlightening and entertaining tour of Scalia's most compelling opinions on the United States Supreme Court. – Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor, Human Events

Scalia Dissents contains over a dozen of the justice’s most compelling, accessible and controversial opinions. Ring also provides helpful background on the opinions and a primer on Justice Scalia’s judicial philosophy. This is the perfect gift for that conservative friend who loves scintillating prose on the most important constitutional issues of our time.

Politics / Economics

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.) reveals a game that taken on new dimensions in an era of globalization.

Economic hit men are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as Empire but one that has taken on terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. – John Perkins

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a story of international political intrigue at the highest levels. For over a decade Perkins traveled the world – Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Columbia, Saudi Arabia, Iran – and worked with men like Panamanian president Omar Torrijos, who became a personal friend. In 1974, he helped to implement a secret scheme that funneled billions of Saudi petrodollars back into the U. S. economy, and that further cemented the intimate relationship between the Islamic fundamentalist House of Saud and a succession of American administrations.

Perkins should know about economic hit men – he was covertly recruited by the U.S. National Security Agency to be one. For years, he worked for an international consulting firm where his job was to convince underdeveloped countries to accept enormous loans, larger than what was really needed, for infrastructure development – and to make sure that the development projects were then contracted to U. S. multinationals; most of this money ended up at Halliburton, Bechtel, Brown and Root, and other United States engineering and construction companies. Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the American government and the international aid agencies allied with it were able, by dictating repayment terms, to essentially control their economies. It was not unlike the way a loan shark operates.
Perkins is founder and president of the Dream Change Coalition, which works closely with Amazonian and other indigenous people to help preserve their environments and cultures, and previously he was founder and CEO of Independent Power Systems, an alternative energy provider.

John Perkins has written a book that shakes one's confidence in the ethics of the prevailing economic system. – Jim Garrison, author, America As Empire, President of the State of the World Forum
Perkins narrates his moral awakening to break free from the corrupt system of global domination he himself helped to create. – Michael Brownstein, author of World on Fire
This book is Perkins' story, that through necessity and courage offers us a way back, beyond salvation, to human justice. – Gary Margolis, Director, Center for Counseling and Human Relations, Associate Professor of English, Middlebury College, author, Fire in the Orchard and Falling Awake
Must reading for those who know another world is possible! – Hazel Henderson, author of Beyond Globalization and Building a Win-Win World
… Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an extraordinary and gripping tale of intrigue and dark machinations. Think John Le Carré, except it's a true story.… While at times he seems a little overly focused on conspiracies, perhaps that's not surprising considering the life he's led. – Alex Roslin, Amazon.com
An adventure thriller that connects the dots between corporate globalization, American Empire, and the dynasty of the House of Bush. – Dragonfly Review

This sure-to-be controversial, real-life tale exposes international intrigue, corruption, and little-known government and corporate activities that have dire consequences for American democracy and the world. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which many people urged Perkins not to write, is a blistering attack on and expose of the little known inner workings of both government and corporate policies that have fostered globalization and led to the impoverishment of untold millions of people across the planet. It is a story that will increase the reader's understanding of why so many people in so many countries hate America and what is has come to stand for, but it’s light on facts. The book is sure to gain a following among conspiracy buffs.

Professional & Technical / Medicine / Reference / Food

Dietary Reference Intakes: Guiding Principles for Nutrition Labeling and Fortification by the Committee on Use of Dietary Reference Intakes in Nutrition Labeling Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine (DRI Series: The National Academies Press)

An old adage warns "You Are What You Eat!" In order for indi­viduals to test this adage, they must understand what they are eating.

Since 1997 the Institute of Medicine has issued a series of nutrient reference values that are collectively termed Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs). The DRIs offer quantitative estimates of nutrient intakes to be used for planning and assessing diets. Using the information from these reports, this newest volume in the DRIs series focuses on how the science for each nutrient in the DRIs reports can be used to develop current and appropriate reference values for nutrition labeling and food fortification.

Focusing its analysis on the existing DRIs, Dietary Reference Intakes examines the purpose of nutrition labeling, current labeling practices in the United States and Canada, and food for­tification practices and policies and offers recommendations as a series of guiding principles to assist the regulatory agencies that oversee food labeling and fortification in the United States and Canada. The DRIs include four categories: the Estimated Average Requirement (EAR), the Adequate Intake (AI), the RDA, and the Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL). These reference values are replacements for the former RDAs in the United States and the RNIs in Canada and as such represent a harmonization of the nutrient recommendations of the two countries. In addition to the DRIs, an Acceptable Macronutrient Distribution Range (AMDR) was developed for macro nutrients.

As a result of the change in the concept for setting reference values for nutrients, the Committee on Use of Dietary Reference Intakes in Nutrition Labeling was convened to address a number of questions, including: Is the one reference value represented by % DV the most helpful approach for nutrition labeling for consumers? Is it best to derive one new reference value for nutrition labeling for each nutrient or a set of values that address the diversity of needs for various life stage and gender groups? Which of the four categories of DRIs must be incorporated into the basis for the new food reference values? What approach should be taken to integrate the new DRIs into the concept of discretionary fortification of food? Is the same reference value approach used for labeling also the best scientific approach for discretionary fortification?

Focusing on how the DRIs can be used to develop reference values, the primary scientific resources for this report are the DRI reports. The overarching goal is to have updated nutrition labeling that consumers can use to compare products and make informed food choices. The task of the Committee was to aid this effort by providing recommendations to the sponsoring agencies, in the form of guiding principles, on how best to use the new DRIs and their underlying science in nutrition labeling. In addition, the committee was requested to provide guidance on incorporating the DRIs into approaches for discretionary fortification.

In Dietary Reference Intakes the Committee presents four key issues that should be considered as regulatory agencies appraise the public health need for discretionary fortification: the magnitude of the estimated prevalence of the nutrient inadequacy, the reliability and validity of the prevalence estimate, the health risks associated with the determined inadequacy, and the indications that the inadequacy can possibly be ameliorated by increasing the availability of the nutrient in the food supply. To implement the guidance on discretionary fortification, the committee recommends that agencies involved in the regulation of fortification adopt the step-wise decision approach to evaluate whether fortification will meet a public health need. This decision approach provides a way to evaluate whether fortification is scientifically justified and incorporates systematic reviews of data using two DRI reference values: the EAR and the UL.

The first four chapters in Dietary Reference Intakes include the committee's task, overviews of nutrition labeling and fortification in the United States and Canada, and a brief review of the history and concepts of the DRIs. Chapters 5 through 8 present the committee's findings and recommended guiding principles, recommendations for data support and research, and supporting references. Appendix A provides brief biosketches of the committee members. Appendixes B and C, respectively, include illustrative examples of application of a population-weighted approach as discussed in Chapter 5 and reference tables. Appendix D provides the agendas of the two information-gathering workshops convened by the committee.

The sponsors and primary audience for Dietary Reference Intakes are the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services FDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), and Health Canada. Since diet-related chronic diseases are a leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States and Canada, helping customers make healthy food choices has never been more important; let’s hope that this report will result in ever-improving consumer information and health.

Professional & Technical / Medicine

Focus On Atherosclerosis Research edited by Leon V. Clark (Nova Biomedical Books)

Atherosclerosis is a degenerative condition in which arteries build up deposits called plaques (atheromas) which consist of lipids (mainly cholesterol), connective tissue and smooth muscle cells originating from the arterial wall. Plaques develop quietly over a period of years and are unnoticeable until there is an interruption in the normal flow of blood. Plaques may partially or totally block the blood's flow through an artery. Two things that can happen where plaques occur are: bleeding (hemorrhage) into the plaque; and formation of a blood clot (thrombus) on the plaque's surface. Atherosclerosis affects large and medium-sized arteries, and the type of artery and where the plaque develops varies with each person.

Atherosclerosis research has witnessed startling progress in recent years, partially due to new drugs as well as to new breakthroughs in molecular medicine and these are covered in Focus On Atherosclerosis Research. The book, edited by Leon V. Clark, contains ten chapters, each summarizing an area or atherosclerosis research and the authors’ contributions to it.

Great interest has been generated in the past decade in the medical and public community on the relationship of infections and atherosclerotic vascular diseases. A large body of data has been accumulated on Chlamydia pneumoniae association with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Less but intriguing data on the link with vascular disease exists for periodontitis, cytomegalovirus, Helicobacter pylori and even influenza virus. Chapter I, by I.W. Fong, summarizes studies on epidemiological, pathological, in vito, cell biology, animal model, and human antibiotic treatment trials. In general epidemiological case-control and cross sectional studies support the association of C. pneumoniae, periodontitis, and influenza virus with atherosclerotic vascular complications, but prospective studies have been less supportive and more contentious. Cell biology, in vitro and animal models suggest that certain pathogens can modulate development of atherosclerosis, including lipid and inflammatory related mechanisms.

Physical fitness and activity status have been well-documented major risk predictors of cardiovascular and total mortality. The aim of chapter II by Jari A. Laukkanen and Sudhir Kurl, is to show the associations of cardiorespiratory fitness, as measured during clinical exercise testing, with cardiovascular diseases. Cardiorespiratory fitness is independently related to mortality in clinical and population-based studies. Poor maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) has been shown to be a comparable with elevated systolic blood pressure, smoking, hypercholesterolemia, obesity and diabetes in importance as a risk factor for mortality as well as a predictor of atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases and the progression of atherosclerosis.

Cardiorespiratory fitness represents one of the strongest and valuable predictors for both fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events emphasizing the importance of exercise testing in everyday life. More attention should be directed toward the use of exercise testing to measure the therapeutic response to a life-style change and pharmaceutical interventions.

Observations in the Bogalusa Heart Study, the focus of chapter III by Gerald S. Berenson and Sathanur R. Srinivasan, show an important correlation of clinical risk factors in early life with anatomic changes at autopsy in the aorta and coronary vessels with atherosclerosis and cardiac and renal changes related to hypertension.

Chlamydia pneumoniae, a human respiratory pathogen, has been repeatedly linked to atherosclerotic disease based on sero-epidemiologic studies, direct detection of the organism in atherosclerotic lesions, animal experiments, in vitro data, and to a lesser extent tissue culture. Whether patients with atherosclerosis or acute coronary syndromes benefit from antibiotics against C. pneumoniae is still an evolving issue. Animal models and in vitro studies, however, continue to accumulate convincing data for an association. In chapter IV, by Christiaan J. Vrints, a literature overview is given of the main studies published on C. pneumoniae and its potential relation to atherosclerotic disease.

Oxidative stress is thought to be etiologically related to atherosclerosis. Experimental evidence clearly demonstrates the presence of oxidized LDL (oxLDL) in the intima of arteries and that it contributes to the initiation and progression of atherosclerotic lesions. Eiji Matsuura and Luis R. Lopez have recently demonstrated that oxLDL interacts with an endogenous plasma protein, β2-glycoprotein (β2GPI), to form complexes and that these complexes circulate in the blood stream of patients with systemic inflammatory diseases. Their in vitro experiments showed that oxLDL quickly interacts with (β2GPI via specific ligands generated by Cu 2+-oxidation in which the negative charge of oxLDL is neutralized by the complex formed.

The relationships among lipoprotein metabolism, genetic vascular factors, vascular disease and Alzheimer's disease (AD) suggest that the examination of centenarian populations in relation to certain genes or lipoprotein metabolism provide insights into the human longevity. Francesco Panza et al.'s findings in chapter VI did not confirm previous data on increased prevalence of the high-risk angiotensin I converting enzyme 1 (ACE1) D allele in French centenarians. They hypothesized that the variability in the strength of association between ACEI polymorphism and longevity could be related to regional differences in ACE1*D frequency in Europe showed in the study, as recently reported for APOE ε2 and ε4 allele in centenarians. Their findings suggest that elevated Lp(a) serum levels, increasing the risk for cerebrovascular disease, may play a role in determining clinical AD but that Lp(a) elevation in centenarians, in the absence of other coronary artery disease risk factors, appears as a positive survival factor. While further studies are needed to confirm the possible role of APOE concentration as putative longevity factor, chapter VI provides an overview of many of the investigated vascular factors that have been investigated with respect to longevity.

The most common metabolic disorders in Western countries, obesity and the insulin resistance syndrome (IRS) are accompanied by an increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and show an alarming increase in prevalence. Both disorders are characterized by increased plasma levels of free fatty acids (FFA) which are thought to play a critical role in the pathogenesis. As studied by Antonie J.H.H.M. van Oostrom and Manuel Castro Cabezas and told in Chapter VII, FFA may impair endothelial function via activation of proinflammatory pathways and production of reactive oxygen species by leukocytes and endothelial cells, processes that eventually may contribute to atherogenesis.

Healthy endothelium plays a central role in cardiovascular control. Therefore, endothelial dysfunction (ED) may have a particularly significant role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. It was also shown that ED is an early event in type I and II diabetes and that it is related to the development and progression of diabetic vascular complications. Chapter VIII by Pavel Poredos shows that ED (demonstrated by flow mediated endothelium dependent dilation) is inversely related to the extent of microalbuminuria. The data show that ED is reversible and by treatment of risk factors it is possible to restore vascular function. ED promotes progression of atherosclerosis and probably plays an important role in the development of thrombotic complications in the late stages of the disease. ED is significantly and directly correlated with the occurrence of cardiac events and that cardiac events increased as ED worsens.

Atherosclerosis is a complex, irreversible disease of the artery tree causing an excess of morbility and most of the deaths due to myocardial infarction and stroke. The disease process initiates as early in childhood and progresses for decades showing a spectrum of lesions in the arteries ranging from the fatty streak to the advanced plaque. Two elements are present in all the stages of the disease: macrophages and lipids. Striking evidence suggest that the very early event of the atherosclerotic process is the accumulation of circulating LDL into macrophages in the intima that leads to foam cell formation. It is demonstrated by Fausta Micheletta, Silvia Natoli and Luigi Iuliano in chapter IX that the oxidation of LDL produces an array of oxidized bioactive lipids with a potential contribution in cellular events of atherogenesis, including endothelial dysfunction, platelet aggregation, and apoptosis. Mildly elevated plasma homocysteine levels are an independent risk factor for atherothrombotic vascular disease in the coronary, cerebrovascular, and peripheral arterial circulation. Endothelial dysfunction contributes to the vascular disorders linked to hyperhomocysteinemia. There is increasing evidence that oxidative stress is contributory to homocysteine's deleterious effects on the vasculature.

These findings and others strongly suggest that the adverse vascular effects of homocysteine are at least partly mediated by oxidative inactivation of nitric oxide. Clinical studies have shown that lowering of plasma homocysteine levels by supplementation of folic acid reverses homocysteine-induced endothelial dysfunction. Whether or not this translates into a reduction of clinical events associated with hyperhomocysteinemia is currently under investigation by Norbert Weiss, reported in chapter X.

Focus On Atherosclerosis Research effectively summarizes the most recent research in a no-nonsense format and will be of interest to practicing physicians as well as health researchers and the academically-oriented public suffering from the disease.

Psychology & Counseling / Biographies & Memoirs

Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory by D. Brett King & Michael Wertheimer (Transaction Publishers)

The ideas of Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), a founder of Gestalt theory, are discussed in almost all general books on the history of psychology, and in most introductory textbooks on psychology. This intellectual biography of Wertheimer, Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory, is the first book-length treatment of a scholar whose ideas are given central importance in fields as varied as social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, problem solving, art, and visual neuroscience.

Brett King and Michael Wertheimer trace the origins of Gestalt thought, demonstrating its continuing importance in fifteen chapters and several supplements to these chapters. King, senior instructor of psychology, Department of Psychology, and Wertheimer,  Professor Emeritus of Psychology, both of the University of Colorado at Boulder, begin by reviewing Wertheimer's ancestry, family, and childhood in central Europe, and his formal education. They elaborate on his activities during the period in which he developed the ideas that were later to become central to Gestalt psychology, documenting the formal emergence of this school of thought and tracing its development during World War I. They discuss the maturation of the Gestalt school at the University of Berlin during 1922-29 in detail.

Wertheimer's everyday life in America during his last decade is well documented, based in part on his son's recollections. The early reception of Gestalt theory in the United States is examined, with extensive references to articles in professional journals and periodicals. Wertheimer's relationships and interaction with three prominent psychologists of the time, Edwin Boring, Clark Hull, and Alexander Luria, are discussed, based on previously unpublished correspondence. The final chapters discuss Wertheimer's essays on democracy, freedom, ethics, and truth, and detail personal challenges Wertheimer faced during his last years. His major work, published after his death, is Productive Thinking. Its reception is examined, and a concluding chapter considers recent responses to Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory.

Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory... integrates earlier theoretical and historical scholarship with groundbreaking new material. This extremely well-written work describes the intellectual growth of Max Wertheimer and the development of Gestalt Theory from hints in Wertheimer's childhood through stirrings early in his education to the emergence of Gestalt Psychology as worldview and a formal system of psychological inquiry.... The book will be interesting for casual readers, immensely useful for teachers of psychology, and critical for historians of science. – William Douglas Woody, University of Northern Colorado

...a terrific, breathtaking book presenting astonishing facts on Max Wertheimer (1880-1943) and his genius, work and life. The authors challenge former ill-conceived messages about the assumed ‘dusty’ European perspectives of Gestalt theory in psychology.... [Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory] should be read by history of psychology students, perhaps beginning with the advanced undergraduates of psychology, say honors class level. – Professor Viktor Sarris, Max Wertheimer Chair of Psychology, J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt a.M., Germany

King and Wertheimer have given us the definitive account of the life and times of one of the twentieth century's most important intellects. Max Wertheimer's Weltanschauung is revealed to us with intriguing detail that could only be known through family, and placed in the broader context of the most harrowing period of German history and the roots of a movement in psychology that is now, at last, taking hold in neuroscience. Max Wertheimer and Gestalt Theory is indispensable to understanding the history of the Gestalt movement, a movement that is destined to become even more influential in the future. – John S. Werner, Jules and Doris Stein Professor, University of California, Davis Section of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior

This tightly written, carefully researched, intellectual biography will be of interest to psychologists and general readers interested in science, modern European history, and the Holocaust. It’s about time Wertheimer had a book devoted exclusively to his life and contributions, and the fact that his psychologist son is an author makes it doubly important, revealing considerable new material.

Psychology / Cognitive Science

The Mind As a Scientific Object: Between Brain and Culture edited by Christina E. Erneling & David Martel Johnson (Oxford University Press)

What holds together the various fields that are supposed to constitute the general intellectual discipline that people now call cognitive science?

In The Mind As a Scientific Object Christina E. Erneling and David Martel Johnson identify two problems with defining this discipline. First, some theorists identify the common subject matter as the mind, but scientists and philosophers have not been able to agree on any single, satisfactory answer to the question of what the mind is. Second, those who speculate about the general characteristics that belong to cognitive science tend to assume that all the particular fields falling under the rubric – psychology, linguistics, biology, and so on – are of roughly equal value in their ability to shed light on the nature of mind. The Mind As a Scientific Object argues that all the cognitive science disciplines are not equally able to provide answers to ontological questions about the mind, but rather that only neurophysiology and cultural psychology are suited to answer these questions. However, because the cultural account of mind has long been ignored in favor of the neurophysiological account, Erneling and Johnson help to correct this oversight by bringing together contributions that focus particularly on different versions of the cultural account of the mind.

The Mind As a Scientific Object explores a special set of issues that go beyond the scope of their first book of collected readings, The Future of the Cognitive Revolution (Oxford, 1997). The issues in question are problems clustering around the ques­tion of which is more basic for providing a scientifically justified account of the human mind: physiological or cultural factors? Both the particular chapters they select and the ways they chose to organize those chapters throw light on various aspects of the topic. With that goal in mind, Erneling, Associate Professor of Communication at Lund University, Institute of Communication, Campus Helsingborg, Sweden, and Johnson, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at York University, Canada, have added introductions to each of the parts that readers can use as guides for understanding the chapters and for seeing how the chapters relate to each other. They also have written the introductions to provide readers with a sense of some of the main difficulties that remain in each of the principal areas discussed.

The Mind As a Scientific Object is interesting and accessible not just to specialists but to a wide, interdisciplinary audience as well. It presents readers with a picture of selected, important themes in the field of cognitive science that is deeper than was previously available, but that still manages to be of wide interest.

Reading Skills / ESL / Social Sciences

Issues for Today, 3rd Edition by Lorraine Smith & Nancy Nici Mare (Reading for Today Series: Heinle / Thomson) is a reading skills textbook intended for intermediate, academically oriented students of English as a second or foreign language.

Thematically organized, the passages in Issues for Today, 3rd Edition, introduce students to topics of universal interest. As students work with the materials, they develop the kinds of extensive and intensive reading skills they need to achieve academic success in English.

Issues for Today is one in a series of five reading skills texts. The series has been designed for students from the beginning to the advanced levels and includes the following:

• Themes for Today – beginning

• Insights for Today – high beginning

• Issues for Today – intermediate

• Concepts for Today – high intermediate

• Topics for Today – advanced

Issues for Today, 3rd Edition, written by Lorraine C. Smith, Adelphi University, and Nancy Nici Mare, English Language Institute, Queens College, The City University of New York, consists of four thematic units. Each unit contains three chapters that deal with related subjects. Each chapter is also independent, entirely separate in content from the other two chapters contained in that unit, giving instructors the option of either completing entire units or choosing individual chapters as a focus in class.

All of the chapters provide students with stimulating topics to react to, think about, discuss, and write about. The initial exercises are an introduction to each reading passage and encourage students to think about the ideas, facts, and vocabulary that will be presented. The exercises that follow the reading passage are intended to improve reading comprehension skills as well as comprehension of English sentence structure. The activities help them see relationships between parts of a sentence, between sentences, and between and within paragraphs. The articles contain vocabulary that students can use in the real world and the exercises are designed to sharpen their ability to learn vocabulary from context. A word form exercise is included in each chapter to help students develop a "feel" for the patterns of word forms in English and an awareness of morphemes; for example, the suffix -tion always indicates a noun. Many vocabulary and word form selections are repeated in subsequent chapters to provide reinforcement.

The progression of exercises and activities in each chapter leads students through general comprehension of main ideas, specific information, understanding structural details, and specific vocabulary. Since reading college material also involves note-taking skills, students are trained to organize the article via diagrams, charts, and outlines, and to briefly summarize the passage. Finally, students practice manipulating new vocabulary by working with different parts of speech, and varying the tense in both affirmative and negative forms and singular and plural forms.

Issues for Today, 3rd Edition, contains a Prereading Preparation section, which contains motivating questions and activities. The third edition includes improved graphics and new photographs, which are accompanied by questions designed to enhance students' comprehension of information presented. The Information Organization exercise includes outlines, charts, and flowcharts, depending on each reading and the type of information it contains. This organization of information section makes Reading Recall a more purposeful activity. Furthermore, the Information Organization design takes into account students' different learning and organizational styles. The Follow-Up Activities section contains a variety of activities and provides opportunities for discussion and interaction. Moreover, the text contains surveys, which provide students with the means and the opportunity to go out into the ‘real world’ and interact with native English speakers in meaningful ways, and affords them the opportunity to collect data that they can bring back to class and combine, generating graphs of their own for interpretation and discussion. Issues for Today, 3rd Edition, includes end-of-unit crossword puzzles, which provide a review of the vocabulary encountered in all three chapters of each unit and Unit Discussion questions, which help students think about, discuss, and make connections among the topics in the chapters of each unit.

The third edition contains two new chapters: "The Importance of Grandmothers" in the Issues in Society unit and "Solving Crime with Modern Technology" in the Justice and Crime unit. In addition to the new chapters, the third edition is now accompanied by audio cassette tapes or CDs on which all the readings are recorded, as well as a theme-based CNN video composed of clips, which complement the topic of one chapter in each unit. In the third edition of Issues for Today, video activities are found at the end of each unit to assist students in their viewing comprehension. Also new to the third edition are Internet activities designed to encourage students with school or home access to the Internet to learn more about a topic they read about in the text.

Issues for Today, 3rd Edition, helps students improve their reading skills and develop confidence as they work through the text. At the same time, the third edition is structured so that the students will steadily progress toward skillful, independent reading. All of these activities will prepare students for academic work and the world of information they will encounter. The third in a series of best-selling, academic skills texts, these books systematically develop students’ reading and vocabulary skills through engaging themes and intensive practice.

- Anna Washington, M.A.T, M.Ed.

Reference / Writing

Page after Page: Discover the Confidence & Passion You Need to Start Writing & Keep Writing (No Matter What) by Heather Sellers (Writer’s Digest Books)

Almost anyone can write good stuff. It's a matter of sitting down, conjuring a state of complete dedication and complete open­ness, and writing. Putting pen to page. – Heather Sellers, from the Introduction

False starts. Self-doubt. Mind games. They end the moment readers pick up Page after Page.
According to Heather Sears, an award-winning writer and professor who has taught writing workshops for the past twenty years, ninety percent of beginning writers stop practicing their craft before they have a chance to discover their talents. This encouraging guide:

• Helps readers build a writing life, one that will help them continue to write without giving up.
• Approaches the writing life without using new age and self-help techniques, so writers from all walks of life will benefit from the advice.
• Provides engaging exercises to help readers shape their writing life and achieve their goals.

Written by an author with more than twenty years of teaching and writing experience, Page after Page provides lively anecdotes and exercises and helps writers develop a mindset and lifestyle conducive to daily creation. As each chapter takes them deeper into the eccentric, exclusive world known only to writers, they learn how to build a productive creative life that keeps them writing page after page, day after day.

I wish that, when I began writing The Deep End of the Ocean, I'd had Heather Sellers's Page after Page to guide me, like a comforting hand on my elbow, leading me through the darkness of the unknowable narrative.  – Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times best-selling author

With an inspiring mix of humor, wisdom, and creativity, Page after Page shows readers how to find the courage and commitment to start and keep on writing.

Reference / Professional & Technical / Maritime

Farwell's Rules of the Nautical Road, 8th Edition by Craig H. Allen (U.S. Naval Institute Blue & Gold Professional Library Series: Naval Institute Press)

Craig H. Allen, a University of Washington law professor and retired U.S. Coast Guard officer, offers an experienced mariner's insight into the rules as he looks at how they are applied by the courts and administrative tribunals in collision cases.

In this eighth edition of Farwell's Rules of the Nautical Road the chapters on rules pertaining to good seamanship and special circumstances and on restricted visibility have been completely revised, and coverage of the narrow channel rule, traffic separation schemes, and the application of the rules to high-speed craft has been vastly expanded. This edition also extensively revises the information on lookout and risk-of-collision responsibilities. It updates the material on radar and automatic radar plotting aids and addresses such new technologies as integrated bridge systems, automatic identification systems, and voyage data recorders, as well as the increasingly active role of vessel traffic services. Recent judicial decisions have been added, as have references to U.S. Coast Guard decisions against licensed mariners and casualty investigations.

The first edition of this book was published in 1941 as The Rules of the Nautical Road by the late Raymond F. Farwell, a captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve and professor of transportation at the University of Washington. As Captain Farwell noted in his preface to the first edition, "The rules will not be better obeyed until they are better understood." Since that first publication, numerous statutory and regulatory changes have been made at both the international and national levels. Such changes have necessitated this series of revisions in Farwell's Rules of the Nautical Road.

Over the years common usage has made Captain Farwell's name synonymous with the book itself, much as Reginald Marsden's name has been associated with the leading treatise on collision law in Great Britain. Accordingly, since its fourth edition this book has been titled Farwell's Rules of the Nautical Road. The challenge was to provide up-to-date information for readers, while at the same time preserving the carefully crafted wisdom Captain Farwell imbued in the first and second editions. The eighth edition builds on the work of the editors of the previous editions, while at the same time taking a new approach and chapter organization.

Any book on rules of the road in the twenty-first century must recognize the virtual explosion in vessel navigation and collision avoidance technology and the growing presence of high-speed craft. More importantly, the rules must now be understood and applied in the larger context of modern risk assessment and management principles. Many of these principles are now codified in the Standards of Training, Certification and Watch­keeping (STC49 Convention and Code, Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention, U.S. Navigation Safety Regulations, and applicable U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard service directives. To help the mariner better understand how the rules are actually being interpreted and applied, the eighth edition updates the judicial decisions relied on in earlier edi­tions. It adds references to a number of decisions by the U.S. Coast Guard in administrative actions against licensed mariners; casualty investigations by the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, and U.K. Marine Accident Investigation Branch; and resolutions by the U.S. Navigation Safety Advisory Council. The book includes a discussion of all changes through December 2003 to the 1972 International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (1972 COLREGS) and the 1980 Inland Navigational Rules Act (Inland Rules).

Farwell's Rules of the Nautical Road together with Dutton's Nautical Navigation are the ‘bookends’ for personal libraries of both professional mariners and recreational sailors. While the fundamental seamanship required for safely operating on or transiting the high seas and inland waters remains constant, new technologies and ever-changing rules and regulations – and the legal implications of any transgressions – mandate an occasional revision of both. Whether used as a primary teaching tool or serving as an authoritative refresher, this updated edition is heartily recommended. – Vice Adm. Howard B. Thorsen, USCG (Ret.), former Commandant of Cadets, U.S. Coast Guard Academy

Farwell's is a highly valuable reference for both the novice and the professional mariner. I use it to teach and in my everyday navigation, and I turn to it for complicated research matters. It's my definitive source. – Capt. William E. Clifford, New York Harbor pilot, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy assistant professor

The most comprehensive text available for today's mariners and students of safe navigation, Farwell's is a trusted classic that has now been thoroughly updated to explain how new technologies enhance a mariner's situational awareness at sea. It's a critical read for bridge watchstanders who wish to develop keen instincts and judgment in tandem with their professional knowledge. – Lt. Brigitte Wallace, USN Seamanship and Navigation Department, U.S. Naval Academy

This new edition of Farwell's venerable reference on the nautical rules of the road preserves the carefully crafted wisdom of the first edition, published sixty-three years ago, while providing up-to-date information to help the modern mariner understand how those rules are being interpreted and applied today. Farwell's Rules of the Nautical Road takes into account the latest developments in vessel navigation and collision avoidance technology along with the growing presence of high-speed craft and explains how to make use of current risk assessment and management principles. Such a thorough, present-day examination of the subject assures the guide's place as an indispensable reference for years to come.

Reference / Education / English

A Glossary of Literary Terms, Eighth Editon by M.H. Abrams, with contributions by Geoffrey Harpham (Thomson Wadsworth)

M. H. Abram’s A Glossary of Literary Terms is a series of succinct essays on the chief terms and concepts used in discussing literature, literary history and movements, and literary criticism. Since first published in 1957, the Glossary has become an indispensable handbook for all students of English and other literatures. Professor of English at Cornell University, emeritus, Abrams is a distinguished scholar who has written prize-winning books on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, literary theory and criticism, European Romanticism, and western intellectual history. He has revised all the entries and brought them up to date, both in substance and in the lists of suggested readings.

A Glossary of Literary Terms defines and discusses terms, critical theories and movements, and points of view that are commonly used to classify, analyze, interpret, and write the history of works of literature. A Glossary of Literary Terms consists of succinct essays in the alphabetic order of the title word or phrase. Terms that are related but subsidiary, or that designate subclasses, are treated under the title heading of the primary or generic term; also, words that are often used in conjunction or as mutually defining contraries (distance and involvement, empathy and sympathy, narrative and narratology) are discussed in the same entry. The alternative organization of a lit­erary handbook as a dictionary of terms, defined singly, makes dull reading and requires excessive repetition and cross-indexing; it may also be misleading, because the use and application of many terms become clear only in the context of other concepts to which they are related, subordinated, or opposed. The essay form makes it feasible to supplement the definition of a term with indications of its changes in meaning over time and of its diversity of meanings in current usage, in order to help readers steer their way through the shifting references and submerged ambiguities of its diverse applications.

The purpose of A Glossary of Literary Terms, Eighth Edition is to keep the entries current with the incessant changes in the literary and critical scene, to take into account new publications in literature, criticism, and scholarship, and to take advantage of suggestions for improvements and additions.

Mainly in response to requests of users of the Glossary, some forty new terms have been added; notable among them are: aesthetics, aesthetic ideology, anaphora, Bloomsbury Group, critique, ecocriticism, gender criticism, hypertext, literature, nature writing, performance poetry, proletarian novel, rap, rime riche, topographical poetry.

First published in 1957, A Glossary of Literary Terms is an indispensable reference for students. The individual entries, together with the guides to further reading included in most of them, are oriented especially toward undergraduate students of English, American, and other literatures. They also are a useful and popular work of reference for advanced students, as well as for general readers with literary interests.

Religion & Spirituality / Church & State

Jefferson and Madison on Separation of Church and State edited by Lenni Brenner (Writings on Religion and Secularism Series: Barricade) is a complete selection of writings from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison focusing specifically on their forward thinking beliefs in the separation of church and state.

The Republicans have told the [American] people a grave lie. They insist that the Founding Fathers wished religion – especially Christianity – to be a major part of our political life. To support their theocratic agenda, Republicans pick and choose quotes of the Founding Fathers, often taking them out of context just as evangelicals ... are want [sic] to do concerning the bible [sic]. When, however, one looks into what the Founders had to say about the subject, they find the Republican perversion crumbling... Who will you follow, Bush and Cheney or Jefferson and Madison? – from Jesus and the Republicans by August Keso, The Washington Dispatch, November 9, 2004

Three perennial hot button issues in the United States are prayers in public schools, government funded ‘faith-based’ initiatives, and clerical endorsements in elections. According to Lenni Brenner, a three-times arrested '60s civil rights organizer turned historian, journalist, and lecturer, we often overlook what our founding fathers actually had to say on the subject. The fact is that Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights – our nation's forefathers and the men who defined what it means to be American – were strong advocates of church-state separation. In Jefferson and Madison on Separation of Church and State we hear them discuss their struggle to separate church and state in Virginia and then in their new United States.

The selections include correspondence between Jefferson and Madison and other notable figures of early American history such as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Law, John Jay, Tom Paine, William Bradford, and the Marquis de Lafayette. The writings also include original drafts of key documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights; and the complete text of the Jefferson Bible, which Jefferson compiled by putting his razor to the four Gospels and cutting out all supernatural passages. Also included in Jefferson and Madison on Separation of Church and State are two appendices, in which the timelines of Jefferson and Madison's lives are presented, and a Scholar's Afterword, which traces the history of religion in American politics from the Civil War to the present day. Selections are introduced by notes by Brenner, providing historical context, and are presented in chronological order, illustrating how their thoughts and policies evolved.

Jefferson and Madison on Separation of Church and State is the most complete collection of these forefathers's writings on religion and secularism. It provides in-depth documentation of the basis of America's First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom. Let us hope that the volume will elevate the ongoing debate over church/state relations by bringing exactly what the two fathers of modern secularism said to the widest possible audience.

Religion & Spirituality / Judaism

The Universal Kabbalah by Leonora Leet (Inner Traditions) presents a new understanding of the laws of cosmic manifestation through the geometry of the Sabbath Star diagram.

Leonora Leet, a Yale Ph.D, and professor of English at St. John's University specializing in Renaissance English literature, has also achieved renown as an innovative modern Kabbalist; her previous books on the Kabbalah are Renewing the Covenant, The Secret Doctrine of the Kabbalah, and The Kabbalah of the Soul.

In The Universal Kabbalah, Leet develops a scientific model for kabbalistic cosmology and soul psychology derived from the kabbalistic diagram of the Tree of Life and the Leet's own Sabbath Star diagram – a configuration of seven Star of David hexagrams. This geometric model begins with the four worlds of the classical Kabbalah, extends the model into the present time and birthright level of the soul, and expands it to three higher enclosing worlds or levels of evolving consciousness. The Sabbath Star diagram therefore accommodates both the emanationist cosmology of the earlier Zoharic Kabbalah and the future orientation of the later Kabbalah of Isaac Luria. The hexagram elements that construct each expansion of the Sabbath Star diagram configure the cosmic stages of each of its "worlds." The matrix that is produced by these construction elements configures the level of the multi-dimensional soul that is correlated with each cosmic world. In its final stage, this model unites the finite and infinite halves of the Sabbatical world to exemplify the secret doctrine of the Kabbalah.

The Universal Kabbalah is an important contribution to the knowledge that makes available at great depth material that up to now was locked up in Hebrew texts. Serious study of this text produces a holographic approach to the cosmos, and questions regarding philosophical contradictions disappear in the perspective of the cosmic architecture the book reveals. It is a seminal work that will become a classic. – Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi, leader of the Jewish Renewal Movement and coauthor of From Age-ing to Sage-ing
Leonora Leet’s discoveries are highly original and play a key role in the completion of the picture of early Jewish mysticism, restoring its rightful place in contemporary religious life. Leet will become known to be among the greatest Kabbalists of this time. – Ralph Abraham, author of Chaos, Gaia, and Eros

Not only does The Universal Kabbalah offer a new, inclusive model for the Kabbalah but it also provides a basis for complexity theory with its final extrapolation to infinity. The universality of the model is shown by its applicability to such domains as physics, sociology, linguistics, and human history. This universal model encodes the laws of cosmic manifestation in terms that are particularly coherent with the formulations of the Kabbalah, giving a mathematical basis to many aspects of this mystical tradition and providing a new synthesis of science and spirituality that may well write a new chapter to the Kabbalah.

Religion & Spirituality

Interrupting Tradition: An Essay on Christian Faith in a Postmodern Context by Lieven Boeve (Louvain Theological & Pastoral Monographs, Volume 30: Peeters)

Not so long ago it would have been fair to say that Christian faith played a leading role in cultural life. Today, however, culture has become largely "detraditionalized"; the impact of faith on society is minimal at best.

According to Lieven Boeve, every age challenges the Christian tradition to recontextualize its presentation of meaning and purpose. The Catholic faith community in Flanders today is struggling with the fact that the transmission of the Christian tradition has been flagging in recent years. This has not only led to a massive decline in church attendance, but it has also had its effects in the cultural domain: culture has become de-traditionalized; ‘traditional’ Christian culture is worn out. Even convinced Christians are having problems reflecting on the plausibility of their faith, precisely because of the chasm that has opened up between faith and culture.

Today's postmodern world may be an especially difficult setting for faith, yet it too affords Christians opportunities for dialogue. In the first part of Interrupting Tradition, Boeve, professor of Fundamental Theology at the Faculty of Theology, Leuven University (Belgium) and coordinator of the research group Theology in a Postmodern Context, provides a pithy description of the vicissitudes of the Christian tradition in modernity and postmodernity.

The second part of the book uses this background to equip Christians to reflect on their faith in a credible and relevant manner without withdrawing from the contemporary world. He argues that Christians today do themselves a disservice when they withdraw into a world of absolute self-justification. At the same time, however, Boeve avoids any form of appeal for an extensive adaptation to the postmodern context. Only a new dialogue between tradition and culture, respectful of (and indeed thanks to) the growing division between both, can claim to offer a future.

The third part of Interrupting Tradition endeavors to give this dialogue concrete form. Readers are introduced to a challenging image of Jesus, an image that is contextual and theologically motivated, prior to being invited by Boeve into a reopened reflection on God. The volume concludes by drawing renewed attention to the place of the Christian faith in relation to the other world religions.

Interrupting Tradition is an insightful book looking at the chasm that has opened up between faith and culture. The study exhorts Christians to reengage society in meaningful ways. The results of Boeve's study reveal that Christians do indeed have the capacity to reflect on their faith in a credible and relevant manner in relation to the actual context in which they find themselves and without relapsing into the extremes of traditionalism or relativism.

Religion & Spirituality / New Age

Queen of the Night: The Celtic Moon Goddess in Our Lives by Sharynne MacLeod Nicmhacha (Weiser Books) helps readers understand the role and power of the moon in the ancient religions, folklore, and mythology of Ireland and the British isles and then discover how to touch that power in their daily lives.

Queen of the Night is a journey into the world of Celtic cosmology, shamanism, and sacred animals, as well as Celtic language, art, and culture, to discover the power and centrality of the moon. Since the earliest times, from stone circles and passage graves to the rites and customs of Druids, the moon has been the symbol of the Goddess and has played a crucial role in worship and celebration.

In 13 chapters representing the moon’s monthly and annual cycles, Sharynne MacLeod NicMhacha, writer, musician, practicing pagan of Scottish and Irish ancestry, and a member of the Celtic band The Moors, tells the story of Celtic moon mythology, and touches upon Greek, Hindu, and Norse traditions. Each chapter sets forth the role of the moon in Celtic tradition and culture and includes poetry, quotes, or prayers honoring the moon. At the end of each chapter, NicMhacha offers meditations, ceremonies, and exercises to help readers connect with the moon and apply its power to their lives.

In Sharynne NicMhacha we have the all-too-rare mix of a well-educated scholar and an experienced magical practitioner. It’s because of this combination that I’ve been a fan of Sharynne’s workshops for years. I’m delighted to see her thought-provoking take on the Celtic Moon Goddess in print and available to everyone. – Christopher Penczak, author of The Inner Temple of Witchcraft and Gay Witchcraft

So often we find books that are either rigorously academic (and dry as bone) or intuitive and popular (and wildly inattentive to fact). Sharynne’s work combines the best of each approach, delivering meticulous research from the best sources while remembering that her intelligent, non-specialist reader wishes not only to know but to understand. – Dr. Kate Chadbourne, Harvard University, from the Preface

From the world of fairies to bards, seekers, and shamans; from the moon’s role in the secret meetings of women spinners to the role of sacred animals and mythic beings, Queen of the Night is a lively, informative book for anyone who wants to learn about practicing moon mythology.

Religion & Spirituality / Christianity

Classical Christianity And Rabbinic Judaism: Comparing Theologies by Bruce D. Chilton & Jacob Neusner (Baker Academic)

According to two well-respected theologians, among all the world's religions, Judaism and Christianity, relate to each other in a unique way because they share a common origin and tell a single story.

In Classical Christianity And Rabbinic Judaism, Bruce D. Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion and chaplain of the college at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, and Jacob Neusner, research professor of religion and theology at Bard College talk about Judaism and Christianity. The two religions share revealed Scriptures that tell a similar story, the tale of man from creation to the end of time. Both originate – by their own word – in the Hebrew Scriptures of ancient Israel. These writings in Judaism are referred to as "the Torah" or "the written [part of the] Torah," and in Christianity, "the Old Testament" or the first half of "the Bible." So they differ even concerning that on which they concur.

They differ also on the contents of the revelation, part of which they share. By "the Torah" Judaism means not only the Five Books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) but the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures, encompassing also the Prophets (Joshua through Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets) and the Writings (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamenta­tions, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles). And beyond those authoritative writings, Judaism assigns a place in the Torah revealed at Sinai to an oral tradition, ultimately written down by the rabbinic sages of the first six centuries of the Common Era. Christianity, for its part, includes in its Bible not only the Old Testa­ment but also the New Testament. But the story set forth by ancient Israel's Scriptures, and the knowledge of God conveyed therein, form a common heritage and a shared foundation. That narrative, with its insistence on the omnipotence and justice of the one and only God of all creation (or so both parties read the story), imposes its own logic and tensions.

For reasons Chilton and Neusner spell out in chapter 1, the joint authors of Classical Christianity And Rabbinic Judaism believe that comparative theology bears promise for both parties to the comparison. Each has a heavy stake in its success. Therefore they take what they hope will prove the first steps, however shaky, toward theological comparison. The work is simply defined. In chapter 1 they define the work of theology, explain the basis of the theology of Judaism and Christianity, and then spell out the shared topics: the story told in common, the chapters of each religion that bear the same title as those of the other. In chapters 2 through 7 they identify six corresponding and critical components of Christian and Judaic theology and show how they intersect and collide. They suggest that theological confrontation defines the task of interfaith dialogue for the twenty-first Christian century. In their selection of topics that are pivotal within each of the two religious systems, they offer productive pathways into that confrontation without pretending to know where it might lead.

Their goal is indicated without being fully reached. They wish simply to engage in the dialogue to which their faiths call them: the productive argument and dialogue on what is true that is treasured in German theology under the name Auseinandersetzung, which lacks a precise counterpart in English-speaking discussion. They hope the path they explore will lead in due course to a renewal of the theological confrontation not undertaken in the first three Christian centuries, then begun but abruptly broken off at the moment of engagement in the fourth. By theological confrontation, not just comparison, they mean the systematic sorting out of truth-claims and the advocacy of one position over another on the basis of common Scriptures, common premises, and shared reason.

Why insist on the language of "confrontation"? Because Judaic and Christian theologies make truth-claims about, in part, a single program of propositions and base these claims on a shared corpus of revealed truth: Judaism's (written) Torah, Christianity's Old Testament.

Clarifies the similarities and differences between Judaism and Christianity in a helpful and compelling manner. I know of no other book that takes this approach and presents more stimulating findings. Readers will especially appreciate the epilogue, where authors Neusner and Chilton candidly discuss their views of the respective truth of Judaism and Christianity. Everyone interested in how these two great faiths relate to one another should read this book. – Craig A. Evans, Acadia Divinity College

A model of interfaith dialogue! Refusing to sacrifice the particularities of either Christianity or Judaism on the altar of interfaith sensitivity, Neusner and Chilton not only clearly present the major views of each tradition – they debate them. – Amy-Jill Levine, Vanderbilt Divinity School

Neusner and Chilton compare the theologies of rabbinic Judaism and classical Christianity, contending that comparison entails not just recognition of intersection, but also confrontation between competing truth claims. The authors examine six carefully chosen theological issues, showing that they are common to the religions and, at the same time, that they conflict on precisely those issues. They present each theological system with clarity and insight, and then they successfully go further by making the religions talk to and about one another. This book represents genuine theological engagement rather than simply polite conversation. It is incisive, thought provoking, and an invaluable contribution to Jewish-Christian dialogue. – Frederick J. Murphy, College of the Holy Cross

Chilton and Neusner, gifted and prolific theologians, take as their task the exposition of theological confrontation, and what results is a stimulating exchange. They hope that after all these centuries both parties have attained that maturity of confidence that permits engagement with difference concerning a common agenda. Classical Christianity And Rabbinic Judaism makes possible theological debate about questions of religious truth that, in their conviction, only Christianity and Judaism, among all the religions of the world, can truly undertake.

Science / Astronomy

Cosmos by Sylvia Arditi & Marc Lachieze-Rey (Firefly Books) is a dramatic photographic tour of the universe.

The observable universe contains some hundred billion galaxies – each one made up of as many stars. Of the vast billions of stars, only a scant 5,000 are actually visible from Earth with the naked eye.

Over the last twenty years, space probes and space-based telescopes have released us from the confines of Earth and catapulted us into the open reaches of space to capture worlds beyond our own. Today, science offers a true window on the universe, enabling earth-bound creatures to peer into the heavens and experience the music of the spheres.

Cosmos invites readers to step through that window to the fulfillment of an ages-old dream of discovery. Cosmos showcases magnificent celestial objects of unparalleled beauty, revealing the most dramatic images of the night sky – from close planets and our sun to the most remote galaxies. Written by Sylvia Arditi, science journalist working in magazines, television and multimedia, and Marc Lachièze-Rey, astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at Saclay Centre d'etudes in France, it features the latest images from space from sources including Hubble, NASA and the European Space Agency.

The book begins with a brief history of astronomy and astrophysics, tracing the developments that paved the way to modern possibilities. The balance of the book is devoted to a stunning array of photographs supported by textual explanations and useful background information.

Cosmos is organized into the following chapters:

• Solar System
• Scattered Nebulae and Stellar Births
• Star Clusters
• Planetary Nebulas
• Decline and Death of Giant Star
• Galaxies as Far as the Eye Can See.

This remarkable voyage shows dying stars and glittering nebula, Saturn's rings and the remains of supernovas. Cosmos, an inspiring, rare and unobstructed view into the far reaches of space, is for anyone who has ever gazed into the night sky and wondered what was actually out there. Beautiful and engaging, with unparalleled photography, the book offers a rare and unobstructed view into the reaches of space, inviting readers to ‘go where no one has gone before.’

Science / Mathematics

Weighing the Soul: Scientific Discovery from the Brilliant to the Bizarre by Len Fisher (Arcade Publishing)

"Science and common sense often don’t mix," notes Len Fisher, a research fellow at the University of Bristol famous for studying the science of dunking doughnuts.

From the man who 'puts the fizz in physics' (Entertainment Weekly), here is an entertaining and thought-provoking foray into the science of the bizarre and the peculiar.
Winner of the IgNobel Prize in physics, Fisher showed just how much fun science can be in his enthusiastically praised debut, How to Dunk a Doughnut. In Weighing the Soul, Fisher, the author of more than eighty scientific papers and book chapters on the physics of surfaces, food science, and the application of physics to biological problems, reveals that science sometimes takes a path through the strange and the ridiculous to discover that Nature often simply does not follow common sense. One early experiment he describes, involving a bed, a platform scale, and a dying man, seemed to prove that the soul weighed the same as a slice of bread – or roughly 21 grams, as the title of the popular movie put it. But other experiments and ideas that seemed no less fanciful in their time led to the fundamentals of our understanding of movement, heat, light, and energy, and such things as the discovery of electricity and the structure of DNA.
As in his previous book, Fisher uses humorous personal stories and examples from everyday life to make the science accessible. He includes a catalogue of the necessary mysteries of modern science: the anti-commonsense beliefs that scientists now hold and use as tools in their everyday work. In chapters that feature figures from Galileo and Newton to Benjamin Franklin and Erwin Schrödinger, among many others, he touches on topics from lightning to corsets and from alchemy to Frankenstein and water babies, but he may not claim the last word on the weight of the soul.

Fisher entertains in an airy, lighthearted manner, while also imparting his own philosophy of science, eloquently discussing the borderlines between science and philosophy and faith; in his view, science can’t know everything, and those things that it can’t know "are the province of philosophy and religion." He also tackles the question of whether science can keep us safe. For instance, can it answer questions about the long-term effect of exposure to microwaves? Fisher’s answer is guarded: taking risks is necessary for progress; science’s job is to provide accurate information with which to weigh both the risk of trying something new and the risk of not trying it. – Barbara Levy, Reed Business Information

Fisher portrays an eclectic mix of scientists and the ridicule heaped on them for their apparently nutty ideas – he also includes genuine quacks and charlatans in Weighing the Soul, a breezy and highly readable addition to those trying to communicate with ordinary folk about science.

Sports / Martial Arts

Ju No Kata: A Kodokan Judo Textbook by Keiko Fukuda (North Atlantic Books) describes the history and importance of Ju No Kata – the science of what it takes to execute throws – to the study and practice of judo.

Sensei Keiko Fukuda, the highest ranked woman in Judo and the world's foremost authority on Ju-no-kata, now 90 and still practicing, shares her expertise and knowledge in Ju No Kata, which also serves as her semi-autobiography. Her grandfather, Hachinosuke Fukuda, was one of the three influential masters of Jujitsu who taught the founder of Judo, Jigoro Kano Shihan, in his formative years. Sensei Fukuda was invited by Kano Shihan himself to enter the then-newly-formed Women's Section of the Kodokan in Tokyo. She has practiced the art of Judo for over seventy years.

In this book, Fukuda, truly one of the pioneers of women's Judo, continues the examination of Ju-no-kata that she began in her first book, Born for the Mat: A Korlokarr Kola Textbook for Women. Here she draws upon her exhaustive experience in teaching and understanding Judo to elaborate on the finer points of Ju-no-kata, one of the seven Kodokan Katas, created by Kano Shihan in 1887. Fukuda performed this Kata with Sensei Noritomi at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. She believes that this Kata, perhaps above all others, epitomizes the principles of Ju and the fundamental nature of Judo.

Understanding Ju-no-kata is essential for passing higher-rank tests and Ju No Kata, imbued with Fukuda's wisdom, is comprehensive and definitive. In this book, the many practitioners of Judo who have benefited from Fukuda's teaching, as well as those new to Ju-no-kata and want to learn and understand it, will find an invaluable resource. Fukada is also a living legend, and here she shares her insights into the nature of Judo and her memories of Kano Shihan through an evocative photo album.

Sports / Golf

Golfing Communities in the Southeast: Places to Live and Play in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas by Dennis J. Phillips (McFarland & Company, Inc.)

The passion for golf infects its victims differently – it causes players to spend hours on the golf course monthly, weekly, even daily, looking for birdies and eagles, but instead often finding water, sand, and frustration. It manifests itself in devoted spectators who travel to follow amateur and professional tournaments played on several levels – local, regional, national, and even international. It breeds media viewers who follow the game on television, computer screens, newspapers, and magazines.

And then, according to Dennis J. Phillips, member of the library faculty at The Pennsylvania State University and the library director at Penn State Lehigh Valley, there are those who enjoy golf so much, they want to make it a prominent part of their retirement surroundings. Golfing Communities in the Southeast functions as both an informative source for such aficionados, and as a guide for the non-golfers in the family.

Several factors influence the decision on where to retire. The communities selected for inclusion in Golfing Communities in the Southeast offer challenging golf courses, a variety of real estate options, nearby dependable health care services, convenient and varied shopping opportunities, a relatively favorable year-round, out­door sports climate, continuing education opportunities, nearby dining and recreation, and regional artistic and cultural amenities. Therefore, the scope of non-golf information included is considerable to help golfers and non-golfers alike identify an acceptable place for retirement.

Details on golf communities in six southeastern states are presented: North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Organized by state, each chapter begins with information on state and city populations; sales, income and social security taxes; and a geographical description. Each state is divided into cities (geographical areas) that offer attractive retirement and golfing opportunities. Lists of a state's nationally ranked and overall best golf courses, as determined by Golf Digest, are also included.

This book is for golfers and golfing aficionados who are looking for places to retire. It is an informative and handy source for locating residential golf communities in the southeast. Although relocating is a difficult decision, Golfing Communities in the Southeast will help couples, families, and individuals find a place to retire that offers a balanced lifestyle for everyone.

Transportation / Automobiles

Hummer: How a Little Truck Company Hit the Big Time, Thanks to Saddam, Schwarzenegger and GM by Martin Padgett (Motorbooks International)

This is the story of how one little truck company created a vehicle that became larger than life, thanks to a large motor company, a war broadcast on round-the-clock news, and a Terminator.

What is it about the HUMMER that attracts and inflames so many people as it plows through America's suburban streets and backwater hideaways? Where did it come from? How did it evolve from the sand dunes of Kuwait on the nightly news to the driveways of America? And what did Arnold Schwarzenegger have to do with it?

This is what author and noted automotive journalist – Marty Padgett explores in Hummer.

Before Americans drove HUMMERS to the grocery store, the Humvee rolled across deserts and through jungles carrying soldiers, weapons, and equipment into the most remote locations and over the most difficult terrain on earth. The story of the civilian HUMMER begins before World War II and the Willys-Overland vehicles, the Jeeps, and up through the growth of AM General and its military contracts for unique transport vehicles through the 1970s and 80s. Worldwide notoriety came as the High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle, or Humvee, by its requisite military acronym, beamed into our homes during live broadcasts of Operation Desert Storm via brand new 24-hour cable news networks. Soon after, a certain action movie star personally encouraged a civilian market for what would become known as the HUMMER, built and sold by General Motors as the ultimate in suburban safety, comfort, style, and "beat the Joneses" prestige.

Filled with thorough research, detailed interviews, and the author's own insight, it's a tale of business, automotive innovation, and military history. And the tale gets even more interesting along the way, with environmentalists, politics, and a second Gulf war giving this powerful vehicle a reputation its creators never dreamed of.

Padgett tells the story, with detailed research and interviews, along with full-color photography of HUMMERs in action. Hummer is the story of a vehicle, a business, a country, and the SUV culture, in general, a fascinating read... and a rocky ride.

True Crime / Entertainment / Biographies & Memoirs

Girl Trouble: The True Saga of Superstar Gloria Trevi and the Secret Teenage Sex Cult That Stunned the World by Christopher McDougall (Rayo)

How did a chart-topping superstar, whose beauty and artistry were sensational enough to make her both a pinup girl and a feminist icon, end up behind bars in a Brazilian prison, accused of helping to mastermind the kidnap, rape, and brainwashing of nearly a dozen teenage girls?

In a foreshadowing of today's American Idol instant-celebrity machine, international superstar Gloria Trevi and her producer-boyfriend Sergio Andrade started a first-of-its-kind talent school for young girls in search of their own chance at the big time. Recruited from the most fervent fans at Gloria's sold-out concerts, teenagers from across Latin America began showing up at her house in Mexico City. Their numbers grew along with Gloria's fame, as hit record followed hit record and Gloria became one of Latin America's top TV and movie attractions. But after a few years, bizarre rumors began to spread that the school was actually a front for a sex-slave operation, which tortured and brainwashed the very girls who wanted to be just like their idol, Gloria Trevi.

Taking a look at this scandalous story, award-winning journalist Christopher McDougall in Girl Trouble recounts how Trevi went from obscurity to world fame to eluding authorities for two years, before her discovery and capture in Brazil. Through exclusive behind-bars interviews with both Trevi and Andrade, as well as with the girls who have come forward with their accusations, McDougall reveals the stranger-than-fiction twists and offers readers an insider's look at Andrade's peculiar personal history.

In the oddest twist to an already convoluted tale, Trevi found herself mysteriously pregnant in prison, prompting allegations by Brazilian authorities of an impregnation scheme involving Trevi and a notorious Brazilian gangster. Only later would the truth of the baby's paternity emerge. This September, Trevi was cleared of rape and kidnapping charges, and freed from the Mexican prison to which she had been extradited after five years – an Afterword was appended to Girl Trouble covering this last development.

The scandal has burned hot ...exposing the underside of an insular entertainment world filled with freewheeling sex... – The New York Times

Jailhouse Rock; Fugitive pop star Gloria Trevi and her manager, Sergio Andrade.. . finally busted in Brazil. – Time

Based on his feature for The New York Times Magazine, McDougall exposes this astonishing and salicious story, delving into the darker side of pop superstardom. Girl Trouble divulges the realities of fame and its consequences on our celebrity-starved psyches. From Tommy Mottola and Mariah and now Thalia, to Celine Dion and her husband/manager Rene Angelil, to Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, Girl Trouble narrates the psychological underpinnings of how and why many of our most talented superstars seem to be so easily manipulated. The book has more than enough depraved twists to please true-crime and pop-culture mavens alike. The book is also available in Spanish as La Atrevida.

Women’s Studies / Social Sciences

The Boundaries of Her Body: A Troubling History of Women's Rights in America by Debran Rowland (Sphinx Publishing, Sourcebooks, Inc.)

The battle for women's rights is an emotional and often polarized debate: a debate over what a woman is, what a woman ought to be, and what a woman should, therefore, be allowed to do. Today, the future of women's rights is in jeopardy.

If I had to guess at the future for women, I would say we stand to lose many more significant battles – and the rights that go with them – if we don't begin to abandon the niceties of a comfortable life with educated opinions and start waging the kind of aggressive, no-holds-barred guerrilla war that our opponents have been riding to victory. – from the Epilogue

Reproductive and abortion rights, privacy issues, medical advances and bodily integrity are not the only topics that are tackled in The Boundaries of Her Body. Property ownership, domestic abuse, and employment discrimination are also addressed and dismantled with legislative evidence to help readers understand their rights and how they have progressed (or regressed).

While women have come a long way and the strides they have made seem clear, Debran Rowland, journalist, civil rights attorney, and artist, first explains a more obscure form of discrimination and analyzes the recent developments in reproductive law and the rights of women today. She makes those connections between the law and the societal position that women hold on a front that is the most prominent, and yet rarely discussed – the biological one. For example, in a single year, the following happened:

• Texas legislators began debating passage of a bill with language declaring that "life" begins "at the moment of fertilization" (as opposed to the more definite moment of birth) and that an "unborn human organism" is alive and entitled to the rights, protections, and privileges accorded any "person" in the state. In a trend that has swept through local and federal state houses, lawmakers across the country continue to demonstrate a willingness to disregard and defy laws they do not agree with.
• The Unborn Victims of Violence Act, an emotion-based bill with the stated purpose of holding "perpetrators" accountable for the violent "deaths" of fetuses not yet born, passed into law after it was re-introduced for a third time in the Spring of 2003.
• Proponents of the bill embraced the use of Laci Peterson and the fetus she was carrying to push the measure through, calling it 'Connor's Law,' holding that life does not begin until birth.

Rowland meticulously researched thousands of original documents over a five-year period and finished The Boundaries of Her Body in seven years with more than four thousand footnotes. She charts the progress of women in America from the early

1600s when European women arrived in relatively large numbers – to modern issues through such areas as the workplace and medicine. The book that highlights and contrasts today's important issues with those of a time more than 200 years ago.

The Boundaries of Her Body explores the law and women's rights in regard to violence against women (including rape and domestic violence), battle for reproductive rights, adolescent women and their unique challenges and how women are defined by their bodies.

Debran Rowland covers every imaginable aspect of women's legal lives, up to the present day. This massive and remarkable history is well written in smart yet accessible language and is thus the perfect book. – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Debran Rowland brilliantly argues the continuing inequality of women's rights in America with the most meticulous and comprehensive research in our times. – Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique

Indispensable source book for courses in women's studies, especially valuable for its coverage of a multitude of court cases. – Kirkus Review

The Boundaries of Her Body is a project of passion on the part of Rowland; her parents were not allowed to be legally married in most states when she was born in 1963. Her mother was what they call African American now, but she was "colored" or ''Negroid'' back then. Her father was then and is still "white." Debran and her four siblings, were called "half breeds" growing up. Rowland's passion is justice, especially where it involves the question of fairness for women and minorities.

The Boundaries of Her Body is the definitive history of the cycle of advances and setbacks that characterize women's rights in America. Rowland covers emotionally charged issues with thoughtful detail, offering insight into the strategies used by politicians and lobbyists to defeat long-standing law. Through detailed insight and the use of court cases, The Boundaries of Her Body reveals the realities of the biology of a woman and how it has controlled her legal rights. Rowland chronicles the issues involved from the woman's point of view – revealing why each case is significant, and why it still matters today. Rowland combines provocative arguments with exhaustive research and affirms that, in spite of advancements, the boundaries of women's bodies will continue to be a source of bitter contention in the law. The political conclusions Rowland draws powerfully forecast lawmakers’ use of a woman’s biology against her by narrowing, broadening, dulling and sharpening the rights of women beyond the point of confusion, and finally, she discusses the future steps women can take to strengthen their positions.

Women’s Studies / History / Social Sciences / Humanities

Creating Women: An Anthology of Readings on Women in Western Culture, Volume I Prehistory through the Middle Ages by Linda Bennett Elder & Jean Gould Bryant (Prentice Hall) is a rich interdisciplinary two-volume anthology of primary source material examining women's participation in and contributions to western culture over the centuries.

The title, Creating Women, in addition to its obvious reference to creative women, reflects another important dimension of Western civilization: the ways in which societal notions of gender (masculine/feminine) and gender roles have in essence "created" and/or "constructed" women. Creating Women documents prevalent concepts of the nature of women, their roles and status in diverse cultures, geographic locations and periods of western civilization. Narrative framework, biographical vignettes and introductions to documents carefully place women and their achievements within the social context in which they lived and worked. The books cover many diverse women, including women from the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods, women from the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Ancient Israel, Crete, Greek women, Etruscan women, roman republic, Hellenistic world, Hellenistic Judaism, Roman Empire, Christian Origins and early Christian world, women in the religious and secular context, renaissance and reformation, the northern renaissance, reformation and counter reformation, women in arts and music, women writers and thinkers, age of the enlightenment and French/American Revolutions, literature and music, women and religion, theatre, dance music, artists and writers, new directions in art and diverse voices.

The goal of the two volumes in Creating Women is to provide students and instructors with a more comprehensive understanding of the history of humankind than has previously been available to the non­specialist, documenting the significant part women have played in the development of Western civilization, from the Upper Paleolithic era to the present. Authors Jean Gould Bryant, Valdosta State University, and Linda Bennett Elder, Florida State University, have brought together a varied collection of primary source materials including archeological artifacts, images, and texts that reveal women's participation in all aspects of human culture, religion, the visual and performing arts, literature, philosophy, and public affairs.

Each volume consists of three parts with five chapters in each. Volume One encompasses women and culture from prehistory through the middle ages, and Volume Two encompasses women and culture from the Renaissance to the present.

Volume One – Prehistory through the Middle Ages

• Part I: Women in Prehistory and the Ancient Near East

• Part II: Women in the Mediterranean and the Greco-Roman World

• Part III: Women in the Roman Empire, Christian Origins, Late Antiquity, and the Middle Ages

Volume Two – Renaissance to the Present

• Part I: Women in Early Modern Europe

• Part II: Women and Culture, 1750-1920

• Part III: Women and Culture in the Twentieth Century

Creating Women, like many other new texts, evolved from the need for reading materials for a new course, an interdisciplinary humanities course. In 1985, a team of Florida State University faculty and graduate students from history, dance, theater, music, English, classics, religion, humanities, and art history received a grant to develop an introductory course for women's studies that would also fulfill part of the university's liberal studies requirements. Bryant, director of the women's studies program, led that project and Elder was a member of the development team from its inception. As they proceeded to refine the course, they discovered that examining women's cultural achievements and struggles provides an innovative framework for discussing women's legal, socioeconomic, religious, and/or political status in different times and places. Creating Women is the product of an extended period of living with the material, adding to it and reconfiguring it in response to input from students and colleagues. Both volumes integrate insights from an abundance of new scholarship that has enriched women's history in all fields over the last three decades.

Features

• The narrative, biographical vignettes, and document introductions place women and their achievements within the broader social-political context in which they lived and worked.
• Introductory narrative helps guide students' analysis of material and facilitates class discussion.
• Maps, charts, and narrative link women and their achievements with more familiar events and personages in Western civilization and also illustrate significant clusters of female creativity.
• Selected bibliographies facilitate student projects and enable instructors to enrich classes with audio­visual material.

According to Elder and Bryant, as half of the human race, women have always been "making" history, yet their part in building Western civilization has been largely invisible. Until very recently, in fact, school and college courses and texts in the humanities, social and natural sciences, and the arts rarely mentioned women. Why were women missing from our books and curriculum? Women, the explanation went, were missing because they had not shaped major historical events and they had contributed little of significance to culture. Their lives revolved around the details of domestic routines and family concerns, whereas men dealt with matters of public import. However, female scholars suspected that the real reason women were missing related to perspectives and assumptions of the male scholars who wrote and taught history. They also knew that women's (and minorities') historical invisibility had provided a rationale for their exclusion from an entire range of leadership positions, professions, and creative endeavors.

We reviewed Volume One. Volume One is divided into three parts and covers a chronological framework that extends from ca. 35,000 B.C.E. to ca. 1500 C.E. Texts included in Volume One represent the most expansive geographic and chronological scope in Creating Women, and the most diverse and complex methods for analyzing the materials that are presented.

Elder and Bryant begin their inquiry into prehistory at the genesis of human culture, when earliest human communities where symbol systems had not yet been formalized into a written language (e.g. Neolithic Anatolia); therefore, images of art, iconography, and artifacts are presented as texts. They also devote considerable attention to the earliest societies that meet traditional criteria as historical, especially in Ancient Near Eastern Mesopotamia. Selections that were written by women in the Ancient Near East have customarily been available only to scholarly specialists. Many of these texts are fragmentary, requiring considerable contextualization from secondary sources, but they are texts by women and thus are indispensable to the historical record of women's contributions to culture. Evidence for so many texts written by women does not emerge again until the early Middle Ages of the Common Era nearly four thousand years later.

Creating Women, Volume One uniquely features Religion as a category for highlighting women's contributions to culture. Since the Enlightenment, and especially in the past century or so, to the extent that history has come to identify itself as science, religion has received only a cursory address in historical analysis. Religion is among the first social institutions in human culture, and, for good or ill, it is the social institution in which there exists the most extensive evidence of women's participation and contributions to culture from prehistory to the Early Modern period.

Each of the three parts in Volume One is preceded by an introduction that places primary source selections in historical and cultural context. Part I of Volume One explores Paleolithic and Neolithic Old Europe, Neolithic Anatolia, the Ancient Near East, Egypt, and texts from the Hebrew Bible. Part II addresses texts and images from the Mediterranean basin that are representative of Minoan Crete and ancient Etruria. It concentrates principally, however, on texts by and about women from Greece and Rome through the Hellenistic period. Part II concludes with texts from Hellenistic Ju­daism. The ordering process adopted for materials representing such diversity and scope is quite simple. Reading selections within each chapter in Parts I and II are organized as representative of such fundamental categories as: Social Organization, Legal Status of Women, Religion, Women in the Aristocracy, and Women Outside the Aristocracy, in order to facilitate clarity. This organizational structure also permits readers to observe distinct and decisive differences among women's experiences across cultures and across the centuries.

The focus in Part III is on women in the Early Roman Empire, Christian Origins, and Late Antiquity in the Greco-Roman World and in the Middle Ages in Western Europe. The final chapters in Volume One serve as a precursor to Volume Two. Readers will notice that for various reasons discussed in this introduction, Volume One is characterized as expansive and Volume Two is intensive. These last five chapters mark the transition. In Part III of Volume One, readers will find a rich profusion of texts written by women. The elemental categories used in Parts I and II are abandoned. Readings in Chapters 12 through 15 of Part III bring readers into social and historical contexts that are more familiar as representative of western civilization. The individual selections emerge from various genres and are arranged along lines of thematic interests within discrete chronological periods. Each major selection is prefaced with an introductory paragraph which discusses particular themes and provides biographical data where available. Smaller selections include a brief introductory comment. Suggestions for further reading are included at the end of most chapters throughout the volume.

Creating Women is an invaluable resource for students and teachers in a broad range of courses, and for anyone interested in women's impact on western culture. Its primary sources facilitate researching women's diverse contributions to Western culture. Exploration of women's creative endeavors from the Upper Paleolithic era to the present invites a powerful rethinking of the making of Western civilization. This expansive scope makes a compelling argument that women have been key in the development of culture from its very beginnings. It also reveals the centrality of gender as a crucial element of social organization and human experiences.

Documents are well situated within more familiar time frames and movements, yet clarify the often restrictive nature of these categories relative to women's experiences. Clear and concise introductions frame selections with pertinent details for contextualizing specific texts and images. While some individuals and selections will be familiar to many readers, others will represent new discoveries in the ongoing task of recovering forgotten women and their contributions.

Both Volumes One and Two are sensitive to the diversity of women's voices and experiences in Western culture, and celebrate the accomplishments of women from a broad range of backgrounds as well as the ingenuity of many whose circumstances worked against their talents and ambitions. The selections are lively and engaging, and often give very personal glimpses into both the societal creation of women and women's creativity.

The interdisciplinary approach Elder and Bryant take in Creating Women and the expansive timespan that they cover will generate spirited discussion. Their approach will also add significantly to readers’ understanding of women and gender in Western civilization, thereby providing a more complete and realistic picture of the history of humankind. Anna Washington, M.A.T., M.Ed.

Guide to this Issue's Contents

Page Contents: Fashion, Managing Motivation, Playing to Win, Cooking with Children,  The Relationships of Children, Archeology for Children, Children's Atlas of War, Computer Graphics, Skillet Cookery,  Movie about Music Legend Ray Charles, Supervision Counseling, When Gambling becomes a Disorder,  Psychoanalytic Work in a Public Clinic, A Southern Black Community, 9/11 Memoir, American Bunkers, Populists And Progressives, Gardening Orchids, Making Beaded Jewelry, The Extraordinary Potential of Pigs! Vernacular Buildings, Racist Fiction, American Dreams Transmogrified, Colombian Theatre in the Vortex, Benefits of Carnivores, Spirituality of Aloneness, More Open Society, Scalia Dissents, Economic Hit Men, Reading Food Labels for Nutrition, Atherosclerosis, Max Wertheimer Gestalt, Between Brain and Culture,  Reading Skills ESL, Writing Skills, Literary Terms Glossary, Collisions at Sea, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on Religion, Creative Kabbalah, Postmodern Christianity, Celtic Moon Goddess, Judaism and Christianity Origins, Astronomy, Weighing the Soul, Martial Arts, Golf In the Southeast, Automobiles: Hummer, Gloria Trevi's Cult Problems, Women's Rights in America? Readings about Women in Western Culture 

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