SirReadaLot.org

 April 2005, Issue #72

Guide to This Issue

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

Arts & Photography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the opening essay:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Business & Investing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Readers will find several themes occurring frequently in this text:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jack: The Great Seducer by Edward Douglas (HarperEntertainment)

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

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

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

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

Among the revelations in Jack:

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

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

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

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

Entertainment / Music / Biographies & Memoirs / African-American

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

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

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

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

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

Entertainment / Music / History

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

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

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

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

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

New Features of the Second Edition

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

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

Features of the Score Anthology

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

New to the Score Anthology

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

Features of the Recorded Anthology

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

New to the Recorded Anthology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These statistics are more than alarming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Health, Mind & Body / Self-help

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 17 games and exercises for individuals.

• 17 games and exercises for pairs.

• 5 massage exercises for pairs.

• 6 rituals of transformation.

• 6 games for the expansion of love energy.

• 3 meditation exercises.

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

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

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

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

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

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

History / Jewish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Included are:

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

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

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

A History of Germany 1815-1990, 4th edition by William Carr ( Arnold )

The recently united Germany is likely to exert formidable economic power and political influence in Europe , and this makes it more desirable than ever to understand its past. That is provided in the fourth edition of Carr's highly praised A History of Germany 1815-1990, an account that spans nearly two centuries, from the Congress of Vienna to the Revolution of 1989-90.

The latest edition of William Carr's classic text has been thoroughly revised and includes a new chapter on the revolution of 1989-90. That revolution is the focus of a new chapter; and Carr took the opportunity to revise other parts of the book in the light of recent research. Carr, Emeritus Professor of History in the University of Sheffield , died in 1991, shortly after revising the book.

The German Revolution of 1989-90 focused attention once again on the historic role of the German people. The ‘German problem’ has been one of the most perplexing concerns of mankind ever since the creation of a ‘united’ Germany in 1871, for the emergence of this new Great Power did not bring peace to Europe – on the contrary. Forty-three years later the German Empire was engulfed in a major conflagration for which the then German leadership bore a heavy share of responsibility. Twenty years later Hitler's Germany plunged the world into a new war ending once more in defeat, this time with even more devastating consequences. Looking back over Germany's turbulent history, there were perhaps three major reasons why the creation of a nation state in the land between the Oder and the Rhine had more ominous consequences for the course of European history than, say, the contemporaneous unification of Italy or the emergence of independent states in Central and Southeastern Europe after the First World War.

In the first place, the absence of clear cut geographical boundaries and the movement of German-speaking people into the Slav territories of Eastern and Central Europe over the centuries made it difficult to define the ‘natural’ frontiers of Germany with any degree of precision. A further complication arose from the fact that when the barbarian kingdoms donned the trappings of Imperial Rome in early medieval times, they conferred a universal character on themselves which was preserved for centuries in the form of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The spirit of univer­salism lingered on long after the empire ended in 1806. During the War of Liberation in 1813 Turnvater Jahn, one of the most popular writers and patriots of the day, dreamed of a Reich still ruled by the Hapsburgs but including the Dutch, the Flemings, the Danes and the Swiss, for were these peoples not as ‘German’ as the Prussians and Austrians? A century later the phenomenal success of Friedrich Naumann's Mitteleuropa, which advocated a close union with the wartime ally Austria-Hungary was a further manifestation of the deep longing for a greater Reich going beyond the Grossdeutschland ideal of 1848. When German officers between the wars spoke with pride of loyalty to the ‘imperishable Reich’ rather than to the ‘transitory republic’ of Weimar they, too, were elaborating on a theme running like a red thread through Modern German history. In the 1940s the fanatical followers of Hitler attempted to create a still greater Reich extending eastwards to the Urals with the Aryan race lording it over the subject Slav peoples.

A second set of problems arose out of the fluctuating boundaries of the German states which greatly complicated the creation of a national Reich. Although the origins of modernization in Germany stretched back into the mid-eighteenth century, Napoleon is rightly regarded as one of the makers of Modern Germany. The revolution he embodied dealt a mortal blow to medievalism and thrust Germany headlong into the modern world. The colorful but chaotic mosaic of the medieval empire was shattered as the states were reduced in number from 350 to thirty-nine in the German Confederation of 1815. In some of the new states, a sturdy regional patriotism flourished in the nineteenth century. Conservative thinkers praised the multiplicity of states as uniquely German. And, as each state was a manifestation of the Volksgeist, it followed that Bavaria, Württemberg and Hanover were German ‘nations’ as much as Prussia and Austria. At the same time French exploitation of Germany produced the first faint stirrings of a different form of patriotism: the desire for a new Reich standing above the states and depriving them of at least some of their sovereign powers. With this latter concept A History of Germany 1815-1990 is mostly concerned.

The third problem arose from the clash between regional and national patriotism. For the triumph of the national over the regional concept came about not by negotiation between equals but through the power-political ambitions of an unequal state: Prussia . Not that there was anything preordained about the turn of events that made Prussia, not Austria, the pace-maker in the process which transformed Germany from a quiet pastoral country, the home of poets and philosophers into the highly industrialized Little German empire ruled over in its last days by the energetic but unstable William II and feared by its neighbors. The Greater German and Mid European ‘solutions’ associated with Austria, the power house of universalism, enjoyed much more popular support in the mid-nineteenth century than is often realized. What Prussia possessed and Austria lacked was a superior military machine, a thriving economy and in Bismarck a political operator of genius who exploited with consummate skill a favorable international situation and harnessed middle-class opinion behind a ‘solution’ coinciding with Prussian territorial ambitions. On such accidents the course of history turns.

When Carr added a chapter on Germany since 1945 to the third edition of this history he supposed that the division of Germany into two states would last well into the twenty-first century. Was not the defeat of 1945 different in kind from that of 1918? Bismarck 's Reich survived that defeat in all essentials and within a few years regained much of its old power and influence. But in 1945 foreign armies invaded Germany for the first time since the days of Napoleon. With Russian soldiers established on the line of the river Elbe , the balance of power in Europe had altered decisively. Germany soon became a casualty of the First Cold War. By 1949 the Russian and Anglo-American zones of occupation hardened into separate states – the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic – which after 1961 were glowering at each other over the Berlin Wall. In a world dominated by two Superpowers, each fearful of the other's intentions and armed to the teeth with devastating weapons, wars of unification had clearly become an his­torical anachronism, completely transforming the nature of the German problem. To anyone writing during the two Cold Wars, hopes of unification seemed to have receded into the distant future. But contrarily, at the close of the 1980s the two states came together peacefully, a transformation which is discussed in the final chapter. How successful the new Germany will be in finding its rightful place in the world constellation will determine whether the ‘German problem’ has been resolved once and for all.

Scholarly yet readable, informative yet concise, this book remains the best single-volume history of modern Germany available. As before, it is essential reading for teachers and students alike. – Teaching History

Reviewers have consistently found Carr’s A History of Germany 1815-1990 the best single-volume survey in English of its kind. An understanding of Germany ’s past is amply provided in this highly praised fourth edition. The changes to this edition will ensure that it retains that high reputation and remains a readable, judicious and stimulating history of Germany in a period of immense change.

Body Snatching: The Robbing of Graves for the Education of Physicians in Early Nineteenth Century America by Suzanne M. Shultz (McFarland & Company)

Also called ‘resurrectionists,’ body snatchers, were careful not to take anything from the grave but the body – stealing only the corpse was not considered a felony since the courts had already said that a dead body had no owner.

Body Snatching recounts the practice of grave robbing for the medical education of American medical students and physicians during the late 1700s and 1800s in the US, why body snatching came about and how disinterment was done, and presents information on efforts to prevent the practice, a group of professional grave robbers, and the European experience. Burking – i.e., murder – was the alternative method of supplying ‘stiffs’ to medical schools; it is covered here as well.

Although the collection is entitled Body Snatching, a number of other terms are used interchangeably throughout the volume. Resurrectioning or resurrectionists, grave robbers, fishermen, snatches, grabs, and sack-em-up-men also refer to the practice of illegal disinterment of human remains and the persons who perform the work. Body snatching is the most descriptive in that would-be thieves took only bodies (sometimes referred to as ‘things’ or ‘stiffs’) for their purposes, leaving behind all of the personal effects that were buried with the deceased. Grave robbing for the motive of obtaining jewelry or other valuables buried with the deceased is beyond the scope of this book. Since stealing only the body from the grave was not considered a felony, the grave clothes were usually returned to the coffin to avoid any criminal wrongdoing.

Author Suzanne M. Shultz, director of Library Services of Philip A. Hoover, M.D. Library at WellSpan Health, York Hospital , says she started out fascinated with the subject, not intending to write a book. When she wrote a paper focusing on Pennsylvania law and events and it was well received, she continued her research. This book, wider in scope, is the result.

A great deal of material on body snatching is available, but it is neither easily accessible nor consistently indexed. It transects the lines of medical history, regional history, and general interest. Most of the recorded activity occurred in Great Britain and Scotland and literature is heavily weighted to those occurrences. For the most part, American literature appeared in newspapers, medical journals, and pamphlets. Newspapers are not indexed; pamphlets are randomly cited; medical indexing is vague.

Body Snatching is a compilation of certain activities of the last two centuries, a portrait of an undeniable part of medical history. It makes no moral judgments. From our vantage point in the 20th century, we can not fully know or understand the pressure for medical knowledge that drove young physicians to commit the acts detailed here. Any criticism would, therefore, be problematical.

According to Shultz Body Snatching is meant to be, as a friend so succinctly described, a form of painless learning. Although when taken as a whole, the book traces the development of body snatching in a more or less chronological fashion, it is divided into short segments that can be read out of context and still retain a sense of story.

Although it is intended to be as comprehensive as possible, this book is very probably incomplete; many incidents such as those reported here have remained hidden for decades and will surface only by accident, and some have been concealed intentionally.

Body Snatching presents a portrait of the practice of grave robbing for the medical education of American medical students and physicians during the late 1700s and 1800s in the United States . Explanations of why the practice existed, how disinterment of corpses was accomplished, and who committed these acts are recounted. Whenever possible, one or more actual reported cases of body snatching are used to illustrate. Public and private efforts to prevent grave robbing are related. A chapter has been included on American professional grave robbers, a group of characters that have remained largely unknown in American history, and a short passage on professional body snatchers may only scratch the surface of a much more widespread activity. Of particular importance is the rediscovery of George Christian, alias Dr. S.E. French, and his diary, both forgotten for more than a century. There is also a brief look at European practices of dissection and body snatching, inasmuch as their experience predates, yet parallels, the American experience. Public attitudes and religious objections, as well as a sample of the popular literature of grave robbing, are also chronicled. A selection of the state laws together with the forces that motivated enactment are retold. The eventual decline of grave robbing and the reasons that it died out are speculated.

An account of the practice of grave robbing for the medical education of American medical students and physicians during the late 1700s and 1800s in the US, explaining why the practice existed, how disinterment of corpses was accomplished, and who committed these acts. – Book News, Inc.

Body Snatching is an historical narrative or story. It is grounded in fact, but it is exciting, fascinating, tragic, appalling, and sometimes gruesome. Very little in Body Snatching is ‘new’ but the compilation of so many incidents in one monograph is unique.

Watkins Mill: The Factory on the Farm by Louis W. Potts & Ann M. Sligar (Truman State University Press)

When Waltus Watkins, a successful farmer and entrepreneur, decided to open a woolen mill on his rural western Missouri property in the late 1850s, he was not just undertaking another commercial venture. By locating the factory on his farm rather than in one of the thriving nearby towns, Watkins was making a conscious decision to blend agriculture and industry. In so doing, he addressed a philosophical question that had been raised a generation before by Thomas Jefferson and others: the role of technology in a largely agrarian society. As the United States entered the Industrial Revolution and then the Civil War, the folkways and nature of work changed drastically. Watkins Mill reflects that transition, as Watkins embraced new technologies yet clung to a more traditional and paternalistic management style. In seeking to shape the values and habits of his employee-neighbors through local institutions such as the school and church, he left his mark on an entire community.

As wagon paths grew into a thoroughfare linking nearby county seats, Watkins's farmstead in Clay County became a place where neighboring farmers came to pick up their mail; where a continuous stream of kin or acquaintances from Tennessee and Kentucky paid visits; where Friday night meetings of the local debate society featured the ora­tions of the young males in the three-county community.

Over the next two decades, Watkins developed a variety of ventures aimed at pro­cessing the yield of his flourishing agricultural pursuits. Neighbors from perhaps as far away as fifteen miles hauled their corn, logs, and livestock to his mills and barns. In turn flour, cornmeal, and lumber went home in the farm wagons or were sent to mar­ket. Then, on the eve of the Civil War, Waltus's most imposing and opportunistic enterprise – his woolen textile factory – was created. From far-flung national networks of steamboats and railroads came dyestuffs, machinery, and tons of raw wool destined for Watkins Mill. Yarn, cloth, shawls, and blankets were dispatched to customers or consigned to storekeepers within a seventy-five-mile radius. Mill workers of all ages, genders, and skill levels were drawn from industrial centers in the eastern U.S. and Europe , as well as from nearby farms. Entire families were employed at the mill, extending Watkins's impact and influence to multiple generations.

At Watkins Mill, the habits and values associated with the rural South mingled with more modern behaviors and attitudes linked with industrial society. Rather than viewing these contrasting folkways as the source of conflict, Watkins sought to make them complementary, to blend the dynamism of the Factory with his more progressive agrarian pursuits. He wanted his factory to remain in a rural setting, as a pastoral experiment. Watkins Mill was to be, in historian John Kasson's terms, "a middle distance, between city and wilderness." There would be no intense focus on industrialism here; no city or even town arose from this community.

Watkins's Jeffersonian experiment flourished for a number of years, in spite of severe political and economic challenges. The combination of Watkins's death in 1884 and the rapid decline in the woolen industry in the Midwest at about the same time led to the mill's eventual failure. The woolen factory was for the most part silent for the last fifteen years of the century, and the community around it slowly dwindled. The farmstead itself remained vibrant, as the Watkins offspring who remained grew acres of oats and hay, tended herds of Shorthorn cattle and milk cows, and pruned extensive orchards, all (like their father) with an eye on the market.

The story of Watkins Mill is both archetypal – Waltus, his family, associates, and employees; his westward migration; his social values; and his entrepreneurial drive represent much of nineteenth-century America – and unusual – the extent of Watkins's enterprises and his purposeful and successful combination of agriculture and industry. Similarly, it was both a societal upsurge of interest in historic preservation and a remarkable local political effort that saved the mill and homestead for posterity.

To tell the story, authors Louis Potts, professor of history at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Ann Sligar, retired Historic Site Administrator for the Mill, in Watkins Mill weave together many threads: family correspondence, business documents, church archives, newspapers, census records, archaeological evidence, folklore, oral history, and perhaps most important of all, the buildings and machines remaining at the site. Since 1964, Watkins Mill has been a Missouri State Historic Site; it is also designated as a National Historic Landmark and a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. In the words of industrial chronicler Laurence Gross, it "contains the finest collection of nineteenth-century textile machinery in situ in North America and includes the most significant textile artifacts known to survive.... The machinery and building can provide modern viewers a great deal of information about the cloth-making process and about the history of machine-building, industrial development, and the working life of the men and women who worked there."

Using a wealth of detail, the authors set forth the intersection farm and factory, bringing Watkins Mill to life and describing the role of the mill in the late-nineteenth century community. The authors use a wide range of sources to describe local social, economic and technological developments in the context of broader national events and developments. Generous use of illustrations help[s] involve the reader in the tale. – Laurence F. Gross, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Although the factory might now be silent, the structure and the machines are not mute. Combined with the documentary records of the Watkins’s agricultural and industrial endeavors, the Watkins Mill, the historic site, and Watkins Mill, the book, offer testimony of how the Industrial Revolution came to rural Missouri in the mid-nineteenth century.

Home & Garden

The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer by Stephanie Cohen & Nancy J. Ondra (Storey Publishing)

Every gardener loves perennials: all one has to do is buy them and plant them, and most will flourish and even expand year after year. But in addition to reliability, perennials offer gardeners a wonderful opportunity to make a stunning visual statement in their home landscapes – if one knows how to combine and arrange them.
In The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer, Cohen and Ondra, two top garden writers and teachers, walk gardeners step-by-step through the process of creating new gardens, as well as of bringing new life to gardens that have lost their luster. They explain how to pick perennials that suit the site by making the most of plant color, shape, size, and texture and how to create eye-catching plant combinations. Illustrations accompany the new garden plans, and photographs by award-winning photographer Rob Cardillo capture how Cohen and Ondra have redesigned their own gardens. The authors also offer down-to-earth design solutions for 20 specific types of gardens, including everything from a minimum maintenance garden to a more complex container garden, from planting a formal border to indulging in the controlled chaos of a cottage garden.  

The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer shows gardeners how to identify a personal style, then combine and arrange perennials – and partner them with annuals, biennials, bulbs, grasses, and shrubs – in colorful garden designs that provide years of pleasure.

This user-friendly guide to designing with perennial plants is written by two accomplished garden writers, Cohen and Ondra, who are not only knowledgeable and experienced, but also incredibly passionate about plants. That doesn't mean they always agree, however – Cohen loves flower color and form; Ondra is fanatical about vibrant foliage. As readers see how each author puts her theories and preferences to work, they may be inspired and liberated to try new approaches in their own gardens as well.

Divided into three parts, The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer begins with the basics of practical garden design, including selecting plants to match the site, creating appealing combinations of color and texture, and adding finishing touches like paths, fencing, and lighting. In Part Two, Cohen and Ondra offer 20 original garden plans, dissected and analyzed, to show how basic design principles can be put into action to solve problems, introduce dynamic color effects in the garden, and create specialty gardens that are simply dynamite in every season. Part Three features case studies using the authors' own gardens to illustrate real-life problems and solutions. Sharing their own successes as well as their disappointments, the authors guide home gardeners through the entire design process, from analyzing the site and creating a plan on paper through planting and maintenance.

… By bringing a refreshingly relaxed attitude to a well-worn topic, Cohen and Ondra give it friendly appeal. Both are professional designers and private enthusiasts who believe "you don't really know a plant until you've killed it." Readers who follow their ample, practical advice are much more likely to create beautiful gardens than to kill many plants, and even experienced gardeners will pick up some tips. … – a Publishers Weekly

 … Especially helpful are 20 original, plant-by-numbers designs addressing a variety of garden challenges; and thoughtful information about garden renovation will be savored by new homeowners who have inherited someone else's mistakes, or established gardeners weary of their current landscaping. Plant charts, reading lists, and detailed descriptions of more than 475 perennials round out this welcome addition to any garden library. – Booklist

In The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer, Cohen and Ondra, offer fun, organized, and – most importantly – attainable advice on how to create gorgeous gardens using these beloved plants. Their chatty style lends a warm tone to the text, making it easily accessible and fun to read, while offering practical advice that delivers beautiful results.

The pages of The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer are filled with lush photography, which illustrates concepts, including color theory, garden proportion, plant combinations, and various garden styles. Exquisite watercolor paintings are paired with each of the 20 garden design plans to accurately illustrate realizations of the garden at its height. An at-a-glance, color-coded chart makes it easy to make plant choices according to bloom season, as well as flower and foliage color, plant height, soil and light requirements, and zone ranges. The stunning package, practical advice, and inspirational voices of Cohen and Ondra make The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer a welcome addition to any garden library. Whether readers are breaking ground for a new garden, or revitalizing an existing bed, The Perennial Gardener's Design Primer can help them achieve great results – year after year.

The Big Boat to Bye-Bye by Ellis Weiner (New American Library)

These crossover genres are hard to classify – is this humor or is it a mystery? It’s both.
Pete Ingalls – ‘the Pee-Wee Herman of Philip Marlowes’ (New York Daily News) – is back. Okay, fine, so who do we blame?

Try Ellis Weiner, author of Drop Dead, My Lovely (Pete's debut novel), as well as The Joy of Worry, Yiddish with Dick and Jane, and a million so-called humor pieces for the likes of The New Yorker, Paris Review, New York Times Magazine and Modern Humorist.

This time Pete's up to his baby blues inside the world of children's television. Sound adorable? Don't kid yourself. In The Big Boat to Bye-Bye a children's TV show becomes a blackmail target when obscene outtakes fall into the hands of some bad guys. Good guy private eye Ingalls is called in to investigate, only to become entangled in a murder, and discover the liberating potential of puppets.

As Ingalls and his fast-talking, fast-thinking hottie assistant, Stephanie Constantino, discover, a preschool show like Playground Pals looks cute and educational on the tube, but in the studio it's a snake pit of intrigue and double-dealing where money and ambition collide, where you shouldn't necessarily trust the talking dog, and where everybody's somebody's puppet.

The setup: a DVD of dirty outtakes – the Playground Pals characters saying and doing obscene things in between filming – falls into the hands of bad guys. The bad guys blackmail the producers. The producers hire Ingalls. Ingalls suspects everybody – and yet he has no evidence. Incompetence and hilarity ensue.

And a person ends up dead.

Can Pete foil the blackmailers and solve the murder, or at least figure out who's the tough guy tailing him? If he can't, can Stephanie? Are there some deep thoughts about the nature of consciousness and the liberating potential of puppets, as well as a very odd subplot concerning a missing necklace and three strangely collusive women?

What do you think?

The Big Boat to Bye-Bye is a very funny mystery from a very funny writer. What else did readers expect from an author who wrote for humor rags like National Lampoon and Spy?

Literary Criticism / Literary / Medieval

Nature's Cruel Stepdames: Murderous Women in the Street Literature of Seventeenth Century England by Susan C. Staub (Medieval and Renaissance Literary Studies: Duquesne University Press) presents a unique selection of seventeenth century pamphlets revealing the popular press's obsessive concern with female violence –violence that is almost always domestic – along with a discussion of the texts' historical and cultural contexts.

Modernized and annotated, the pamphlets in Nature's Cruel Stepdames vividly illustrate the precarious and often contradictory legal position of the early modern English woman. Because the early modern woman was so thoroughly defined by her mari­tal status (either married or to be married), the crimes chronicled in this study – infanticide, child murder and husband murder – focus almost exclusively on women’s roles as wives and mothers

Although these texts describe events that were extreme and extraordinary, they provide samples of the period’s definition of the proper scope of maternal and wifely authority. In their focus on female criminality at a time when women seemed to be gaining greater power and authority within the domestic sphere, these writings seek not so much to warn readers of the dangers of insubordinate women, but to assure that all women remain in their properly ordained places as wives and mothers. Furthermore, while these accounts provide examples of the household gone awry, by nega­tion they offer a definition of the properly ordered family. Almost invariably, an unintended side effect of these stories is that in their policing of the unruly woman, they critique the very patriarchy they mean to support.

According to author Susan C. Staub, more often than not, the woman's actions in these pamphlets are explained as the result of sexual transgressions: sex out of wedlock, adultery, or promiscuity. In choosing the texts for Nature's Cruel Stepdames, Staub, professor of English at Appalachian State University, says she had two goals. First, she sought to include both representative and unusual pamphlets. So Staub includes works such as Deeds Against Nature and Monsters by kinde, a fairly typical account of an unmarried mother who kills her illegitimate newborn by throwing it in a privy, and Murther, Murther. Or, A bloody Relation how Anne Hamton . . . murthered her deare Husband, the story of a wife who murders her husband simply because she wants more social and economic freedom. But she also offers more unusual narratives, narratives often as interesting for the way they relate their stories as for the stories they tell.

Staub says her second goal was to choose texts that correspond to the commonplace stages of the early modern woman's life: maid, wife, and widow. She added the role of mother to the familiar trio of stages because married mothers are profoundly important in the murder pamphlets of the period. In fact, although unmarried, infanticidal mothers were apparently more prevalent in early modern England , the popular literature focuses more on married mothers who murder their children. This focus suggests that child murder by a wife was more shocking basically because it was less common, but it also indicates an anxiety about maternal power.

Stories of husband murderers, women who most blatantly overturn the definition of the wife as feme covert, comprise the first section of Nature's Cruel Stepdames. Staub begins with the married woman because she represents the norm of early modern society. Strangely, most of these accounts emphasize the motivation for the wife's actions. In detailing why these women committed their crimes, the authors seek to explain – and hence contain – the crime. But the attention to motivation also gives the criminal limited psychological reality. Women thus depicted are shown to be not entirely subsumed in their husbands but to have desires and wills of their own. By subtly challenging the legal definition of the wife, this literature seems to indict the entire marital framework; both the wives and husbands ignore the strictures on appropriate household behavior. Husbands are shown beating and raping their wives, speaking harshly, or neglecting them altogether, or squandering their family estates and leaving their dependents destitute. Wives respond with anger, adultery, and ultimately, violence.

The second section in Nature's Cruel Stepdames is devoted to married mothers, the figure in many ways most problematic in this literature. As mothers, these women possess very real and socially sanctioned authority; as wives, they must cede that authority to their husbands. These pamphlets seem to recognize this conflict by depicting these women as good mothers, good mothers who murder their children. Often their violence is perpetrated not to break free from patriarchal constraints but rather to conform to them. Although the texts are frequently ambivalent in their analysis of motivation, for the most part these women commit their crimes out of a concern for their children's physical, spiritual, and mental well-being. And yet, despite sympathetic portrayals of these criminals, almost all these texts present maternal power as conflicted, with the mothers' actions representing a contest for power within the household.

The next selection of texts concerns unmarried women who murder their illegitimate babies. Though unmarried mothers who commit infanticide are constructed as monsters in this literature, closer examination reveals that they are actually the most powerless of any of the violent women included in Nature's Cruel Stepdames. Mostly poor servants struggling to survive in a society that holds little place for them, these women commit their crimes out of a desperate attempt to maintain their jobs and reputations. Their actions represent not a subversion of the social order but an endorsement of it.

The final section concerns one of the more unusual cases treated in the murder pamphlets, the miraculous story of Anne Greene, a woman who is executed for infanticide but is revived during a public autopsy. The story of the hanged woman revived exists in several versions both in English and French and offers a vivid example of the ways popular culture reshaped narratives to invest them with meanings appropriate to the culture and time. Confronted with a criminal whose punishment apparently offers no lesson about proper behavior because the execution fails, these pamphleteers attempt to reconstruct her into a socially acceptable version of proper womanhood.

The works examined in Nature's Cruel Stepdames were not written to be great literature, but to respond to, report on, or even to exploit events that early modern society found significant. Because these texts so richly reflect their culture, they offer an invaluable source for interrogating the domestic, economic, and legal conditions of seventeenth century women. Chosen both for the class and social issues they investigate and for their correspondence to the traditional stages of a woman's existence in those times, these stories show readers what writers found important enough to tell, how they told them.

Literature & Fiction

Mahu or The Material by Robert Pinget, translated by Alan Sheridan-Smith (French Literature Series: Dalkey Archive Press)

Robert Pinget's Mahu or The Material tells the story of Mahu, who, unlike his ambitious, successful brothers, is a lazy man who approaches the world around him with a defiant spirit and a witty outlook on life. Part of the reason for Mahu's laziness is that he may be nothing more than a character in a failing novel by his friend Latirail, a novel that is being overrun by characters invented by yet a different author.

The second half of the book consists of Mahu's strange and hilarious musings on everything from belly dancers to how he catches ideas from other people in the same way he catches germs.

Robert Pinget (1919-1997) wrote many plays and essays during his lifetime, along with fourteen novels, including Someone, The Inquisitory, Baga, and Passacagia. Best known as a practitioner of the French New Novel, he is considered to be one of France 's most innovative writers and received a number of awards, including the prestigious Prix Fémina for Someone and the Prix des Critiques for The Inquisitory.

What can one say of Pinget . . . except that he conveys an impression of integrity, intelligence, and power. – John Updike, New Yorker

[The Inquisitory] is one of the most important novels of the last ten years. – Samuel Beckett

Robert Pinget is one of the current French novel's few indisputable glories. – John Sturrock , New York Times

Pinget has succeeded in creating a character fit to rank with Joyce's Bloom. – Vivian Mercier , New York Times

A mix of dark humor and manic wordplay, Mahu or The Material is Pinget's funniest novel and is as inventive now as when it was first published.

Mysteries & Thrillers

Cheapskates by Charlie Stella (Carroll & Graf Publishers)

Reese Waters, the lead character in Charlie Stella’s new thriller, Cheapskates, is an unlikely hero.

Reese is a former bus driver and ex-con who merely wants to do the right thing by prison buddy Peter Rizzo. Headstrong, principled, edgy, and a bit naive, Reese stumbles into the hard-boiled heart of Stella's fast-paced, fast-talking, continually unpredictable plot. But Reese doesn't falter, because he made Pete a promise. He just doesn't expect the right thing to entail $50,000 in cash, a funeral, the mean-spirited schemes of Rizzo's congenitally greedy ex-wife, confrontations with Mafia consigliore Jimmy ‘Wigs’ Valentine (he's got a lot more wigs than scruples), two hit men, a Nation of Islam splinter group, and the homicide investigation of two New York police detectives. Reese is barely a day out of Fishkill Penitentiary before his world is spinning crazily out of control because everybody's after the money, which is all at once a divorce settlement, an unhonored debt, a ransom demand, a shakedown, a killer's fee, and a mere fifty g's.

The promise Reese made is a promise that the ruthless, grasping, and increasingly dangerous cheapskate characters in Cheapskates don't want Reese to keep.

Stella, author of several off-off Broadway plays as well as three widely praised crime novels: Eddie's' World, Jimmy Bench-Press, and Charlie Opera, has written a shrewd new crime novel that skates fast – but not cheap.

Two pals walk out of New York 's Fishkill Penitentiary. One, Reese Walters, wants nothing more than to go home to his mom in Brooklyn and drive a cab. The other, Peter Rizzo, wants nothing to do with Reese's plan of buying a cab and lives only for revenge on his ex-wife, who made off with $50,000 of his money. Reese's plans explode when his pal is shot down on the street. Bothered by the indifference shown by both cops and Rizzo's family to the murder, Reese starts looking into his friend's death on his own. This puts the somewhat innocent Reese into the middle of a metropolitan Macbeth filled with mobsters, bent cops, a Nation of Islam splinter group, and a rapacious ex-wife. Stella, the author of three well-received, character-driven crime novels – Eddie's World (2001), Jimmy Bench-Press (2002), and Charlie Opera (2003) – presents another deeply realized hero confronting a greed-crazed world. – Connie Fletcher, Booklist

With dynamite dialogue, high-octane action, and hardboiled humor, what Stella's Cheapskates will do for the money gets as wild as the ride of a runaway bus loose on Second Avenue . Readers will eagerly await the next book from this talented author.

Mysteries & Thrillers

The Thin Man [UNABRIDGED] by Dashiell Hammett, read by William Dufris, 5 cassettes, total playing time 5 house, 58 minutes (Mystery Masters Series: The Audio Partners Publishing Corp.)

There are many famous books that few people have actually read, but everyone has read The Maltese Falcon and The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Thin Man. Right?

What? Okay, there must be readers who haven't read Dashiell Hammett's last and funniest book. And they should. All the wit of Nick and Nora is there, and the plot from the book needed no change to make the film one of the greatest American mystery comedies ever.
Nick Charles was a hard-edged gumshoe for years until his wife Nora inherits a tidy sum. After six years living away, Nick is back in his old haunt, New York , where it seems his very unwelcome past is ready to resurface. Enter pretty, blond, Dorothy Wynant, daughter of weird (and possibly insane) inventor Clyde Wynant. Wynant's secretary/mistress has just been murdered. Despite Nick's constant assertions that he's not in the business anymore and definitely not on the case, he gets drawn into a complicated web of family matters, confused identities, and surprising evidence. Wife Nora is a willing accomplice as they sift through the players in the mystery, all the while sipping cocktails and socializing in rarefied New York society. Despite his reluctance, he and Nora are drawn into a byzantine world of speakeasies, sociopaths, and shady ladies.

Dashiell Hammett is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer. – Boston Globe

You probably already know that The Thin Man is not actually Nick Charles, but Clyde Wynant, a successful inventor who has disappeared. When his daughter asks for help in finding him, Nick refuses. He's retired from being a private detective, having married the very wealthy Nora, and he is intent on spending his days and nights drinking, dancing, playing, and looking after his wife's fortune. Nora persuades him to take the case because she thinks it would be great fun. And it is – especially for the reader. While generally regarded as the most lightweight of Hammett's five novels (it is), it is also the second most entertaining (after The Maltese Falcon). Try it for a great sense of the good life in the New York of the 1930s. – Otto Penzler, Amazon.com

Reader William Dufris, voted one of the "Best Voices at the End of the Century" by AudioFile magazine, in his rendition of The Thin Man renders Hammett's wit and world-weariness with his usual panache, and his performance brilliantly captures the edgy panache of 1930s New York.

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), recognized as a master of hard-boiled detective fiction, spent his early twenties working as a detective in San Francisco . He began writing fiction after serving in WWI, and had his first success in the popular crime magazine, Black Mask. The Thin Man was made into a movie in 1934, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and spawned an entire series of films.

Mysteries & Thrillers / Short Stories / Animals

Creature Cozies: A Menagerie of All-New Mysteries from… edited by Jill M. Morgan (Berkley Prime Crime)

Bad human! Bad, bad human!

We all know that our innocent-looking pets can commit a lot of unexpected mischief. But sometimes they have a talent for sniffing out the two-legged troublemakers of a more dangerous kind...

Featuring a lovable cast of crime-solving canines and sly, sleuthing cats, Creature Cozies, a unique collection of 11 mysteries – written by some of today's most beloved authors, with a little inspiration from their four-legged friends – takes the age-old friendship between pets and their providers and stands it on its fuzzy ear. Edited by Jill M. Morgan, author of numerous novels and anthologies, the collection features these stories:

• A rough-and-tumble tomcat with a heart of gold takes a liking to a sweet old lady, and ends up having to save her from her own scheming relatives in Carole Nelson Douglas’s "Junior Partner in Crime."
• A lady private eye gets a full week of dog days when she's hired to protect a beloved pooch from a sinister conspiracy in Maxine O’Callaghan’s "Going to the Dogs."
• In editor Morgan’s "Scratch That One," a beleaguered antique-store owner and her flighty feline uncover a long-lost photo of a child that leads them into the past – and a bittersweet mystery of motherly love.
• From New York Times bestselling author J.A. James comes the story of a spunky senior citizen and her two loyal golden retrievers who try and put the collar on a ruthless killer in "Highest, Best Use."

And the rest of the writers include:

• Jan Burke
• Dick Lochte
• Marlys Millhiser
• Ed Gorman
• Jane Haddam
• Gary Phillips
• Noreen Ayres

Whether readers have a furry friend to curl up with, or they just like to curl up with a good story, Creature Cozies is a unique and rewarding treat. Get ready to meet this mystery menagerie...they're cute, they're cuddly – and they're on the case.

Mysteries & Thrillers

The Killing Club by Marcie Walsh, with Michael Malone (Hyperion)

The Killing Club [ABRIDGED] by Marcie Walsh, with Michael Malone, narrated by Marcie Walsh, 4 compact discs, (Random House Audio)

Marcie Walsh, as played by Kathy Brier, has been a fan favorite since her first appearance on One Life to Live in October 2002. Her quirky yet endearing character, the receptionist at the police station, has battled a myriad of challenges, such as staging an intervention for a drug-addicted college student (who later became her boyfriend), dealing with the deceptive behavior of her best friend, and of course, falling in love. The Killing Club, ostensibly written by her, but actually written by Michael Malone, critically acclaimed novelist and head writer of  One Life to Live from 2002-4, has been integrated into a full year of episodes beginning March 2004 and continuing through the book's publication. Not only will fans see Marcie writing the book on the show, but they will notice that, eerily, what she writes begins to come true.

The novel goes like this: over a decade ago in the small town of Gloria , New Jersey , feisty, red-headed outcast Jamie Ferrara and eleven friends from Gloria Hart High School started a club. They would come up with ingenious ways to kill people they didn't like – and write down these ‘pretend’ murders in a Death Book. Calling themselves the Killing Club, the group of misfits voted on who was most likely to get away with their imaginary murders. It was harmless fun . . . or so they thought.

More than a decade later, Detective Sergeant Jamie Ferrara of the Gloria Police Department has a homicide investigation on her hands. The victim is Ben Tymosz, one of her fellow Killing Club members. And worse, Ben's death is an exact replica of a ‘murder’ once dreamed up in the club. Jamie's boss, her fiancé, Rod, is sure the death is just a ghoulish accident. But when the club reunites for Ben's funeral, the unimaginable happens: another murder, another Killing Club member dead, another crime copied from the Death Book.

Soon Jamie is getting death threats – anonymous notes with details only those in the club would know. Someone is targeting the Killing Club, and all signs point to one of their own. Jamie's oldest friends turn into suspects. In a race against time, Jamie must separate her teenage memories from her hardened cop's instincts and find the killer – by learning dark secrets at the heart of the Killing Club – before everyone in the group is dead, including Jamie.

Malone, an Edgar winner, struts his stuff here. The twists twist well, the characters have just the right amount of depth, and Malone's splendid use of detail enables him to create a fascinating, multidimensional community. – Booklist

Walsh/Malone craft an interesting plot spiced up by the Peyton Place -like antics. – Publishers Weekly

This readable, entertaining effort should find wide readership. – Library Journal

The Killing Club is a suspenseful page-turner that will leave readers riveted. The novel crackles with murder, love, and betrayal and introduces the smart young detective Jamie Ferrara. And there’s a bit of romance and humor thrown in too.

Parenting & Families / Pre-teens

First Moon: Celebration and Support for a Girl's Growing-Up Journey [BOX SET] by Maureen Theresa Smith ( New World Library)

Nothing rocks a girl's world as much as her first period.

It can be an exciting time, but it can also be challenging as she experiences the changes happening with her body and moods. Like most transitional times in life, it's a time to prepare for the journey ahead, and with First Moon readers discover that becoming a woman is empowering and infinitely creative.

First Moon is a boxed set, developed by Maureen Theresa Smith, an experienced facilitator of girls' self-esteem circles, designed to support girls as they develop physically and socially into young women. It offers easy-to-understand biological information as well as guidance for going through the emotional and social changes of puberty with grace and confidence. It includes a journal as well as a guidebook featuring stories from girls around the world, affirmations, visualizations, rituals, and crafts and projects ranging from beading and baking to beauty treatments. It also contains stickers, henna tattoos, a calendar, and a moon cycle spinner wheel.

Designed to support girls before and during their first year of menstruation, this package offers:

•  An informative and fun 160-page guidebook

• A beautiful companion journal

• A 13-month flow chart calendar

• 3 sheets of colorful stickers

• A reusable keepsake box

With facts, safety tips, recipes, crafts, meditations, and inspirational stories, First Moon delivers practical guidance for navigating change with grace.

Maureen Smith's First Moon is a delightful, caring, practical guide for girls approaching menarche. Every girl should receive this gift that overflows with the joy of being female and teaches her to care for herself as she develops, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It contains a wealth of information about the female body and widens our view with stories from other cultures – for example, Egyptian, American Indian, Mexican – that reflect positive attitudes toward becoming a woman. Written in an accessible supportive voice, mothers will find that they too are enriched by sharing this guide with their daughters. – Virginia Beane Rutter, author of Celebrating Girls and Embracing Persephone

Colorful and artistic, First Moon offers support to girls as they develop physically and socially into young women. Emphasizing the strong connection between a young woman, her community, and our natural world, First Moon boosts girls’ creativity, confidence, and body awareness with style and finesse. Down-to-earth, warm, and encouraging, First Moon is a welcome resource for young girls and their parents, and a thoughtful gift for girls ages nine to 14.

Philosophy / Consciousness & Thought

Paranoia and Contentment: A Personal Essay on Western Thought by John C. Hampsey (University of Virginia Press)

Paranoia has in modern times taken on the purely negative definition of ‘mental derangement.’ In his new book Paranoia and Contentment John Hampsey turns upside-down this negative conception, coining two new words to reveal the different ways paranoia operates.

A hybrid in both content and style, Paranoia and Contentment is an investigation into Western intellectual history. Hampsey, Professor of English at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis, Obispo, approaches paranoia not as a clinical term for an irrational sense of persecution but from a uniquely positive perspective, as a cultural truth – a way of understanding the history of human thought and perhaps the best way to describe Being itself.

Hampsey turns first to the ancient Greeks to explore the origin of the concept of paranoia. "Paranoia" – literally "beside the mind" – was the Greeks' primarily negative term for thinking outside the usual thought processes, or beyond reason. Working from this classical definition, Hampsey sees paranoia operating in two distinctly different ways. First there is the paranoic, his name for off-track thinking that is expansive, creative, even visionary. This is opposed to the paranoidic, which is motivated by fear, delusion, and a pursuit of contentment so obsessive that it has crippled human imagination and diminished tolerance of those who are perceived to threaten that contentment. The distinction is especially significant because the paranoidic so dominates Western thought and culture that paranoic thinking has become nearly lost to us.

Hampsey seeks to recover this expansive mode of thought by tracing an arc of paranoic moments in Western culture. Abraham, Jesus, Socrates, Hypatia, Joan of Arc, Goethe, Blake, Kierkegaard, Schreber – these are only a few among the many figures whom the author examines in order to isolate moments in Western intellectual history when paranoic vision temporarily breaks through the barriers of paranoidic fear. The book's analyses and inquiries are joined by anecdotal interludes in which Hampsey applies the conflicting concepts of paranoic and paranoidic to revealing moments in his own life.

Paranoia and Contentment is a fascinating exercise in redefining 'paranoia' and coining the word 'paranoidic', thereby positing new criteria for analyzing our life and society today. – Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Paranoia and Contentment is a sharply reasoned, humane, surprising, and intellectually bold meditation on paranoic vision. Part scholarship, part personal essay, this beautifully written book turns upside down our standard thinking about paranoia, creativity, imagination, and what it is to be wholly human. – Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried and winner of the National Book Award

An extraordinarily original rumination on the human condition, ranging across a broad field of philosophical thought and Western literature.... Hampsey's goal is to startle us into reconsidering our conventional ways of thinking, and I believe he has achieved that goal admirably.... Eminently readable, often eloquent. – Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus, Boston University , author of A People's History of the United States

Paranoia and Contentment is a bold and original investigation into Western intellectual history. Written with a combination of literary analysis and personal insight, Paranoia and Contentment is an eye-opening journey into the moments in Western intellectual history, and the author's own life, when paranoic vision temporarily breaks through the barriers of paranoidic fear. As humanly engaging as it is erudite, the book reclaims paranoic thinking as a crucial part of our consciousness and an indispensable component to understanding our cultural history.

Philosophy

Justice by Louis P. Pojman (Foundations of Philosophy Series: Pearson Prentice Hall)

Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale. – Augustine, City of God

Justice is not the only social-political value, and those who take an absolutist line (fiat justicia ruat caelum – "let there be justice even if the heaven falls") are mistaken. But justice is of vital importance and merits comprehensive attention. The concept is a systematically contested one that is tossed about rhetorically from many quarters. A plethora of confusing, competing theories abound, so that one needs a road map to find one's way about.

Part of the Foundations of Philosophy Series, Justice is written from the viewpoint that although justice is the most important concept in political philosophy, it is also one of the most contested concepts. The material presents a philosophical map to navigate the plethora of confusing, competing theories and concepts regarding the importance of justice.

Author Louis P. Pojman, Cambridge University , begins Chapter 1 with an Introduction, giving an overview of the concept of justice and arguing that justice is a vital part of political philosophy, which in turn is part of moral philosophy. Morality is the most important institution for social life, and politics is a function of morality. Pojman distinguishes between formal and material concepts of justice and discuss the related issues of comparative/noncomparative justice and distributive versus commutative justice. In Chapter 2 he outlines the classic desert theory of justice. Chapter 3 examines the libertarian concept of justice in the work of Robert Nozick. Chapter 4 discusses the most prominent liberal theories, those of the late John Rawls. Chapter 5 looks at recent pluralist theories of justice, developing Pojman’s own version of these theories, and showing how they can be consistent with objectivist theories. Chapter 6 examines the idea of equal opportunity, arguing that while the concept of equal opportunity is ambiguous, it is the most plausible candidate for a lineage between equality and justice. Chapter 7 outlines and defends a cosmopolitan view of justice. Finally, Chapter 8 considers criminal justice, especially retributive justice, and argues for a pluralist version of penal justice.

Although justice is not the only social and political virtue, it is one of the three most significant ones, along with liberty and utility. Justice examines the various candidates for a theory of justice: the Classic Desert Theory, the Libertarian Theory, and the Welfare Liberal Theory of Justice. There seem to be several spheres of justice, and Pojman examines the pluralist aspect of justice, the relationship of equality to justice, namely, equal opportunity. He expands the theory of justice to include global concerns, dealing with cosmopolitan justice and finally examines retributive justice, including capital punishment.

Justice elucidates the complexities while maintaining impartiality and fairness in assessing various theories of justice; nevertheless Pojman’s own conclusions are often clearly stated. The book is written for those in criminal justice professions or philosophical vocations.

Politics / International / Business & Investing

Mankind and the Oceans edited by Nobuyuki Miyazaki, Zafar Adeel, & Kouichi Ohwada (United Nations University Press)

The oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earth's surface and play an important part in our lives by controlling climate and weather conditions; hosting shipping, transportation, recreation and tourism; and providing us with food, minerals and petroleum. With the growth of the human population, especially in coastal zones, there is a growing threat to oceans from land-based activities such as industrial effluent, municipal sewage, and runoff from agricultural areas, as well as antifouling agents used on ships and aquaculture nets, and the excessive exploitation of fish stocks. To manage ocean resources and the environment reasonably, we need well-designed scientific research, strong international networks, and public education.

Mankind and the Oceans presents evidence relating to the role of the oceans in mankind’s survival in the twenty-first century. The book is edited by Nobuyuki Miyazaki, a Professor at the Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo; Zafar Adeel, Assistant Director, Program Development, of United Nations Univer­sity International Network on Water, Environment and Health, in Ontario; and Kouichi Ohwada, Professor, Faculty of Environmental and Symbiotic Science, Prefectural University of Kumamoto, Japan. It focuses on regional and national case studies and emphasizes approaches that can help remedy our impact on the oceans. It contains of valuable information on the ocean environment, including controversial issues such as fish stock depletion rates, plus the conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity, and constructive suggestions for future directions.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held at Rio de Janeiro , Brazil in 1992, created a new awareness of the fundamental problems of sustainable development. Following this, an international conference on 'Man and the Ocean' was held in Tokyo , Morioka , and Kamaishi in Japan in 1998 with the cooperation of the United Nations University), the Ocean Research Institute of the University of Tokyo , and the Iovate Prefectural Government. About 50 distinguished scientists from 16 countries participated in the conference, made presentations on the most current topics and key issues pertaining to the oceanic and coastal environment, and exchanged useful information on developing a good relationship between man and the ocean. The conference was divided into two main symposia: activities related to the oceanic and coastal environments; and marine pollution and biodiversity.

In order to disseminate the research work presented at the 'Man and the Ocean' conference and to encourage initiatives for resolving current marine environmental crises, it was decided to publish the papers presented at the conference as a book. The concept of this book, entitled Mankind and the Oceans, is that sustainable human development requires healthy functioning ecosystems. The principal objective of this book is to explore the relationship between human life and the ocean from aspects of marine environment, marine pollution, marine biodiversity, and the desirable management approaches. This volume comprises 12 chapters, which focus on three thematic areas: human activities related to marine life and management, case studies of marine pollution, and research on marine biodiversity and environment.

The three segments of Mankind and the Oceans highlight case studies on marine environment and biodiversity conservation as well as approaches for resolving these problems. Contributors recognize that these marine environmental problems are intertwined in a complex way. However, they feel strongly that by striving together, human ingenuity can find innovative and intelligent solutions to these problems and that now is the right time to put these ideas into action. They hope this work is a first meaningful step along the path for a new wave of research leading to reconsideration of "Man and the Ocean".

Mankind and the Oceans contains important and fascinating evidence of the role of the oceans in mankind's survival in the twenty-first century. It is intended as a reference book for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the general public. The contributors provide valuable insights into our fundamental understanding of the relationship between the human society and the oceans, and suggest ways to integrate the manage­ment of coastal and marine zones. Mankind and the Oceans will also serve as a useful tool for policymakers, resource managers, scientists and all other people concerned about the role and future of our oceans.

Classical Architecture for the Twenty-first Century: An Introduction to Design by Jean Francois Gabriel (WW. Norton & Company)

Why design buildings in the classical tradition today? Much of modern architecture has lost sight of its purpose, which is to serve mankind; an obsession with abstract form has superseded the humanistic values expressed in classical architecture. Invented by the Greeks, developed by the Romans, and reinvented in the Renaissance, classical architecture spread from Italy to France, Great Britain, and the United States to become the first international style. The great architects of the twentieth century – Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Louis Kahn – enriched our classical heritage, and their work should be studied along with the many achievements of classical architecture, as Classical Architecture for the Twenty-first Century suggests.

The renewed interest in classical architecture is not a passing fashion; it is motivated by a legitimate desire to endow our built environment with beauty, dignity, charm, and order; in short, with the timeless virtues of civilized life. The classical elements and their combinations are no longer a standard part of architectural education, and may appear arbitrary and dogmatic. Offering a rationale for design rules, this book explains the principles of classical design in a clear and lively form. Classical Architecture for the Twenty-first Century presents drawing instruction and tested design strategies to readers, experienced or not. Each stage includes a series of design problems, beginning with simple ones and increasing in complexity for readers to address or study as models. The recent classical buildings discussed in the final section testify to the variety and vitality of the current classical revival. They presage the most interesting developments in the architecture of the twenty-first century.

The book was written by award-winning, practicing architect Jean-Francois Gabriel, who has taught at the University of Notre Dame, the California Polytechnic University , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Syracuse University . Initially trained as a sculptor, Gabriel was among the last graduates of the des École des Beaux-Arts to benefit from the traditional educational system in architecture.

We understand immediately from the title of Classical Architecture for the Twenty-first Century that Gabriel is not so much interested in the history of architectural classicism as in its timeless design technology. Gabriel widens readers’ horizons by laying bare the rational structure of classical architecture. He explains what can be understood and appreciated by all. He steers clear of fashionable cults of uncertainty and complexity and ignores sectarian newspeak. For him, the authority of classical architecture needs no mythological mediation; it imposes itself by the evidence of its principles and the self-contained rationality of its nature.

Although much of the material in Classical Architecture for the Twenty-first Century is taken from history, the content is concerned with the future, not the past. This book is intended as a guide to shape our architectural future in a harmonious, humanistic way. Classical architecture is not a historic style; it has evolved through many phases for more than two millennia. Architectural excesses have been committed under the rubric of the right to freedom of expression for the artist. We pride ourselves in being rational, but our society tolerates, even encourages, arbitrary forms and meaningless gestures in architecture. Perhaps it is regrettable that we now have the means to build so quickly that there seems to be no time for serious reflection.

The best musicians aim to be good interpreters of music; far from trying to reinvent the musical language everyday, they follow their music line closely. Why is it that an architect cannot be satisfied to be a good interpreter of architecture: Is it not better to copy a good design than to invent a poor one? Indeed, it is because classical architects ‘copied’ one another, emulated one another, and competed with one another that the quality of their architecture reached unequaled heights. It is because architects ‘all did the same thing’ or, more precisely, used the same form-language, that the language itself became so rich, so versatile and eloquent, and that it continues to appeal to us today. The classical celebrates enduring values, not passing fashions.

There is a vast literature on the subject of classical architecture. So, why another book? Because there has been a tremendous increase of interest in classical architecture in the last fifteen years. More and more, people want to live and work in traditional buildings, endowed with charm and dignity, and many practicing architects are relearning ways to design timeless, people-friendly environments. Classical Architecture for the Twenty-first Century was written in part to help them make the transition. It also addresses itself to beginners who have some drafting ability. Classical architecture is an architecture of logic and good sense where a reason can be given for every decision made by a designer familiar with the language. It is the reasonableness, the rationalism of classical architecture that is its greatest asset, and its power to move us is principally derived from harmony and clarity.

Since there is no need to repeat what has been said, and said very well, by previous authors, the focus here is on what is not covered in depth in other books. Classical Architecture for the Twenty-first Century begins with the fundamentals: ten constants that can be observed in the arrangement of classical forms across the centuries with all their subtle adjustments and deserve the name of canons. Their timelessness and universality are illustrated by the profusion of sketches, diagrams, and photographs in these pages.

The second chapter presents the vocabulary. The basic forms used in classical architecture, as well as the precepts that guide the classical architect in putting them together, that is to say, the grammar. While it may appear restrictive at first, the discipline of classical design is liberating: the inherent logic in the way the parts come together facilitates their assemblage.

Originality is simply not an issue in classical architecture as can be seen in chapter three, which suggests the vast range of possible classical solutions to the most elementary design problems. The art of architecture – any kind of architecture – begins with the definition of rooms. Confronted with the task of designing a truly complete space, the student and the professional designer should not underestimate the complexities of designing a satisfactory spatial unit. This unit, which we call a ‘room’ is very different from the unfinished or ‘leaking’ space of modernist architecture. There are obvious differences but also many similarities between indoor and outdoor rooms. Open to the sky or not, the well-defined space is the foundation of classical architecture.

Design cannot be considered independently from the act of drawing. To be able to sketch rapidly and accurately what is on one’s mind is an invaluable skill. Chapter four elaborates on this and introduces other drawing techniques such as watercolor wash, the traditional graphic method of classical architects.

Readers whose goal is to develop their skills are invited to address a sequence of four design problems, beginning with a simple one-room building. Following this comes a pair of twin one-room pavilions, then a room within a room, one of which is an outdoor room and finally a small complex of interrelated indoor and outdoor rooms.

Chapter five of Classical Architecture for the Twenty-first Century explores classical interiors, paying particular attention to the most public and the most private rooms, the vestibule and the bedroom, and the ordering of rooms and their shape in large and small buildings alike. In chapters six and seven, there is a detailed analysis of the major issues of facade design, followed by a thorough study of the challenges presented by the three-dimensional composition of buildings.

Chapter eight proposes six design problems, more ambitious than the first four, beginning with a small town house and ending with varied institutional buildings. What all these programs have in common is a specific site, real or imaginary. Designs solutions proposed by students illustrate each program. In following the guidelines of the first two chapters, the students have given their designs what Geoffrey Scott would have called "at least a measure of distinction."

Whether readers wish to try their hands at solving the proposed problems or not, much can be learned from looking closely at the student projects. Chapters nine and ten concern themselves with necessary refinements. Chapter nine focuses on often neglected details, such as rustication and bollards, which are capable of greatly enhancing design intentions. Chapter ten goes into detail about edges, which are perhaps the most critical aspect of defining architectural spaces.

A final series of ten design problems is found in chapter eleven. In general, these are larger and more complex than the others. In most cases, site pressures are insignificant, if they exist at all. More freedom is therefore given to the designers, but also greater responsibilities. It is mostly the study of the program requirements that suggests the design strategies that are briefly discussed. Principles for giving shape to the buildings are found in the first two chapters.

The last chapter of Classical Architecture for the Twenty-first Century presents a selection of recent buildings. The growing number and variety of classical designs promise the most interesting developments in the architecture of the twenty-first century.

This is a practical text for learning how to design buildings in the classical tradition today, an exceptionally approachable, thorough, informative guide to the theory and technique of designing classical buildings, as taught by a graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts. Generously illustrated with sketches, freehand diagrams, renderings, and photographs, Classical Architecture for the Twenty-first Century gives a lively, contemporary reality to what sometimes seems a remote subject. The book makes significant contributions towards a humanistic, life-enhancing, and harmonious environment in our houses and our cities.

Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills: An Activity Workbook by Kenneth A. Lane (Slack Incorporated)

There is nothing more satisfying than seeing a child who has been struggling in school and feeling inferior starting to enjoy reading and developing a good self-image.

With over 20 years of experience as a developmental optometrist, Dr. Kenneth A. Lane has designed Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills to help occupational therapists, optometrists, and other professionals develop the skills to work with learning disabled children on their ocular motor and visual perceptual skills.

According to Lane, the secrets of having a good activities program are:

1. Have a good understanding of why a certain activity is beneficial for the child.
2. Have a good understanding of the child's developmental age.
3. Move quickly from activity to activity because often children have very short attention spans.
4. Know how to vary the activities to benefit the child the most.
5. Keep a good record of what activities have been previously given and take good notes of your observations.
6. Develop a good rapport with the child, and most of all, keep the activities fun so the child does not become bored after a few weeks. This is done by constantly varying the activities.

To establish a framework for understanding, each chapter begins with the scientific theories used to develop the activity forms. Suggestions are included on how to solidify the program's success.

There are hundreds of activities in this book, each designed to help give children the necessary skills to succeed in school, to prepare them to learn to read. The easy-to-follow activity forms are then presented, along with numerous illustrations. The forms are divided into as many as five levels of difficulty so both children and teenagers can benefit from each activity. Topics include: complexity of reading, ocular motor, gross motor, visual-motor perception, visual memory, laterality, and reversals.

Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills contains daily lesson plans and practical tips on how to successfully start an activities program. Other helpful features include a glossary of terms and a reference list of individuals and organizations that work with learning disabled children to develop these skills. A questionnaire is included in the Appendix to give to parents to help them determine which categories to use. The chapters preceding the activities will give tips on the best way to proceed in each category of activities.

The first of its kind, Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills utilizes a learning approach by linking the theories with the remediation activities to help learning disabled children improve their perceptual and fine motor skills. Professionals who are looking for a way to assess and address a variety of fine motor and visual perception deficiencies will welcome this workbook into their practices. The book will be of help to parents and teachers as well.

Psychology / Religion & Spirituality

Handbook of Positive Psychology edited by C. R. Snyder & Shane J. Lopez (Oxford University Press)

Psychology has long been enamored of the dark side of human existence, rarely exploring a more positive view of the mind. What has psychology contributed, for example, to our understanding of the various human virtues? Regrettably, not much. The last decade, however, has witnessed a growing movement to abandon the exclusive focus on the negative. Psychologists from several sub disciplines are now asking an intriguing question: "What strengths does a person employ to deal effectively with life?"

The Handbook of Positive Psychology provides a forum for this more positive view of the human condition. In its pages, readers are treated to an analysis of what the foremost experts believe to be the fundamental strengths of humankind. The book, edited by C.R. Snyder, Distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Kansas , and Shane J. Lopez, Assistant Professor, Counseling Psychology Program, Department of Psychology and Research in Education, University of Kansas , is the first systematic attempt to bring together leading scholars to give voice to the emerging field of positive psychology. The chapters are written by many scientists – contributing scholars, with numerous awards, distinguished professorships, and honorary degrees – who are striving to inspire people to develop a more wholesome focus on the positive aspects of life. The research highlighted in Handbook of Positive Psychology provides overwhelming evidence that many talented scholars and award-winning researchers are reclaiming what was once at the core of their discipline: the psyche, the study and understanding of the power of the human spirit to benefit from life's challenges. The men and women who have written chapters for Handbook of Positive Psychology, as well as countless more inspired by their research, are courageously gathering data and testing hypotheses to help us learn more about an essential question that perhaps serves as the North Star for a positive psychology: What enables us to override our biological inclinations to be selfish and instead find meaning, purpose, and value in nurturing and upholding the positive qualities of our human nature?

Snyder and Lopez feel they had a once-in-a-lifetime scholarly adventure in preparing this Handbook of Positive Psychology to create the first handbook for a new approach to psychology. The book provides, in Chapter 1, written by Martin Seligman, an initial historical overview of the positive in humankind. Seligman, Fiox Leadership Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania , ventures a radical proposition about why psychotherapy works as well as it does. He suggests that positive psychology is a major effective ingredient in therapy as it is now done, and, if it is recognized and honed, it will become an even more effective approach to psychotherapy. Among the tactics of good therapy are

• Attention
• Authority figure
• Rapport
• Paying for services
• Trust
• Opening up
• Naming the problem
• Tricks of the trade (e.g., "Let's pause here," rather than "Let's stop here")
• Instilling hope
• Building of buffering strengths (i.e., the Nikki principle)

Good therapists almost always use these strategies, but they do not have names, they are not studied, and, locked into the disease model, we do not train students to use them to better advantage. These deep strategies are all techniques of positive psychology and they can be the subject of large-scale science and of the invention of new techniques that maximize them. Among the strengths built into psychotherapy are courage, interpersonal skill, rationality, insight, optimism, honesty, perseverance, realism, capacity for pleasure, putting troubles into perspective, future-mindedness, and finding purpose. In contrast, the prevailing social sciences tend to view the authentic forces governing human behavior as self-interest, aggressiveness, territoriality, class conflict, and the like. As a side effect of studying positive human traits, science will learn how to better treat and prevent mental, as well as some physical, illnesses. As a main effect, we will learn how to build the qualities that help individuals and communities not just endure and survive but also flourish.

The sections of Handbook of Positive Psychology are entitled: Introduction and Historical Overview, Identifying Strengths, Emotion-focused Approaches, Cognitive-focused Approaches, Self-based Approaches, Interpersonal Approaches, Biological Approaches, Specific Coping Approaches, Special Populations and Settings, and The Future of the Field.

It is not often, if ever, that one is able to witness a scientific revolution. However, that priv­ilege may have been allowed readers of the Handbook of Positive Psychology. With its pub­lication positive psychology has arrived, and the landscape of our discipline may have changed forever. Human strengths, happiness, positive emotions, wisdom, creativity, love, forgiveness, optimism, personal growth, humor (to name but a few) were traditionally dis­tinct, research domains far from central to psychological endeavors, if not viewed through the lens of psychopathology. … – The Psychologist

Psychology has long been enamored of the dark side of human existence, rarely exploring a more positive view of the mind. What has psychology contributed, for example, to our understanding of the various human virtues? Regrettably, not much. The Handbook of Positive Psychology provides a forum for a more positive view of the human condition. It examines positive subjective experiences, cognitive constructs about the future, and the capacity for courage, aesthetic sensibility, creativity, perseverance, altruism, tolerance, and wisdom at the individual and group levels…. – Adolescence

A sweeping, inspiring vision for a 21st century science that explores positive thoughts and emotions and builds human strengths and virtues. Unquestionably, the definitive volume for the new positive psychology. – David G. Myers, Professor of Psychology, Hope College and author of The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty

The publication of Snyder and Lopez's Handbook of Positive Psychology is a watershed event in the history of psychology. This volume, with its 55 chapters authored by leading experts in the field, marks the transition of positive psychology from a movement advocat­ed by only the few faithful to a widely publicized approach to understanding the positive side of people.  … – Donelson R. Forsyth, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University

That just about says it all, and this reviewer could not agree more. This is a landmark book; and we can only hope that one day the scientists who contributed to the Handbook of Positive Psychology will be recognized as visionary leaders, whose research helped to identify, elevate, and celebrate the creative po­tential of the human spirit. As Sir John Templeton says in the introduction, “I am hopeful that as current and fu­ture researchers catch the vision of a positive psychology, and as foundations and govern­ments initiate programs to support this ground-breaking and beneficial work, we will all forge ahead in a spirit of humility.” As with any new and promising paradigm, the reactions of people will determine the fate of positive psychology.

Reference

Guide to College Reading, 7th Edition by Kathleen T. McWhorter (Longman) focuses on the key areas of reading comprehension, vocabulary improvement, and textbook reading.

The influx of nontraditional students into both two- and four-year colleges has enriched the educational scene; at the same time, it has made the prepara­tion of these students for academic success an institutional priority.

Guide to College Reading, seventh edition, is written to equip students of widely dif­ferent backgrounds with the basic reading and critical-thinking skills needed to cope with the demands of academic work. Specifically, the book guides students in becoming active learners and critical thinkers. Written by Kathleen T. McWhorter, Niagara County Community College , the book addresses the learning characteristics, attitudes, and motivational levels of reading students.

This seventh edition offers students a new Contemporary Issues Minireader, new tips in each chapter on taking reading tests, Internet activities for skill reinforcement, a revised and updated section on reading graphics, a new section on reading across the disciplines, and a new section on reading and evaluating electronic sources. The new edi­tion uses a visually appealing four-color design, including interactive visual chapter openers.

Critical thinking is incorporated throughout Guide to College Reading in instruction, exercises, and readings. Metacognitive activities include teaching readers how to evaluate their own learning styles to increase their ability to read college-level material successfully. Exercises that ask readers to respond by writing sentences and paragraphs after reading help make the critical connection between these two activities.

Guide to College Reading helps students master ten college reading skills:

1. Identify their learning style and how to use it to their advantage: Chapter 1.
2. Find out whether they understand the reading material: Chapter 1.
3. Discover the meaning of a word using context clues: Chapter 2.
4. Figure out the meaning of a word using word parts: Chapter 3.
5. Build a system for reading (SQ3R): Chapter 5.
6. Find the main idea in a paragraph: Chapter 6.
7. Read a textbook chapter: Chapter 9.
8. Remember what they read: Chapter 11.
9. Tell the difference between fair and biased writing: Chapter 13.
10. Decide whether a statement is fact or opinion: Chapter 13.

Guide to College Reading offers students step-by-step instruction and practice in crucial discrete reading skills, such as identifying the main idea, learning the SQ3R approach to reading and using textbook learning aids. At the same, time, the text builds reading and thinking skills by integrating instruction and assessment throughout the book in important areas such as vocabulary development, methods for improving comprehension, and techniques for students with different learning styles.

The chapters are divided into numerous sections; exercises are frequent but brief and explicit. Reading topics and materials have been chosen to relate to the students' interests and backgrounds, while exhibiting potential for broadening their range of experience. Many students have compensated for poor reading skills with alternate learning styles; they have become visual and auditory learners. To capitalize on this adaptation, a visual approach to learning, including four-color drawings, diagrams, and visual aids to illustrate concepts, is used throughout.

Guide to College Reading is organized into six major sections, following the logical progression of skill development from vocabulary development to reading paragraphs, articles, essays, and chapters. It also proceeds logically from literal comprehension to critical interpretation and response. An opening chapter focuses on student success strategies, including such topics as attitudes toward college, concen­tration, learning styles, and comprehension monitoring.

The following features enhance the text's effectiveness:

• Integration of Reading and Writing.
• Reading as Thinking. For example, students are shown how to define their purpose for reading, ask questions, identify and use organization and structure as a guide to understanding, make inferences, and interpret and evaluate what they read.
• Comprehension Monitoring.
• Skill Application.

Numerous changes and additions have been made in this seventh edition to engage students with contemporary issues, sharpen their test-taking abilities, develop their skills for reading and evaluating electronic sources, introduce students to disciplinary reading skills, and encourage skill reinforcement and application thorough Internet activities.

• Contemporary Issues Minireader.
• Tips for Taking Reading Tests.
• New Section on Reading and Evaluating Electronic Sources.
• New Section on Disciplinary Reading Skills.
• New Interactive Internet Activities.
• New Chapter Opening Images.

In addition to the book-specific supplements, a series of other skills-based supplements is available for both instructors and students.

Guide to College Reading is ideally suited for those interested in developing their reading skills at the 6th-9th grade level. The text adopts an encouraging, supportive, non-threatening voice and an unassuming attitude toward learning. Guide to College Reading provides a variety of everyday examples and extensive exercises to encourage students to become involved and to apply the skills presented. The language and style are simple and direct; explanations are clear and often presented in step-by-step form. Numerous diagrams and drawings help readers visualize how reading material can be organized. High-interest photographs and artwork appeal to visual learners. Chapter-ending readings give immediate practice for chapter skills and aid in transferring these skills to actual reading situations. Learning Style Tips reinforce material introduced earlier throughout the book and teach readers how to apply knowledge of their individual learning styles to learn new skills.

Conflict in the Cosmos: Fred Hoyle's Life in Science by Simon Mitton (Joseph Henry Press)

It's my nature – I recognize that it must be an accident in my upbringing and the turn of the century when I was at the university – I just go from observation. – Fred Hoyle

A veritable cult figure to many, Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) was one of the most important, famous, and controversial figures of 20th-century astronomy, the Carl Sagan of the 50s and 60s. He coined the term ‘Big Bang’ and earned himself scientific celebrity by enthusiastically endorsing theories that ran counter to conventional wisdom.

Conflict in the Cosmos tells the story of Fred Hoyle's prolific career, which spanned more than 60 years. During that time, he made major contributions in fundamental areas of astronomy. His most important work focused on the evolution of stars, the origin of the chemical elements, the nature of gravitational forces, and the origin of life on Earth. But he is perhaps best remembered for his rare talent as a science communicator. He hosted one of the first radio programs that focused on science and then moved his show to the new medium of television, making him a household name.

A man of ceaseless intellectual activity, Hoyle pushed the boundaries of our knowledge by being both right and wrong. When he was right, his contributions were of Nobel Laureate quality. Indeed, even when he was wrong, he stimulated his exasperated opponents to work that much more furiously to produce damning evidence against him, thus yielding additional discoveries and leading to more knowledge on a topic.

Conflict in the Cosmos was written by Simon Mitton, a Fellow of St. Edmund's College, Cambridge . After Hoyle's 1972 resignation, Mitton was appointed graduate administrator of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge . During his tenure in that position he became acquainted with many of Hoyle's associates, whose vivid recollections contribute to the richness of this biography. Conflict in the Cosmos tells the story of Hoyle's life as well as his science. Structuring each chapter around an intellectual puzzle, the science is framed within the context of the knowledge available to Hoyle at the time.

During the quarter century beginning about 1950, Hoyle both startled and charmed his public with a copious stream of new ideas, implau­sible theories, and an innovative approach to research. While most of his professional colleagues specialized in a single area of research, such as comets, or the evolution of stars, or the nature of sunspots, Hoyle's approach had more in common with the leading intellectuals of the Enlightenment. He regarded the entire celestial realm – the universe and all its contents no less – as being within the compass of his enqui­ries, and this brought him into conflict with members of the academy who had a strong sense of ownership of their respective specialties.

By his example, he led a despondent research community away from a fading tradition, directing them instead toward the extraordi­nary richness and diversity of the new astrophysics that began to emerge in the 1960s. In the 1970s, thanks in good measure to his inspi­ration, as well as his considerable skill during the short period in which he directed, at the national level, the policy for astronomy research, Britain again became a world leader in the astronomical sciences. Other distinguished astronomers played an equal or superior role to Hoyle's in advancing research expertise, thereby recovering Britain 's international prestige. Hoyle's personal contribution to the rebirth of British astronomy came from his outstanding ability to think outside the box, and his unfailing loyalty to international collaborations at a time when many British researchers regarded American astronomers as the competition rather than an opportunity.

An enduring feature of Hoyle's character was that in every sense he never let setbacks, rejections, or political maneuvers deflect him from his own research agenda. He always had a deep conviction that in his ‘search for the truth,’ which is how he expressed his life's mission, any opponent should be able to provide a counterargument from experiment or direct observation. He declined all opposition based on semantic arguments invoking the philosophy of science, or the deploy­ment of a paradigm, or appeals to common sense.

After 1950, Hoyle was a very public figure at home and abroad. In the 1960s, ‘according to Hoyle’ became a catch phrase in discussions of the latest news from the cosmos. His broadcasts for the BBC in 1950 brought him immediate fame as a gifted expositor. With his gritty Yorkshire manner, his ability to be picturesque using words alone, and the universe itself as his topic, he transformed the BBC's approach to academic lectures, persuading them of the benefits of a less donnish style of presentation. His lectures for radio audiences set the prelude for a brilliant par­allel career as a popular science and science fiction writer.

In researching and writing Conflict in the Cosmos, Mitton privately compared Hoyle to Copernicus, Newton , and Einstein. These latter were achievers on a timescale that repeats only over the centuries rather than over a generation for the next decisive move forward. What is extraordinary about Hoyle's science is that his impact derives equally from when he was right and when he was wrong. Generally within academia, an erroneous paper is quietly forgotten: it receives the silent treatment. Hoyle's contribution to the advancement of astronomy derived much of its impetus from the way in which his colleagues recoiled at his notions. In the twentieth century, no other figure in astronomy had to withstand for such a long period the criticisms of both the invisible college of astronomers worldwide and the parochial college of Cambridge practitioners. Hoyle's scientific life was truly a conflict in the cosmos.

An elegantly written and thoroughly documented biography of a great and immensely influential scientist who was a fascinating personality as well. – Sir Martin Rees, author of Our Final Hour and Our Cosmic Habitat

Fred Hoyle was a towering figure in 20th century astronomy and cosmology, and one of the most successful scientific communicators of his time. This is the first comprehensive exploration of both the science and the man, told by one of the few living writers equally familiar with both. – Lawrence M. Krauss, author of The Physics of Star Trek and Atom: An Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth ... And Beyond

(Mitton's) lively writing and extensive research bring to life this important figure in the development of modern astronomy. – Publishers Weekly

…Mitton, who knew Hoyle, notes attributes, such as his pugnacity, that grated some, but dwells on the traits that drew many more into his orbit. Apparently he was extraordinarily exciting to work with, possessing an agile intuition that leapt over disciplinary borders. Trained in mathematics and nuclear physics, Hoyle switched to astrophysics and subsequently expounded on paleontology, biology, and archaeology. Mitton most closely tracks Hoyle's work in astrophysics, especially his greatest achievement (the accepted solution to the origin of the elements) and his greatest controversy (opposing big bang cosmology with his steady-state theory). Both, characteristically, were collaborations, and Hoyle, talking science wherever he went, shines brightly in Mitton's appreciation. – Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

Drawing on his personal knowledge of Fred Hoyle, Mitton in Conflict in the Cosmos vividly and sensitively recreates the many public clashes between Hoyle and his critics, and at the same time he clearly explains the science underlying the conflict.

Social Sciences / Cultural Anthropology

The Grasinski Girls: The Choices They Had and the Choices They Made by Mary Patrice Erdmans (Polish and Polish-American Studies Series: Ohio University Press)

The Grasinski Girls were working-class Americans of Polish descent, born in the 1920s and 30s. They went to high school, married, and had children. For the most part, they stayed home to rear their children. And they were happy doing that. They took care of their appearance and their husbands, who took care of them. Like most women of their generation, they did not join the women's movement and today they either reject or shy away from feminism.

Using oral histories of her mother and aunts, Mary Erdmans in The Grasinski Girls examines the subtle complexities of the seemingly ordinary lives of white, Christian, working-class women in the post-World War II generation. Comparing the Grasinski sisters, at times, to women of her own post-feminist generation and situating them within the world of home and church, Erdmans explores how gender, class, ethnicity, and religion shaped the choices that these women were given as well as the choices that they made. These women are both acted upon and actors; they are privileged and disadvantaged; they resist and surrender; they petition the Lord and accept His will. Erdmans, an associate professor of sociology at Central Connecticut State University and the author of Opposite Poles: Immigrants and Ethnics in Polish Chicago , 1976-1990, is interested in the intersection of biography and history. Through extensive interviews and interactions with five Polish-American sisters, Erdmans enters the secret yet signally important world of family to tell the story of a generation of women who, for the most part, have remained voiceless in both the ethnic and women’s history narratives. In The Grasinski Girls, Erdmans describes this world of small victories, silent hurts, ordinary pleasures, and, above all, the triumph of survival. Their world was bounded by the structures and strictures of patriarchal relations with their father, their husbands, and their employers, but men remain mostly offstage in this volume.

Contents of the book include:

1. Migration and Generations: St. Stan's Cemetery; The Mothers of the Grasinski Girls; Frances Ann: The Lights of the City; Ethnicity in the Belly of the Family
2. Choices Given, Choices Made: Nuns and Moms; Nadine nee Patricia: I Gave My Youth to Jesus Christ and my Old Age to Bob; What's a Polish-American Girl to Do? Working-Class Girls in the Convent; Angela Helen: The Best Time in My Life, and the Worst Time; Mothers on Boone St. ; Mary Marcelia: I Thought I Was a Superwoman; The Importance of Being Mothers
3. Learning to Sing: Agency and Resistance; Fate and Faith; Caroline Clarice: So I Learned to Fly; Kitchen Table Resistance

This very original book – informed as it is by the interdisciplinary concerns of women's studies – will surely set a standard for feminist and collaborative research methodology with women outside the academy. – Donna R. Gabaccia, Mellon Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh , author of Immigration and American Diversity, and coeditor of Immigrant Lives in the U.S.: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

In their own words, The Grasinski Girls reveals to readers the nuances of privilege and oppression often otherwise overlooked and as such is a good example of the series, The Polish and Polish-American Studies Series, of which it is a part.

Social Sciences / Anthropology

The Art of Fieldwork, 2nd edition by Harry F. Wolcott (AltaMira Press)

One of anthropology's premier educational researcher and writers on fieldwork methodology looks at the essential elements that constitute the art of his discipline. In The Art of Fieldwork, Harry F. Wolcott, professor emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon , compares the fieldworker to the artist, while recognizing the inherent differences between the labors of each.

In this second edition of The Art of Fieldwork Wolcott updates his original text, challenging and petitioning anthropology and its practitioners to draw on the traditional precepts of science and on the richness of artistry in the collection, interpretation, and expression of fieldwork data. Each of the original chapters has been revised to reflect the past decade of developments in methodology. And there is a final new chapter on the art of discretion.

Wolcott does not argue that fieldwork is art, any more than he believes that fieldwork is science, but he does not consider the nexus between fieldwork and data collection as a central issue. So, too, is the relationship between the scientific aspects of the fieldwork tradition on the one hand and what anthropologist Evans-Pritchard describes as the ‘imaginative insight of the artist which is required in interpretation of what is observed’ on the other. Wolcott says his purpose in The Art of Fieldwork is to examine how fieldwork not only invites but requires something of an artistic approach. How can we capitalize on that potential? And how, like other art forms, including the fine arts, does fieldwork exhibit satisfactions, constraints, conceits, and deceits comparable to the art world? After all, artists live and work in a real world, too. What can we learn from examining that world?

The title The Art of Fieldwork conveys two central ideas: first, that this is a book about fieldwork; second, that its focus is not on scientific techniques but on whatever else fieldwork entails in addition to technique. Wolcott gives Robert Trotter credit, pointing him in the right direction by saying: What we do not have is a book on the art of ethnography. The art of ethnography? How about The Art of Fieldwork instead? And a book idea was conceived, to be devoted to exploring dimensions of fieldwork not well served by a preoccupation with data-gathering alone. Most of the discussion turns on an examination of what it is about fieldwork that resembles what artists do and how what artists do differs from (and is similar to) what scientists do.

In the book, Wolcott demonstrates an ethnographic bias toward cultural interpre­tation. Anthropology and sociology are where fieldwork got its start, and it helps to keep before us the cross-cultural and comparative basis on which the anthropological approach was founded. The cross-cultural aspect of fieldwork has become especially problematic for those being introduced to, or encouraged to pursue, qualitative approaches in settings totally familiar. Wolcott’s illustrations include research conducted in settings not all that different from other too-familiar settings in which researchers find themselves today.

Part I, "Fieldwork Contexts," takes a look at art and art worlds to provide perspective for what follows. Part II addresses "The Field-work Part of Fieldwork," including both its basic arts and these darker arts. The conceptual aspects undergirding fieldwork are dealt with separately in the chapters that comprise part III, "Fieldwork as Mindwork." In part IV, "Fieldwork as Personal Work," Wolcott first inventories some satisfactions accruing to the fieldworker. Finally, he examines three of his own studies to render an appraisal and suggest a quality that can only be contributed from the artistic side, a quality that he calls the "art of discretion."

As fieldwork gets better, Wolcott’s hope is that we will find ourselves doing better art and better science without becoming too possessed about whether or not we are doing either. Since more attention seems to be going toward measuring and counting, he turns attention here to the flip side of the argument to ponder, What counts? The real genius in fieldwork lies in knowing how to answer that seemingly simple question.

No succinct, unifying concept or definition of art emerges in The Art of Fieldwork – Wolcott says he had such faith in the power of writing that he firmly believed a definition would emerge, but it never happened. Instead, he looks at some facets of art, ranging from how, viewed as a social institution, art works in its unique ways, to suggestions for pursuing fieldwork more artfully. That led to a working definition stated in terms of what artists seek to do, rather than what art is. Yet science thrives on that same ambiguity – it has come to mean too much to too many who accept its findings too uncritically as our Ultimate Salvation, our Truth, our reliable Western Way of Knowing. Science does indeed offer a way to know the physical world, including the physical bodies, human and otherwise, in that world, but it is not the only way.

If, as Jerome Kirk and Marc Miller suggest, a fieldworker must be 'ready to look a fool for the sake of science,' the questions addressed in these pages is, What should a fieldworker be willing to do for the sake of art? And how far can one go?

Wollcott (anthropology, U. of Oregon) looks at the essential elements that constitute fieldwork methodology, comparing the fieldworker to the artist, describing fieldworkers' basic techniques and ethical and personal dilemmas, and linking fieldwork to building theory, analysis, and the writing process. He discusses fieldwork as intimate, long-term acquaintance, objectivity and bias, and writing as central to the art of fieldwork. – Book News, Inc.
Far more than a how-to-do-it handbook, The Art of Fieldwork offers a rich, engaging discourse drawing from a lifetime of personal experiences. – Donald A. Ritchie, Routledge Studies in Memory and Narrative

This is a fine introduction to the perils and pleasures of fieldwork. Broad, eclectic, and open, it deals with questions of both epistemology and technique straightforwardly and without pretension. – Leslie Salzinger, American Journal of Sociology

Wolcott updates his original groundbreaking text, in this long-anticipated second edition of The Art of Fieldwork, which appeals to anthropology and its practitioners to draw on the traditional precepts of science as well as on the richness of artistry. The Art of Fieldwork makes an exciting reentry into the ongoing debate of the processes, challenges, and rewards of fieldwork. Qualitative researchers across the disciplines will find this well-crafted, approachable book a thought-provoking read and a perfect introduction to the nuances of field methods for their students.

Social Sciences / Folklore & Mythology

Both Sides of the Border: A Texas Folklore Sampler edited by Francis Edward Abernethy & Kenneth L. Untiedt (Publications of the Texas Folklore Society LXI: University of North Texas Press )

Texas has a large population who has lived on both sides of the border and created a folkloric mix that makes it unique. Edited by Francis Edward Aberneths and Kenneth L. Untiedt, Both Sides of the Border gets its name from its emphasis on recently researched Tex-Mex folklore. But Abernethy, Regents Professor Emeritus of English at Stephen F. Austin State University , outgoing editor of the Texas Folklore Society and Untiedt, English teacher at Stephen F. Austin State University and incoming editor, recognize that Texas has other borders besides the Rio Grande . They use the title Both Sides of the Border with the folklorist's knowledge that all of Texas’s songs, tales, and traditions have lived and prospered on the other sides of Texas borders at one time or another before they crossed the rivers and became ‘ours.’

Chapters of the volume are organized thematically and include favorite storytellers like James Ward Lee, Thad Sitton, and Jerry Lincecum. Lee's beloved "Hell is for He-Men" appears in the volume, along with Sitton's informative essay on Texas freedmen's settlements.

The Texas Folklore Society has been publishing Mexican folklore from both sides of the border since its beginning. And the authors conclude with the observation that Texas has a large population of individuals who have lived on both sides of the border and are now creating a folkloric mix that we will hear much of in the future. Thus, Both Sides of the Border is timely.

According to Abernethy and Untiedt, this 2004 Publication of the Texas Folklore Society #61 was to have been a traditional miscellany, containing the best of papers presented at TFS meetings over the past few years, as well as casual submissions. Abernethy and Untiedt have used that meritorious miscellany of materials as the center of the book. They conclude with "The Family Saga (Cont'd.)" because they had several rich family legends and studies of family legends left over from last year's publication. The Family Saga has stimulated a flow of family legends that will eventually require the publishing of a companion volume.

Abernethy started editing Both Sides of the Border, number sixty-one, with a full hopper of folkloric articles, much richer in material than he was that first year of the editorship. In completing this final project he realized again – for the twentieth time – how blessed the Society is with its wealth of writers and researchers. Folklore courses have lost their places in academe since the beginning of his editorship, but Society members have continued to collect and preserve and study folklore on their own.

Both Sides of the Border is, in part, a nostalgic look backward for the outgoing editor, Abernethy, who began in the fall of 1971. The book contains something to delight everyone interested in Texas folklore.

Social Sciences / Popular Culture / History

Laboring to Play: Home Entertainment and the Spectacle of Middle-class Cultural Life, 1850-1920 by Melanie Dawson (University of Alabama Press)

The changing styles of middle-class home entertainments, Melanie Dawson argues, point to evolving ideas of class identity in U.S. culture. Drawing from 19th- and early-20th­century fiction, guidebooks on leisure, periodicals and newspaper columns, and a polemical examination of class structures, Laboring to Play interrogates the ways that leisure performances (parlor games, charades, home dramas, and tableaux vivants, etc.) encouraged participants to test out the boundaries that were beginning to define middle-class lifestyles.

From 19th-century parlor games involving grotesque physical contortions to early-20th-century recitations of an idealized past, leisure employments mediated between domestic and public spheres, individuals and class-based affiliations, and ideals of egalitarian social life and visible hierarchies based on privilege. Negotiating these paradigms, home entertainments provided their participants with unique ways of displaying individual ambitions within a world of polite social interaction.

In Laboring to Play Dawson , Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the College of William and Mary and coeditor of The American 1890s: A Cultural Reader deals with subjects as wide ranging as social performances, social history (etiquette and gentility), literary history, representations of childhood, and the history of the book.

Contents include:

1. Labor, Leisure, and the Scope of Ungenteel Play

2. Dramatic Regression: The Borrowed Pleasures and Privileges of Youth

3. Fracturing Genteel Identity: The Cultural Work of Grotesque Play

4. Skills Rewarded: Women's Lives Transformed through Entertainment

5. Staging Disaster: Turn-of-the-Century Entertainment Scenes and the Failure of Personal Transformation

6. Old Games, New Narratives, and the Specter of a Generational Divide

7. Imagined Unity: Entertainment's Communal Spectacles and Shared Histories Epilogue

A learned and engaging analysis based on an impressive body of research. . . . Dawson's focus on entertainment in the home has the benefit of providing us with a close and careful look at the intersections between ideologies of domesticity, class, and leisure. – Cynthia J. Davis, author of Bodily and Narrative Forms: The Influence of Medicine in American Literature, 1845-1915
…Highly effective are the detailed readings of the 'entertainment chronotope' in a number of important American literary texts, including Alcott's Little Women, Wharton's The House of Mirth, Lewis's Main Street, Gilman's Herland, and Cather's My Antonia. – William Gleason, author of The Leisure Ethic: Work and Play in American Literature, 1840-1940.

Laboring to Play is a compelling analysis of how ‘middling’ Americans entertained themselves and how these entertainments changed over time. It examines the relationship between work and play as well as the role of game playing in American cultural and identity formation.

Social Sciences / History / Pornography

International Exposure: Perspectives on Modern European Pornography, 1800-2000 edited by Lisa Z. Sigel (Rutgers University Press)

International Exposure demonstrates the wealth of modern European desires woven into the fabric of European history: desires about empire and nation, about self and other, about plenty and dearth. Essays examine the ways in which these longings were expressed through pornography; and details the pleasures received through sex. By documenting the diverse meanings of pornography, senior scholars from across the disciplines show the ways in which sexuality became central to the individual, to the nation, and to the transnational character of modern society.

Edited by Lisa Z. Sigel, visiting assistant professor of history at DePaul University and the author of Governing Pleasures: Pornography and Social Change in England ,

1815-1914, the ten essays in International Exposure engage an array of topics, including obscenity in the German states, censorship in France ’s Third Republic , ‘she-male’ internet porn, the rise of incestuous longings in England , the place of the Hungarian video revolution in the global market, and the politics of pornography in Russia .

A substantial discussion of the broad history and state of the field complements the in-depth case studies that examine a wide range of sources from literature to magazines, video to the Internet.

This sophisticated, even witty collection goes beyond tired old debates to provide compelling and surprising insights into national cultures of pornography. – Anna Clark, author of Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution

This collection makes an important and pioneering contribution toward demonstrating the historically and culturally specific nature of pornography and erotica. – Lesley Hall, founding editor of H-Histsex Discussion Network for the History of Sexuality

In this courageous, timely, and genuinely groundbreaking work, Lisa Z. Sigel and her coauthors examine the history of pornography in its national and international dimensions. Highly recommended. – Kevin White, author of Sexual Liberation or Sexual License?: The American Revolt against Victorianism

In International Exposure, Sigel brings together the latest studies in European pornography from the field's foremost scholars, and highlights new approaches to the topic – to content, readership, form, and delivery. By tackling the highbrow and lowdown of the pornographic form, this volume lays the groundwork for the next surge of studies in the field.

Sociology / Folklore / Latino Studies

Old Las Vegas: Hispanic Memories from the New Mexico Highlands by Nasario Garcia (Texas Tech University Press) gives readers the last vestiges of a cultural past in Northern New Mexico.

Las Vegas , New Mexico , ‘a land of castles and conquerors, ideas and icons,’ is a symbol of the Western frontier, and for good reason. Even in the first half of the twentieth century, life there and its environs posed daily and often daunting struggles for survival, as these twenty viejitos attest.

Their oral histories, as told in Old Las Vegas, both sad and joyful, comprise a medley of compelling subjects, ranging from life in the countryside, folk healing, religion, politics, and folklore to witchcraft and superstitions. Recounted here in their original Spanish and in English translation, these reflections on a distant past are uncomplicated and straightforward, lucid and honest; their aged tellers are freed of preconditioning or pretense.

The author, Nasario Garcia, a native New Mex­ican and leading folklorist in his state, is well known for his bilingual works on New Mexican folklore. As a member of the Speakers' Bureau for the New Mexico Humanities Council, he lectures throughout the state on the Hispanic culture and language of New Mexico .

No one surpasses Nasario Garcia in his understanding of Hispanic folklore in New Mexico . This new collec­tion of popular culture and history of northern New Mexico is a tempting feast. He serves up numerous memories and stories dealing with religion, schooling, politics, supernaturalism, and folk remedies and sayings. Altogether, here are rich, rewarding voices from a complex past we must not lose; they will intrigue and reward scholars and students alike. – Richard W. Etulain, author, New Mexico Lives: Profiles and Historical Stories

Another triumph for Nasario Garcia, master at interviewing the viejitos, the wise elders of Hispanic New Mexico, men and women whose well-examined lives were worth living and are eminently worth learning from. – Thomas J. Steele, author, Archbishop Lamy: In His Own Words

Nasario Garcia has provided an invaluable service in recording and translating the oral recollections of Hispanic pio­neers who endured hardships of rural life in isolated regions of New Mexico during the early twentieth century. … Their stories of a vanishing way of life are filled with pathos, humor, and nostalgia. A most interesting and very readable book. – Howard Bryan, author, Wildest of the Wild West

Told so quietly they fairly whisper, these stories resonate with simple wisdom and with the richness of a language, culture, and traditions that span several centuries in New Mexico . Folklorists, historians, cultural and social anthropologists, and students and teachers of Spanish throughout the Southwest will find much that engages and instructs in the accounts in Old Las Vegas that García has so lovingly gathered and carefully assembled here.

Sports

Tiger Virtues: 18 Proven Principles for Winning in Golf, and in Life by Alex Tresniowski (Running Press)

We love golf because golf imitates life. We honor brilliant golfers because they demonstrate a mastery that few others can replicate. We wonder how the finest golfer in the world became the finest golfer in the world, and we wonder how he gets better. We wonder how this golfer continues, year after year, to compete at such a high level.

Tiger Woods is the world's greatest golfer, and possibly its most recognized sportsman. Many of us are addicted to watching him work his magic on Sundays. Include author Alex Tresniowski, senior sportswriter for People magazine, in this group. Over the last decade as a fan and journalist, Tresniowski has taken note. Tiger Virtues examines greatness in detail and addresses the questions that we all have when we see perfection in action.

In Woods, Tresniowski has found: wakefulness, happy warrior, sureness, humility, intuition, vision, preparation, diligence, adaptability, positive thinking, integrity, patience, stillness, no expectations, balance, fearlessness, yielding, spirit, and exuberance. With these 18 attributes, Tiger Woods has reached unheard of heights. In Tiger Virtues, Tresniowski defines these 18 attributes – drawn from Buddhist principles – that constitute Woods' winning approach to golf, and reveals how his unprecedented mastery of the game is a metaphor for life. His application of Buddhist principles has been well-documented, and he is known for his relentless commitment, fierce competitiveness, and uncanny ability to perform at his best under pressure. In fact, he has noted that "Golf has been good to me, but the lessons I've learned transcended the game."

The text is supported by original interviews with more than 40 current golf pros and analysts, including observations from Earl Woods, Butch Harmon, David Feherty, Gary McCord, Bobby Clampett, Jim Huber, Peter Oosterhuis, Roger Maltbie and the coaches who have watched Tiger grow and readers are granted a uniquely true vision of Eldrick 'Tiger' Woods. The text is supported, most importantly, by the cooperation of Wood's strongest influence, his father and manager, Earl Woods. Tiger Virtues works as both a golf coach and a life coach.

Tiger Virtues is not just a book that deifies a superstar. It is an honest look at how the building blocks of practice, purpose and some simple philosophical tenets have convened in one incredible athlete. And as Tresniowski says, “we are merely walking along with Tiger and gleaning what we can.”

Tiger Virtues is simple in theory, broad in scope, and appealing to anyone who has ever swung a nine iron. It’s about golf, yet it has nothing to do with golf.

Sports / Biographies & Memoirs

Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner by Dean Karnazes (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin)

There are those of us whose idea of the ultimate physical challenge is the 26.2-mile Boston Marathon. And then there is Dean Karnazes.

Karnazes has run 226.2 miles nonstop; he has completed the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon across Death Valley National Park – considered the world's toughest footrace – in 130-degree weather; and he is the only person to complete a marathon to the South Pole in running shoes (and probably the only person to eat an entire pizza and a whole cheesecake while running).
Karnazes, named one of the Top 10 Ultimate Athletes by Outside magazine, president of EnergyWell Natural Foods in San Francisco , is an ultramarathoner: a member of an elite, hard-core group of extreme athletes who race 50 miles, 100 miles, and longer. They can run forty-eight hours and more without sleep, barely pausing for food or water or even to use the bathroom. They can scale mountains, in brutally hot or cold weather, pushing their bodies, minds, and spirits well past what seems humanly possible.
Ultramarathon Man is Karnazes's story: the mind-boggling adventures of his nonstop treks through the hell of Death Valley , the incomprehensible frigidity of the South Pole, and the breathtaking beauty of the mountains and canyons of the Sierra Nevada . Ultramarathon Man captures the euphoria and out-of-body highs of these adventures.

Dean toys with the barrier between possible and impossible, and expands the limits and boundaries of what it means to be human. This book will cause the jaws of even Navy SEALs to drop, and remind everyone of what it feels like to be truly alive. – Sam Fussell, author of Muscle

… Sure, it's gory to read about how he lost one of his big toenails from shoe friction during the Western States Endurance Run. But what registers more is that here's a guy competing in an event that includes 38,000 feet of elevation change – the equivalent of scaling the Empire State Building 30 times…. – Erica Jorgensen, Amazon.com
… This running memoir (written without a coauthor) paints the picture of an insanely dedicated – some may say just plain insane – athlete. … "Never," Karnazes writes, "are my senses more engaged than when the pain sets in." Yet his masochism is a reader's pleasure, and Karnazes's book is intriguing. Casual runners will find inspiration in Karnazes's determination; nonathletes will have the evidence once and for all that runners are indeed a strange breed. – Publishers Weekly
Charming and surprisingly quirky, providing the perfect escapist fantasy for couch potatoes and weekend warriors alike. – Kirkus Reviews

With an insight and candor rarely seen in sports memoirs, Karnazes in Ultramarathon Man also reveals how he merges the solitary, manic, self-absorbed life of hard-core ultra running with a full-time job, a wife, and two children, and how running has made him who he is today: a man with an überjock's body, a teenager's energy, and a champion's wisdom. Absolutely amazing!

Our Red Sox: A Story of Family, Friends and Fenway by Robert Sullivan (Emmis Books)

For writer Robert Sullivan, rooting for the Red Sox was a family tradition. He grew up with the Red Sox and has stuck by them through thick and (long periods of) thin. He was with the team all along, including the high-hopes years of 1967, 1978, 1986, and 2003 and of course in 2004, and his reports from Fenway on time.com gained him a wide audience and served as catalyst for Our Red Sox.

The Red Sox World Series victory broke the long-standing ‘curse of the Bambino’ and transcended the sport, the individuals in the uniforms, even the team. Sports Illustrated referred to it as a victory about a people (New Englanders), a loyalty, a family, a nation.

Sullivan, a 23-year veteran of Time Inc. publications, the deputy managing editor of Life magazine and the editorial director of Life Books, cannot remember a day when he was not a Red Sox fan. It seems he was born a Sox fan; he certainly was raised to be one. From Ted to Yaz, this to-the-death pledge was a rite of passage for anyone growing up in semi-rural Massachusetts in the 1950s and 60s. But now, in his middle innings, Sullivan finds himself in Westchester County , New York – in the backyard and too often in the shadow of the Yankees.

Our Red Sox is about playoffs recently past and seasons long ago, about 2004 and 1918 and everything in between. It's about fathers and sons and daughters and moms, about sandlots and bleacher seats and press row, about tragedies imagined and frighteningly real – all of these things happening in an orbit around the park called Fenway.

There are small, crystalline moments – such as the memory of the author's dad gathering his boys to listen to a broadcast as Earl Wilson finishes off an improbable no-hitter. And large moments, too, as the author endures the pain represented by Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner, and Grady Little from the cheap seats of Fenway, Shea, and Yankee Stadium.

As Red Sox fans know better than anyone else, it all comes out truly fine in the end. For Sullivan, that seventh game in the Stadium was followed by a serene World Series experience with his family, then an unexpected and unusual audience with Curt Schilling himself.

This is a book about what binds a family together, and a region together, and what it means to care. It is a graceful reflection, filled with heart and humor, love and loss and—ultimately, miraculously – with triumph. – Jim Collins, author of The Last Best League

If you think it's impossible to say anything both new and intimate about the Red Sox, you have not read Robert Sullivan. This is not just another memoir about a fan's relationship to the game he loves and the team that he loves – this is the one against which all others will have to be measured. It's a lovely book by an exceptionally decent man who also happens to be a fine, fine writer. – Daniel Okrent, author of Nine Innings and Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center

Our Red Sox is a funny, gentle and moving memoir from deep inside the strange land called Red Sox Nation. It is a home run – constantly good-humored, touching, dramatic, and, ultimately, magical. As we say in the south, you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the (Rex Sox) country out of the boy.

Travel / Arts & Photography

Our North Carolina by Kevin Adams (Voyageur Press (MN))

What is it about North Carolina that makes our state so special?

See for yourself in Our North Carolina, a stunning pictorial tour through every beautiful corner of our popular state – a tour that captures our unique character and landscape.

From the Great Smoky Mountains to the sandy Atlantic beaches and the Outer Banks; from Civil War battle sites and vivid hues of autumn foliage along the Blue Ridge Parkway to cities, farmland, and much more, renowned local photographer Kevin Adams showcases the people and places that make North Carolina such a great state to visit and in which to live.

Nature created four distinct areas within North Carolina 's boundaries, resulting in a state whose diversity is hard to match. From the vastness of the Appalachian Mountains

to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge; from Kitty Hawk, the birthplace of flight, and the historic lighthouses that hold sentry along the coast to the farmlands and significant universities of the Northern Piedmont region; from historic Asheville to the bustling cities of Charlotte and Raleigh, Our North Carolina shows the natural, historical, and cultural aspects of the Tar Heel State.

Showcasing the state's beauty, Our North Carolina offers a glimpse into what makes the region unique. Adams, award-winning photographer of North Carolina Waterfalls, Wildflowers of the Southern Appalachians , Waterfalls of Virginia and West Virginia , Hiking Great Smoky Mountains National Park , and North Carolina’s Best Wildflower Hikes outdoes himself in this visually exciting photography/travel book, long on vistas, broken only by the labels needed to identify the photographs.
 
Travel / History / Biographies & Memoirs

In the Footsteps of Daniel Boone by Randell Jones (In the Footsteps Series: John F. Blair, Publisher)

Market hunter, frontier guide, wilderness scout, master woodsman, expert marksman, Indian fighter, militia leader, surveyor, land speculator, judge, sheriff, droner, elected legislator, merchant, tavern keeper, prisoner of war, Spanish syndic, husband, father – Daniel Boone led one of the fullest and most eventful lives in American history. Every place Daniel Boone traveled, he faced danger. Time and again, his long life was almost cut short by British soldiers, Cherokee warriors, Shawnee raiders, and frontier outlaws, not to mention the buffalo, bears, wolves, and panthers prowling the wilderness, or the threat of starvation, fires, and freezing winters. Encompassing 85 sites stretched across 11 states, In the Footsteps of Daniel Boone takes readers to the places where Boone lived, hunted, fought, and dreamed of the next frontier.

As the theme song from the 1960s television series phrased it, "Daniel Boone was a man/ Yes, a big man." The truth behind the legend can be explored as readers follow Boone as he leads the expansion of America 's frontier. From his birthplace in Pennsylvania to his final resting place in Missouri , In the Footsteps of Daniel Boone is a combination travel guide/history book, which allows readers to walk where Boone walked. Written by Randell Jones, In the Footsteps of Daniel Boone is the fourth volume in the In the Footsteps series of historical travel guides. “This book takes readers to the places where the stories unfold and shapes the visitor's understanding of events by adding the dimension of being there,” Jones says. According to Jones, past president of the Overmountain Victory Trail Association, historical reenactor, and a storyteller who has performed at the National Storytelling Festival, “Standing atop Pilot Knob, from which Boone first saw the ‘beautiful level of Kentucky ’ and gazing out across the same landform connects readers in a way no narrative of the tale can.”

From Pennsylvania , his family moved south through Virginia and into North Carolina , where Boone married Rebecca Bryan and where he lived and hunted for almost two decades. During the late 1700s, Boone and others began exploring the western side of the Appalachians . He engaged in long hunting expeditions into Tennessee and Kentucky , was captured and escaped from Indians several times, marked the Wilderness Trail through the Cumberland Gap , erected a stockade at Boonesborough , Kentucky , and fought the American Revolution on the western front. Even before Kentucky became a state, his frontier exploits earned him international fame, yet he lost all of his land holdings because of title disputes. Seeking a new frontier, Boone moved to Missouri , where he lived until his death in 1820, just short of age 86.

In the Footsteps of Daniel Boone elaborates on these basic facts, telling the fascinating stories connected to the various sites in Pennsylvania , Virginia , North Carolina , Tennessee , Kentucky , Ohio , Missouri , as well as locations in Maryland , West Virginia , Michigan , and Florida . The site descriptions in In the Footsteps of Daniel Boone are supplemented with an appendix that lists major sites in the order in which Boone visited them, as well as a bibliography, an index, maps, and photographs, making it easy to use the book as a guide to the 85 of the places Boone visited.
Writing / Reference

Concise Rules Of APA Style by American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association) presents specific, key chapters from the best-selling Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, fifth edition.

This look-up, pocket-style guide offers readers quick access to the essentials of APA Style. Concise Rules Of APA Style shows readers how to:

• Construct an error-free reference list through a variety of examples and sources.
• Credit sources properly and avoid charges of plagiarism.
• Appropriately format numbers, statistics, figures, tables, and appendixes.
• Check the mechanics of style for punctuation, spelling, capitalization, abbreviation, italicization, headings, and quotations.
• Avoid the grammatical errors most commonly reported by social science editors.

Concise Rules Of APA Style offers essential writing standards for students, teachers, researchers, and clinicians. Many psychology departments require that student papers, theses, and dissertations be prepared accord­ing to APA Style. Familiarity with both departmental standards and APA Style guidelines will enable students to prepare papers efficiently. Although Concise Rules Of APA Style is considerably shorter and more compact than the Publication Manual, the style guidance it offers is complete. Editors from the American Psychological Association have selected for their pocket guide those rules of style that are critical for clear communication. Readers are urged to consult the Publication Manual, drawn from an extensive body of psychological literature, for broad background information about scientific publishing, including guidance on designing research, identifying the parts of a scholarly article, understanding the process of journal publication, and submitting articles for publication. Concise Rules Of APA Style is a quick-reference supplement to that guide.

Chapter 1 begins by providing tips to strengthen readers’ scientific writing skills, listing the rules of grammar that have proven to be most challenging to those who submit articles to the APA Journals Program, sharing guidelines to reduce bias in language, and describing the most effective heading structure for organizing ideas. Chapters 2 and 3 review the mechanics of style for punctuation, spelling, capitalization, abbreviation, and italicization. The preferred use of numbers as well as standards for metrication and statistics are presented in chapter 4. Chapters 5 and 6 provide guidance for the construction and formatting of tables and figures. Instruction on writing and formatting supplemental material is offered in chapter 7. And, finally, complete information on quoting sources and citing references both in text and in the reference list is provided in chapters 8 and 9. For ease of use, the editors have provided four tools for looking up information: A brief table of contents inside the front cover lists key topics, an expanded table of contents provides detailed entries, an extensive index at the end of the book locates key discussions, and a quick guide to electronic references inside the back cover directs readers to helpful formatting examples. For convenience, the book also includes a "Checklist for Manuscript Submission."

Concise Rules Of APA Style is an authoritative guide, in a convenient, portable format, on how best to present the ideas and data readers have worked so hard to gather. This handbook in conjunction with the Publication Manual helps readers master the style standards that best foster strong and concise writing in the social sciences.

Guide to This Issue

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

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