SirReadaLot.org
We Review the Best of the Latest Books
ISSN 1934-6557
August 2005, issue #76
Guide to This Issue
Contents: Home & Arts:
Fix-Up Furniture, Homes, Quilts,
Digital Photography of Nature, Harold
Weston's
Architecture / Home & Garden
Cheap and Tasteful Dwellings: Design Competitions and the
Convenient Interior, 1879-1909 by Jan
Jennings (The
In 1879, Carpentry and Building magazine launched its first house design competition for a cheap house. Forty-two competitions, eighty-six winning designs, and a slew of near winners and losers resulted in a body of work that offers an entire history of an architectural culture. The competitions represented a vital period of transition in delineating roles and responsibilities of architectural services and building trades. The contests helped to define the training, education, and values of ‘practical architects’ and to solidify house-planning ideals. The lives and work of ordinary architects who competed in Carpentry and Building contests offer a reinterpretation of architectural professionalization in this time period.
Cheap and Tasteful Dwellings explores in detail the results of
these competitions, conducted over a thirty-year period from 1879 to
1909. In this book, Jan Jennings, professor in the Department of
Design and Environmental Analysis at
A landmark book in architectural history,
Cheap and Tasteful Dwellings makes a compelling case for the
theory of convenient arrangement – its history, its role, its
principles, its relationship to contemporary interior design
education, and its meaning to American architecture. More
importantly, the book explains the impact of Carpentry and
Building's contests in furthering the tenets of convenient
arrangement for house design. By using extensive material from the
magazine,
Arts & Photography
Digital Nature Photography Closeup by Jon Cox (Amphoto Books, Watson-Guptill Publications)
Some 59.3 million digital cameras will be sold this year – and most come fully equipped with close-up features that let users get up close and personal with all the wonders of nature, from birds and trees to flowers and insects to underwater plants and fish. But few buyers know how to get the most from these features.
Digital Nature Photography Closeup shows readers, whether
amateurs or professionals, how to harness the macro power of their
cameras to create breathtaking nature photography. From Jon Cox,
instructor at the
- Stunning color photographs of a wide range of subjects.
- Macro techniques.
- File formats, Photoshop, and pertinent digital technology.
Cox offers advice on purchasing and using special macro equipment, i.e., lenses, extension tubes, teleconverters, microscopes, etc. In this logical follow-up to his bestselling Digital Nature Photography, Cox uses dozens of full-color examples to illustrate how he got that shot – and how other photographers can, too.
Digital Nature Photography Closeup is a comprehensive guide for
macro photographers. From basic techniques, to action shots,
aquarium and underwater photography, even shooting through a
microscope,
Digital Nature Photography Closeup is a great guide to exploring
the fascinating world of nature with a macro lens.
Arts & Photography / Art History / Cultural History
Wild Exuberance: Harold Weston's
The
Along with 104 color and ten black-and-white plates of Weston's
works, the catalog
Wild Exuberance includes essays that cover myriad aspects of
Weston's life and art. The
Wild Exuberance … focuses attention on Harold Weston, who should
be a significant figure in the history of twentieth-century American
art.... Born into social and economic privilege, Weston chose
individual liberty and relative isolation over social
conformities....
Wild Exuberance puts him and his work before us with spirit and
insight. – Marc Simpson, Associate Director,
This is an important volume, a contribution to regional studies,
social history, and the art history of American modernism. Harold
Weston is restored in this study to his rightful place as a
fascinating American figure, committed equally to social and
artistic progressivism…. His varied works, traced here in absorbing
detail over some five decades, are a splendid addition to the canon
of modernism. His life story, deftly outlined here as well, expands
our understanding of a turbulent period in American cultural and
social history. – Linda S. Ferber, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of
American Art, The
The fully illustrated exhibition catalog
Wild Exuberance provides a rare opportunity to see Weston's best
Biographies & Memoirs
Rolling Down Black Stockings: A Passage out of the Old Order Mennonite Religion by Esther Royer Ayers (The Kent State University Press) demonstrates the powerful influence of a society on a young girl's life, and how that childhood influence follows her.
Although my plain dress and long braids made me quite different
from my classmates, my black stockings troubled me the most. Rolling
them down and exposing my bare legs made me feel like one of them.
Rolling Down Black Stockings is a personal account of Esther Royer Ayers's youth spent in a highly restrictive and confined religious community. Ayers's story is as much a search for identity and a longing for a mother's love as it is a tale about a rigid culture and religion and her abandonment of it.
Ayers's account begins when she was eight years old, watching her mother take care of her sick father. Ayers, a writer who worked for a pharmaceutical company before retiring, describes how her family coped with the burden of not having enough income, which meant that the children were expected to work instead of pursuing an education. She writes of the difficulties she and her siblings faced when secular educational leaders closed the one-room schoolhouses that served her Mennonite community. She relates her struggles and conflicts on leaving her home and church.
Rolling Down Black Stockings is told in three books: book one describes Ayers’ youth in a farm community on the outskirts of Columbiana, Ohio; book two follows her struggles as she tries to fit in with another culture after leaving the church; and book three discusses the history and cultural dynamics of Old Order Mennonite.
This memoir recalls Esther Ayers's strange childhood. Her first
job, at 12, was as a maid in a neighbor's house. Esther and her
seven siblings already knew how to work hard – cleaning, heating
water for laundry, hoeing, gathering potatoes, and hauling buckets
of milk.
For Old Order Mennonites, heavy toil with few pleasures was the way
to heaven. An eighth grade education was good enough. Children were
ordered to fail twice so they could legally quit school at age 16.
For bright inquisitive Esther, this life was stifling. Esther had
never been to a movie, read a magazine, or seen a home with art on
the walls. … – Sandy Huff, Amazon.com
Writing with intelligence and insight, Rolling Down Black Stockings is a rare and reflective memoir and a valuable piece of social history that will appeal to historians as well as those interested in separatist communities and women's studies.
Biographies & Memoirs / African American
Bones Hooks: Pioneer Negro Cowboy by Bruce G. Todd (Pelican Publishing Company)
Some colored people are envious of my position among white people. They follow me because they know I can get help from the white people, but they do not trust me. Someday they will understand me. – Hooks
If a man was man enough to work on a ranch in the early days, he
was too much of a man to abuse me. If he did, I knew he wasn't man
enough to stay there for long. – Hooks explaining race relations on
the
Texans still talk about Bones Hooks and his famous ride. In 1910,
the forty-three-year-old former cowboy, then working as a
In
Bones Hooks Bruce G. Todd, creator of the
The son of former slaves, Mathew ‘Bones’ Hooks left home at the
age of twelve to pursue the rough-and-tumble life of a cowboy,
during which he rubbed shoulders with other legends such as Col.
Charles Goodnight. After his retirement, he devoted himself to civic
and social improvements in
Todd's book is rich with the history of the
In literature, music, and Western films,
Bones Hooks is the seldom-heard story of how blacks pioneered
the American west.
Todd brings a fascinating life, and an important, little known piece
of history, to light in this, the first biography of a man who broke
both wild horses and racial barriers.
Biographies & Memoirs / Entertainers
One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey 'The Kid' Ungar, The World's Greatest Poker Player by Nolan Dalla & Peter Alson, with a foreword by Mike Sexton (Atria Books)
There has been a recent explosion of interest in high-stakes poker thanks to cable sports networks' televising of the World Series of Poker, numerous celebrity tournaments and other high profile match-ups. But for anyone with a longer-term interest in the game, the zenith of professional gambling was undoubtedly the heyday of Stuart Ungar, whom many consider to have been the greatest card player who ever lived. Ungar, the only player to win the $10,000 championship event in both the World Series of Poker and the Super Bowl of Poker – and to do so three times each – was a high-strung genius, both fearless and aggressive.
One of a Kind takes readers inside that world of high stakes gambling, capturing the roller coaster of big money and seedy glamour, of devastating losses and unrequited hopes.
Stuart Errol Ungar was born in 1953 on
Ungar was by many accounts the greatest gin player that ever was,
and he quickly made his mark in the mob-run gambling dens of
But the same reckless and flamboyant attributes that made Ungar
such an exciting card player to watch, took their toll on the rest
of his life. He was an inveterate gambler, who would generally
squander his sizable casino winnings at the racetrack. Married to a
woman who stood by him and managed his finances as best she could,
he yielded to the temptations of his celebrity status with sexual
promiscuity. He never had a bank account or credit card, and only
got a social security number minutes after winning his first World
Series in order to collect the prize money. In the 24/7, glitzy
world of Vegas casinos, he turned to drugs – coke, crack, methadone,
painkillers – and ultimately sank into the unreliable persona of
addict. At age 45, he was found dead in a squalid
In One of a Kind veteran sports handicapper and World Series of Poker media director Nolan Dalla, along with acclaimed writer Peter Alson, offer the first authorized biography of Ungar's heartbreaking ascendancy and decline. The book was originally intended to be Ungar's autobiography, and Dalla had spent many hours interviewing the card sharp during the summer and fall preceding Ungar's death in 1998. The authors still tell parts of the story using Ungar's own words, but have greatly expanded the biographical narrative through extensive interviews with the people in Stuey's life.
If you want an ‘education’ in the old-time gambling underworld,
you can’t do better than
One of a Kind. Although you’d never want to live it, Ungar’s
life, as drawn by Dalla and Alson, is riveting, haunting, and
compelling. Ungar’s legacy of genius, destroyed by indulgence, would
seem absurd as fiction; as truth it is a gripping epic tragedy. –
Brian Koppelman and David Levien, screenwriters of Rounders and
Runaway Jury
A well-written and well-researched study of the most naturally
gifted and emotionally stunted card genius in the history of poker.
– A. Alvarez, author of The Biggest Game in Town
One of a Kind is a riveting account of Ungar's meteoric ascent and ignominious decent in the gambling world. This intimate biography illuminates the dark genius of poker's most charismatic and mysterious star, who could ruthlessly peer into and read other men's souls but seemed baffled and powerless when confronted with his own.
With well-seasoned knowledge, Dalla and Alson recreate the palpable drama at the tables, leading the uninitiated through the rules of the games and the subtlety of play. Mostly though, their compassionate, yet clear-eyed biography pays lasting tribute to a man of unequaled skill, who burned out long before his legend.
Biographies & Memoirs / Travel
Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev by Robert Dessaix (Shoemaker & Hoard)
Ivan Turgenev (1818-83) was a Russian writer best known for his
play A Month in the Country and his novel Fathers and Sons. Together
with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev was one of the leading
novelists of
No less sensational than his novels was his personal life. For
forty years, until the day he died, he was passionately devoted to
the diva Pauline Viardot, following her and her husband around
Europe and even living with them amicably at times as part of their
household. Everything for Turgenev, even his dismay at the
backwardness and injustice of life in
What, then, did Turgenev mean by ‘love,’ the word at the core of
his life and work?
Robert Dessaix, widely known interviewer and commentator on
Australian television and radio, has had his own forty-year
relationship with Turgenev, first as a student of Russian in both
Australia and Russia, then as a teacher, and now as what he calls a
close friend. When he was in
Themes of Dessaix’s work include the problem of irrational love in a world of reason, Russian theology, the experience of being far away and therefore barbarian in European eyes, the modern confusion of the erotic with the sexual, and of course, the problem of death. Dessaix tells how he has come to see Turgenev's life and work as an expression of a turning point in the history of love – the moment the Romantic became rational, love unraveled into sentiment and erotic feelings, and Eros became a mere commodity.
Dessaix's exploration of Turgenev's travels illuminates not only
the great writer's soul but allows us better to understand the
mysterious relationship between the landscapes of geography and the
landscapes of literature, and how page and place feed magically off
one another. This is one of the best travel memoirs I've read in
years. – Alberto Manguel
Virginia Woolf wrote of Turgenev's fiction that the meaning of
what he said went on long after the sounds had stopped. The same is
true of Dessaix's lucid, tender prose. At the end of his journey the
author feels, ‘I'd caught up with myself at last,’ and he believes
he has understood himself better. Readers of this profound, funny,
sad book may also come to believe the same. – Evening Standard (
An elegant, witty and moving study of a beloved writer and, more deeply, of love itself. Twilight of Love would have delighted its subject. – John Banville
In this truly remarkable work, Robert Dessaix has found the pulse that quickened Turgenev’s age, but has failed in ours. Twilight of Love is a moving, melancholy, vastly informative excursion into the Russian mind, and the language is superb at capturing the landscapes, atmospheres, and human vagaries.
Business & Investing / Economics / Humor
A Devil's Dictionary of Business: Monkey Business; High Finance
and Low; Money, the Making, Losing, and Printing Thereof; Commerce,
Trade; Clever Tricks; Tours de Force; Globalism and Globaloney;
Industry; Invention; the Stock Market; Marvelous Explanations and
Clarifications; All Presented with Wit and Attitude… by Nicholas Von
Hoffman (Nation Books)
A Devil's Dictionary of Business, a curmudgeon’s lexicon, is full of diabolical stuff about business. It provides a comical, entertaining overview of the business world, told from the perspective of the legendary Nicholas von Hoffman, best-selling author of Citizen Cohn, and Washington Post columnist of whom the late Katherine Graham said, "My life would have been a lot simpler had Nicholas von Hoffman not appeared in the paper."
Arranged alphabetically, from ‘Abacus’ to ‘Zukor, Adolph,’ the dictionary elucidates the business world from top to bottom, from the ancient world to the Enron world. For example von Hoffman defines a financial ‘Analyst’ as "a human steam calliope employed by stockbrokers to tout securities the brokerage owns (or has a hidden financial interest in) and wants to unload onto the naive and ever hopeful."
Von Hoffman, a self-styled Pulitzer prize-losing author, has had a long and bumpy career in journalism, during which he has been fired more than a few times by editors and TV executives who have a limited tolerance for curmudgeonly behavior. He is the author of thirteen books, several plays, and an opera libretto, and a columnist for the New York Observer.
Financial ignoramuses (ignorami?) like myself will dive into this book. . . . So this is what 'equity' means? I never even heard of 'dogs of the Dow.' Now, because of Nicholas von Hoffman I might even peruse financial pages. Not alone, though. I will keep beside me my trusty A Devil's Dictionary of Business. – Frank McCourt
…In between the wisecracks, he offers a trove of information on business topics from the basics of double-entry bookkeeping to the arcana of Hello Kitty merchandising, and draws grudgingly appreciative biographical thumbnails of such figures as Andrew Carnegie, Jimmy Hoffa and yo-yo mogul Donald Franklin Duncan. Throughout, von Hoffman pays tribute to capitalism's achievements in conferring organization, technology, low prices and high quality on society while bemoaning its wholesale re-engineering of that society to eliminate family meals, foist on us a culture driven by the youth marketing demographic and make the consumer ‘the central person in the American universe.’ Readers will enjoy the book either as an entertaining casual browse or as a socioeconomic soapbox. – Publishers Weekly
A Devil's Dictionary of Business is a godsend to those looking for an incisive and entertaining overview of the business world. This catty, chatty, sharp, funny, mean, informative, and engaging book is worthy of its antecedent, Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, and is an ideal gift for one’s stockbroker, bank manager, loan shark, or that anti-capitalist, Starbucks-bashing cousin, all of whom will enjoy von Hoffman’s sardonic and dizzying tour of Mammon.
Business & Investing / Human Resources
The HR Value Proposition by Dave Ulrich &
Wayne Brockbank (
"Why should our company continue to invest in HR?''
It's a question frequently asked about the HR function, particularly as the field's traditional activities like payroll, benefits administration, and training are being automated or out-sourced. Once this transactional work is streamlined or delivered via new channels, wonder many executives and line managers, what does the future hold for HR professionals?
According to Dave Ulrich and Wayne Brockbank, leading HR thinkers and professors at the University of Michigan School of Business, HR is in the midst of a fundamental transformation – from transactional players aspiring to become ‘strategic partners,’ to key wealth creators whose activities add value for all stakeholders. This transformation will require a dramatic refocusing of HR: from what is done to what is delivered; from building HR functions for efficiency to building them for stakeholder value; and from implementing best HR practices to delivering value-added HR practices.
Drawing on an eighteen-year global study of over 30,000 HR professionals and line managers, Ulrich and Brockbank identify the fourteen HR criteria that have the greatest impact on value creation and outline five core elements required to build them:
- External business realities: Adapt HR practices to a complex and changing world.
- Stakeholders: Connect HR actions to the value they create for stakeholders.
- HR practices: Invest in practices that yield the most value for the firm.
- HR resources: Align HR strategy and organization with business priorities.
- HR professionalism: Upgrade the competencies and perform new roles for every HR professional.
Scores of best practice examples from international corporations to smaller firms illustrate how companies are delivering value through HR. Audits, diagnostics, and tools help HR professionals assess where they are now and where they need to focus to build their own world-class HR function.
Ulrich and Brockbank clearly reinforce our vision that HR leaders must be highly visible, credible, value-added business partners to be effective in the world of business. – Bill Conaty, Senior Vice President, Corporate Human Resources, GE
Like HR Champions in the 1990s, The HR Value Proposition will fuel a decade of HR professional development in the years ahead. It provides the theories, examples, and criteria that create and deliver HR value. – John Hofmeister, President, Shell Oil Company
This readable and practical book illustrates a new way of creating seamless interdependency with all stakeholders. Both managers and HR will benefit enormously from this strategic framework. – Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Written by the field's premier trailblazers, The HR Value Proposition charts the path HR professionals must take to help lead their organizations into the future, offering a compelling, actionable blueprint for the future of HR.
Business & Investing / Marketing & Sales
Buzzmarketing: Get People to Talk About Your Stuff by Mark Hughes (Portfolio)
Forty-four percent of sales are affected by buzz or lack thereof, according to a 2001 McKinsey Report.
Everyone wants buzz for their business, but few people actually know what to do to get it. Mark Hughes, CEO of Buzzmarketing and host of the nationally syndicated radio show The Buzz Factor, shares the secrets of word-of-mouth marketing in his book Buzzmarketing. Buzz marketing is a topic many people talk about but few truly understand. To explain it, Hughes draws on his own real-world experience as an executive and consultant.
Most marketing is pushy, but Hughes says that word-of-mouth marketing ‘pulls’ by engaging attention of consumers and the media to the point where talking about the brand becomes entertaining, fascinating, and newsworthy. He tells the inside story of smart marketing strategies that got everybody talking about American Idol, Britney Spears, text-messaging, tie-dye, Miller Lite, and other buzz machines.
The key to these buzzmarketing success stories, says Hughes, is that they start conversations by pushing one or more of The Six Buttons of Buzz: the taboo, the unusual, the outrageous, the hilarious, the remarkable, and secrets (both kept and revealed).
Hughes explains why verbal mention placements are more effective
than visual product placements; why guerilla marketing isn't
buzzmarketing; how celebrities can be used in unexpected ways to
create buzz; how David & Goliath stories propel buzz for companies
like Ben & Jerry's; and how to police the product from bad buzz.
…Hughes's tales of companies that successfully harnessed buzz are
the strongest part of the book, covering businesses as diverse as
Pepsi, Ben and Jerry's and Rit Dye, which revived itself by sparking
the tie-dye craze in the 1960s. … Hughes's ideas are provocative and
should interest business professionals frustrated with same-again
advertising campaigns. – Publishers Weekly
A business book that's entertaining and useful for big brands and start-ups alike. – Steve Forbes, Editor in Chief, Forbes
An intriguing book about an intriguing new trend in marketing. It's rare to find a business book that teaches and entertains like this. – Warren Phillips, former editor, The Wall Street Journal and CEO, Dow Jones
Buzzmarketing works. It's not just a nice-to-have, it's a must-have! – Brian Swette, former Chief Marketing Officer, Pepsi-Cola; former COO, eBay
At last! A fun-to-read business book that delivers on its premise. Buzzmarketing puts a spotlight on what makes word-of-mouth advertising score a knockout...just when cluttered traditional media has lost its punch. – Stan Rapp, Chairman of McCann Relationship Marketing
The book shows how any company can thrive by pursuing a buzz-driven strategy rather than just hoping for a lucky break. Full of entertaining inside stories, Buzzmarketing is the definitive guide to today's hottest – and cheapest – marketing strategy.
Business & Investing / Small Business
Retail in Detail, 3rd edition by Ronald L. Bond (Entrepreneur Press)
Do you dream ... of staking your claim to riches in the retail
world?
Most small-business owners have no one to turn to for professional advice and must learn how to set up and manage their businesses the slow hard way – through trial and error.
Retail in Detail is the seminal text for the retail industry –
revised in this third edition to address today’s changing retail
market conditions.
Author Ronald Bond, with more than 30 years experience as a
manager and small business owner, takes an honest and down-to-earth
approach, discussing the problems that retail owners encounter on a
daily basis. Practical work sheets and cost figures help readers
calculate critical financial information.
Retail in Detail covers the steps of planning, opening, and managing a retail store, beginning with an honest assessment of whether readers are really suited to running a business. Bond provides practical information on planning a store opening, from selecting a product line and hiring employees to buying an initial inventory and obtaining the required permits, licenses, and tax numbers. Bond guides readers every step of the way, utilizing real-world examples and informative anecdotes to break down the critical daily processes into concise, easy-to-follow, chronological steps, including how to:
- Choose a location and maintain an image.
- Purchase and keep track of inventory.
- Stay abreast of legal and regulatory requirements.
- Manage finances and bookkeeping.
- Maintain employee relations.
- Overcome the common problems of retail operations.
- Manage inventory to decrease expenses.
- Minimize common mistakes.
- Establish a financial plan for decision making and growth.
Instead of focusing on economic theories and obscure business
concepts,
Retail in Detail is a step-by-step guide addressing the
commonplace, daily problems of retail operations like: choosing a
product line, the ins and outs of wholesale markets, pricing and
credit policies, inventory tracking and using computers, employee
relations, store location, store image, and merchandise displays. …
In addition there is a glossary of terms, an extensive publications
list, and
Retail in Detail will give the aspiring entrepreneur a much
needed basis from which to launch his or her enterprise. Sound,
sage, productive advice, which if followed carefully, will enhance
the odds of success for any new business. –
Retail in Detail provides real information readers can apply to
their retail business today.
With more than 30 years of experience, Bond provides the most comprehensive information available to successfully plan, launch and manage a retail business. Packed with realistic and practical advice, this step-by-step manual raises the bar for the most comprehensive information available.
Business & Investing / Small Business & Entrepreneurship
The Small Business Owner's Manual: Everything You Need to Know to Start Up and Run Your Business by Joe Kennedy (Career Press)
Nothing is more important for small business owners than saving time and making the right decisions – being both efficient and effective. The Small Business Owner's Manual is designed to help entrepreneurs and business owners of all sizes and shapes do just that, providing them the direct, fast-paced, and practical information they need. While some may read it cover to cover, the real value of The Small Business Owner's Manual is as a reference resource when entrepreneurs are faced with pressing questions that need answers.
For example:
- Choose among 13 ways to get new financing and the 17 steps
to building a winning loan package.
- Weigh the pros and cons among eight legal structures, from
corporations to LLCs.
- Write winning ads and analyze 16 advertising and marketing
alternatives including the latest in Search Engine Marketing and
Search Engine Optimization.
- Develop a powerful business plan in half the time.
- Get taxes paid on time, collect from deadbeats, protect the
business from litigation and get legal agreements with teeth by
effectively finding and partnering with CPAs and attorneys.
- Get a quick overview of the 14 top forms of business
insurance including workers comp and medical.
- Understand the legal side of hiring, firing, and managing
employees and contractors.
- Minimize taxes by learning the ins-and-outs of business income taxes, the top 5 payroll taxes, sales and use taxes, common tax dodges, and the latest loopholes for business owners.
- Learn how the credit system really works and minimize chargebacks, disputes and headaches.
- Discover 12 ways to minimize fraud.
I have worked with Joe Kennedy for well over a decade and have met few others with such energy for absorbing and implementing the many skills required to successfully run a small business.... There is much in this book to accelerate your business. I consider [it] an invaluable resource. – Eric Weider, President and CEO, Weider Health and Fitness
Author Joe Kennedy has more than twenty years of experience in operating and working with small businesses, a degree in finance and an MBA. He knows how entrepreneurs think and their drive to get to the essence of an issue, make the right decision and quickly move on. Impatient business owners will likely prefer this book since only the most relevant information is provided. The Small Business Owner's Manual is useful for newly minted entrepreneurs as well as seasoned business owners and can be read from cover-to-cover or to quickly lookup information in the midst of a crisis.
Cooking, Food & Wine
Grilled and Chilled: 120 Delectable Recipes for Light and Fresh Summer Cooking by Martha Day (Southwater)
Grilled and Chilled, written by cook and food writer Martha Day,
encapsulates the spirit of summer in 120 dishes, both classical and
innovative. The recipes, inspired by summer produce and ingredients
and by the pleasure of outdoor cooking and eating, are presented in
seven sections: appetizers and light meals; fish and shellfish; meat
and poultry; barbecues and picnics; pasta dishes, breads and pizzas;
vegetables and salads; and summer desserts. Traditional recipe
favorites such as Chilled Fresh Tomato Soup, Salade Nicoise, Classic
Whole Salmon, Grilled Chicken Salad, Tandoori Chicken, Margherita
Pizza, and Fresh Citrus Gelatin, are interspersed with stimulating
ideas like Pear and Pecan Nut Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing,
Grilled Salmon with Red Onion Marmalade, Pan-fried Pork with Peaches
and Green Peppercorns, Stilton Burgers and Mango and Lime Sorbet in
Lime Shells. There are also innovative recipes featuring some
favorite ingredients: Red Pepper and Watercress Filo Parcels, Warm
Duck Salad with
The recipes are shown in step-by-step detail and there is a
picture of every finished dish. The simple-to-use format includes a
shopping list for ingredients, and illustrations of techniques and
equipment on the page. Included are recipes for every kind of event,
meal and eating style, from formal dinners and barbecues to finger
foods and buffets
Grilled and Chilled is an introduction to cooking illustrating
ingredients, materials, techniques and equipment, including details
of types of barbecues and how to use them. It includes lunches and
suppers, picnics, barbecues, outdoor parties, al fresco dining and
open-air entertaining. Its 120 recipes and over 800 photographs
capture the essence of summer, inspired by seasonal ingredients and
by the pleasures of outdoor cooking and eating. This tempting
collection of recipes will inspire, and the simple-to-follow,
step-by-step format means that creating enticing summer meals
becomes easy and enjoyable.
Cooking, Food & Wine
Recipes from a Very Small Island by Linda
Greenlaw & Martha Greenlaw (Hyperion) presents the
When Linda Greenlaw comes home for dinner – whether it's from a
30-day swordfishing expedition or a day out on her lobster boat –
she knows what's going to greet her the moment she walks in the
door: a home-cooked meal courtesy of Martha Greenlaw, a fantastic
cook and Linda's mother. Martha Greenlaw, who's spent forty years
delighting friends and family with her cooking, has decided to share
her kitchen secrets. Some of these recipes are family heirlooms, and
others are creations that Martha has developed herself. About 20 are
from Linda, the bestselling author of The
In Recipes from a Very Small Island, Linda and Martha Greenlaw team up to present a slew of New England-style dishes. Using such regional staples as berries, fresh seafood and hearty vegetables, Martha and Linda have created recipes that readers will appreciate for their authenticity and simple, unfussy ingredients. All the recipes put the focus on their easy, intuitive techniques.
The Greenlaws' recipes range from hearty dishes like "Martha's Famous Lobster Casserole" to unique creations like "Spicy Swordfish Steaks with Cool Cucumber-Cumin Concoction." Linda and Martha demonstrate how to make the most of locally grown and seasonal produce, devoting one chapter to the culinary pleasures of "Blueberries and Cranberries" with "Foggy Morning Blueberry Muffins" and "Cranberry-Pear Crisp with Almond Topping." Another chapter features garden delights such as "Roasted Root Vegetables," and "Gingered Fruit Slaw."
Besides recipes from Martha and Linda, there are a series of
essays that offer an insider's view of life on
… It's a charming collection. … the Greenlaws present a nice
variety of old and new (e.g., classic
Recipes from a Very Small Island is packed with colorful
anecdotes about seaside life and brimming with more than
seventy-five recipes, this collection showcases the talents and
idiosyncratic charms of the Greenlaw family. Written in Linda's
inimitable style and filled with tasteful photographs,
Recipes from a Very Small Island will appeal to any cook who
wants to make a tasty and satisfying
Cooking, Food & Wine
Food and Cooking of Africa and the Middle East: A fascinating
journey through these rich and diverse cuisines: the culinary
history, the ingredients, the techniques and over 150 authentic
dishes by Josephine Bacon and Jenni Fleetwood
(Lorenz Books) brings together the authentic cooking styles and
classic foodstuffs of two vast and diverse regions,
Food and Cooking of Africa and the Middle East is a collection
of recipes from all over
After the introduction, the next six chapters, covering recipes from all over the regions, provide over 150 dishes ranging from appetizers and main courses to refreshing fruit desserts and delectable pastries. Enticing dishes are included for all palates and every kind of meal, from mezze starters, spicy, sizzling meat dishes and piquant fish curries to a dazzling array of rice and vegetable dishes, as well as exotic, delicate sweets and desserts. Recipes include irresistible appetizers like Fattoush, Dolmeh and Borek, hearty main dishes such as tagines, couscous and curries, tangy vegetables, side dishes and salads like Mandazi, Yam Chips and Joloff Rice, and tempting pastries and desserts, like Spiced Nutty Bananas and Briouates with Almonds and Dates.
With over 700 color photographs, step-by-step instructions, informative cook's tips, and a nutritional breakdown for every recipe, the book is easy to follow.
This wonderful collection of 150 delicious recipes from all over
Education
The Creative Arts: A Process Approach for Teachers and Children
(4th Edition) by Linda C. Edwards (Merrill
Prentice Hall)
The creative arts are our universal language – the language of our imagination, of musicians and dancers, painters and sculptors, storytellers and poets. They are the rhythmic language of the dancing five-year-old using her body to recreate the graceful movements of a swimming dolphin. The language of the arts is revealed through the painters and sculptors who choose not to be restrained by convention as they represent their understanding of color, shape, and form in ways that are personally satisfying and pleasing.
The creative arts are one of the most revealing of all human activities. They are the ways we communicate the very essence of our aesthetic experiences – our powerful, essential, and lasting ways of bringing beauty into our world. The arts are never dry, boring, or mundane. They provide a pathway for people of all ages to reach into new unfoldings and understandings of themselves.
In
The Creative Arts, Linda Edwards,
This new fourth edition presents a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of professional research, while continuing to provide links between theory and practice.
The Creative Arts, 4th edition moves teachers away from a reliance on prescribed activities and an endless array of uniform products toward a more secure sense of everyone's ability to engage in the creative process – regardless of product.
The overall framework through which this information is presented follows the continuum of the affective domain – a developmental framework that moves readers along on their journey to becoming a teacher or to becoming a more enlightened and articulate experienced teacher. As budding teachers move through the chapters and the continuum, they will progress from the basic, first levels of affective development to the highest. Their awareness of their growth through these levels will heighten their sense of their own creative abilities and those of their students.
Chapter 1 presents four statements summarizing the central themes and ideas about the creative arts that are woven throughout the book. Chapter 2 addresses the process involved in being creative. Chapters 3 through 8 are organized into specific categories of the creative arts: exploring feelings and images, introducing music and movement, celebrating the visual arts, encouraging play and creative drama, experimenting with three-dimensional art, and planning for literature. Chapter 9 considers two topics of general importance to all teachers: building a bridge between self-understanding and creativity, and the process toward the self-actualization of teachers.
Each chapter begins with a true story, collected from Edwards’ own years as a teacher and from the experiences of practicing teachers and student teachers. These stories set the stage for each chapter and highlight children's involvement in the creative arts process in real-life settings. These glimpses into the creative activity of children can serve as discussion starters for introducing, over viewing, concluding, or reviewing concepts, and they provide a wide range of experiences to observe and to reflect on.
Many chapters also present, in separate sections, overviews of four important components of the learning environments in today's classrooms: developmentally appropriate practice, children with special needs, personal and professional growth of teachers, and viewing the arts through a multicultural context.
Appendixes on children's literature, songs, finger plays, and guided imagery provide a ready resource for hands-on creative arts experiences for teachers and children. These resources offer a quick reference for locating materials for use in classrooms; many are mentioned throughout the book.
More than 300 references to the professional literature are cited in The Creative Arts, and a complete list appears at the end of the text. This reference list provides a compendium of recent research and up-to-date work in the field of the creative arts. More than 90 new citations have been added to this fourth edition, which reflect the expansion of the base of theory and research that supports the creative arts.
Many changes and major revisions to the fourth edition provide a comprehensive look at the creative arts and how the arts can expand our understanding of the teaching and learning process. The Creative Arts discusses noteworthy studies in music and movement, art, creative dramatics, and literature. It highlights the potential of multicultural arts as a resource for creative expression and awareness. It includes a section on national standards for visual and performing arts and the President's committee on the arts and humanities. And it addresses the eight intelligences (naturalist) and discusses all eight intelligences in each chapter.
A Family's Role in Developing Creative Arts at Home – Each content chapter contains strategies for encouraging family involvement in the creative arts. These process-oriented activities are appropriate for caregivers and children and are written with the home environment in mind.
The Literature Connection – Children's literature is a wonderful resource for learning about the arts and creativity. Each chapter includes recommended children's books that teachers can use to enhance children's experiences in the creative arts and provide a literature connection to the content of the chapter. An annotation is included so the teacher can select books about the arts to read while children are participating in the arts process.
Children's Drawings and Paintings – Included in this edition are visual images of children's work. These images are included as examples of the various stages of a child's creative development.
The Creative Arts as Viewed through a Multicultural Context – The multicultural coverage in this fourth edition is expanded through both content and examples that deepen the multicultural coverage. This focus on viewing the arts through a multicultural context is included to highlight its great potential as a resource for creative expression and awareness of the diversity of global arts.
Quotations – The powerful words of philosophers, musicians, dancers, artists, writers, and actors throughout this edition promote new ways of thinking about the arts. Some quotations are presented to provoke serious thought, while others use humor to convey a message. All provide inspiration to teachers for including creative arts education in the lives of young children.
Contemporary Theories and Models – This fourth edition is made more comprehensive through expanded coverage of Lev Vygotsky and Parson's theory of aesthetic development. Vygotsky's work provides a foundation for understanding the social formation of learning. Parson's theory is noteworthy in that he presents us with a systematic way of viewing aesthetic awareness and development in the arts.
Multiple Intelligences Theory – Since the publication of the
third edition, Howard Gardner has expanded his theory of multiple
intelligences to include naturalist intelligence, and most recently
he presents evidence for a possible existential intelligence.
Research – More than ever before, research studies and theoretical contributions provide a comprehensive view of why the arts are an integral component of education for all learners, especially children. To accurately reflect this growth, current and relevant research is included in this new edition to provide the foundation for continued study of the arts.
Margin Notes – The Creative Arts also supports teachers’ learning through the use of margin notes that provide suggestions and alternative ways for reinforcing and enriching learning. These notes are particularly helpful for outside assignments; extended research; classroom arrangement; individual, cooperative, and large-group activities; and as suggestions for establishing professional contacts with artists outside the field of education.
This fourth edition of The Creative Arts is an informative and challenging approach to the role of teachers as facilitators of the creative arts process in their own child-centered school arena. Those new to teaching will find avenues for structuring their first classroom environment to create an inviting atmosphere in which the children will have not only the freedom but also the permission to explore the process of creativity through many art forms. Experienced teachers will find the courage to break away from the old confines of having all children draw, make, move, or create the same thing at the same time. They will be encouraged to view the arts as an orchestral score, with much room for interpretation.
The Creative Arts engages future teachers in the processes of creativity to encourage creative growth and participation in their classrooms. It emphasizes process, rather than product, so teachers learn that once they tap into their own creativity they are better equipped to help children participate in the creative process. With its clear emphasis on the creative process, this book shows future teachers how to tap into their own creativity in order to foster children's creative growth. Grounded in research and theory, the coverage supports a constructivist notion of the creative arts and moves students away from prescribed activities and projects in favor of encouraging the creative drive of all children.
Education / College & University
Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk edited by Richard H. Hersh & John Merrow (Palgrave MacMillan)
In his foreword, Tom Wolfe asks, "do parents – does anybody – have any idea what happens in college?" Declining by Degrees argues that the multi-billion dollar enterprise of higher education has gone astray.
When A Nation at Risk called attention to the problems of our public schools in 1983, that landmark report provided a convenient cover’ for higher education, inadvertently implying that all was well on America's campuses.
Declining by Degrees edited by Richard H. Hersh, Senior Fellow
at the Council for Aid to Education and former president of Trinity
College and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and John Merrow,
Peabody Award winning president of Learning Matters and former
education correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, blows
higher education's cover. Sixteen essayists – from Frank Deford,
James Follows, and Howard Gardner to Carol Geary Schneider,
president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities,
and Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of
- How students are being short-changed by lowered academic standards.
- Why many universities focus on research instead of teaching and spend more on recruiting and athletics than on salaries for professors.
- How administrations are more obsessed with rankings than with learning.
Additional contributions include Leon Botstein, Julie Johnson Kidd, David Kirp, Arthur Levine, Gene Maeroff, Jay Mathews, Murray Sperber, Roberto Suro and Richard Fry, Deborah Wadsworth, and Heather Wathington.
…A ‘must read’ for those interested in both good news and bad, from higher education’s influential insiders and jaded outsiders. – Lee S. Shulman, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
… one thing becomes clear throughout: the state of American
higher education is a product less of policy decisions, curriculum
structure or student demographics than of the values and priorities
of American society. To this end, the contributors do an excellent
job sketching the larger cultural and economic forces – such as
materialism, job specialization, the information explosion and the
near-universal adoption of marketplace values – that they see as
primarily responsible for the decline of America's colleges and
universities. – Publishers Weekly
Instead of focusing on statistics, the book pulls together a series of essays on the causes in the decline of undergraduate education from a broad range of educators, journalists, administrators, parents and policy makers. Editors Hersh and Merrow thus sound the alarm, offering a no-holds-barred examination of the causes of this nation-at-greater-risk phenomenon and provide suggestions for what we must do to improve a system so vital to the nation's future. Because of its broad focus, Declining by Degrees will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from educators and policy makers to parents concerned about their children's education.
Education / Computers & Technology
Using Technology in the Classroom, Brief Edition by Gary G. Bitter & Jane M. Legacy (Allyn & Bacon)
Using Technology in the Classroom, Brief Edition was written to
help prospective and practicing classroom teachers, school
personnel, and parents understand the role of technology in PreK–12
education. Authors Gary G. Bitter,
Using Technology in the Classroom reflects the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T). It is especially designed for introductory undergraduate or graduate students who need an overview of the role and use of technology in education and who find the exhaustive educational technology books that are currently available too long or irrelevant. Specific education episodes as well as applications at all levels are provided throughout the book. A DVD, located at the back of the book, is filled with video examples of real teachers and students using technology. The video excerpts, noted throughout the book with the designation DVD/Video Vignette, are aligned with the ISTE's National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S). Readers are encouraged to view the video lessons again and again as their observation and understanding levels increase. Learner activities are designed for students to further explore specific educational understanding and applications.
Using Technology in the Classroom emphasizes technology-rich
instruction supported by learning and teaching research. The ISTE
standards for teachers and students are highlighted throughout the
book. The
- Research summaries of the effect of technology on language, mathematics, science, and social studies achievement, as well as on students with special needs so that teachers can see how technology affects learning in various curriculum areas.
- Quick reviews of productivity tools and application software that can also serve as a resource for basic operations of the most common productivity software: word processors, spreadsheets, databases, and concept-mapping tools. Educational uses of these application software programs are discussed, and a convenient table of common terms is presented for each application.
- Basic concepts of electronic mail, email procedures, etiquette, listservs, and Internet educational applications. Electronic communication covering the Internet and the World Wide Web is an integral part of the technology-rich instruction emphasized in the book. Security issues with regard to students' exploring the online world are discussed with examples.
- Information on planning and designing learning environments. Addressing the planning and designing processes of using technology in the classroom is the centerpiece of technology-rich instruction and is a focal point of this text.
- Emphasis is on planning and developing technology-rich lessons with technology integration utilizing WebQuests, software, blogging, searching, and methods of applying the Internet to create technology-based lessons.
- Software review guidelines which illustrate the unique features of each educational software type with descriptions of each category, tips for practical classroom integration, and illustrative classroom vignettes.
- Specific educational website review guidelines, popular content resources, and portals identified for language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and the arts.
- An online instruction model to encourage a planning, design, and development process to produce technology-rich online instruction. Chapter 8 provides complete technology-rich instruction lesson plans for technology integration in the content areas and for multidisciplinary units.
- A major focus on the social, ethical, legal, and human issues involved in the role technology has in the educational field. Computer viruses, spam, email scams, blogging, and phishing are addressed as well as individual privacy, equity, and ethical and legal concerns. Numerous websites are provided for researching accessibility and the digital divide, the creation of electronic resources for students with disabilities, copyright, plagiarism, and virus information.
- The text emphasizes social, ethical, legal, and human issues
related to technology (Ch. 13 and elsewhere).
- Education oriented introduction and application of the
Internet provides details on current topics such as searching,
online instruction, and applying the Internet to create
technology-rich lessons (Chs. 4, 6 & 7).
- Emerging technologies such as including assistive and
adaptive technologies for people with disabilities are carefully
identified (
The book also comes with a Companion Website with additional resources, practice tests, and links to related sites.
Using Technology in the Classroom is a brief, accessible and
practical technology text organized around the NETS Standards and
emphasizes applying technology-rich lessons in the classroom based
on national standards, Bitter being a co-author of those standards.
The book prepares pre-service and in-service teachers at all levels
with the necessary background for planning and teaching
technology-rich classes. Emphasis is on planning and developing
technology-rich lessons to prepare the user for many types of
lessons including webquests, software review, and selection
procedures. It also informs teachers of the challenges and mixed
messages that students in today's classrooms will face in their
information-saturated lives.
Education /
Using Young Adult Literature in the English Classroom (4th Edition) by John H. Bushman & Kay Parks Haas (Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall)
The authors John H. Bushman and Kay Parks Haas show busy English
teachers how to address lifelong reading, reader response, teaching
the classics, and reaching a diverse student population.
Using Young Adult Literature in the English Classroom covers
diversity in young adult literature with a strong emphasis on the
relationship between reading, writing, and language skills. The book
presents curricular patterns to illustrate ways to organize
literature lessons in a variety of settings. It discusses theories
of Piaget, Havighurst, Kohlberg, and Carlsen – and literary examples
that use these theoretical frameworks.
Using Young Adult Literature in the English Classroom provides
future middle and high school English teachers with the guidance
they'll need to choose reading selections and develop ideas for
teaching them.
According to Bushman, Professor of Teaching and Leadership (English Education) at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and Haas, English department chair, Ottawa High School, Kansas, young adult literature – with its conflicts, themes, protagonists, and language – should be present in the curriculum to provide the necessary transition to adult literature. This genre deserves the attention that is currently given the classics by those who aspire to teach English and by those who are already teaching English.
New to this edition
The authors have made changes in the fourth edition of Using Young Adult Literature in the English Classroom, updating the literature selections significantly to provide readers with information about the most current young adult literature. They have significantly changed and updated two chapters: ‘Diversity in Young Adult Literature’ (Chapter 8), and ‘Media and Young Adult Literature’ (Chapter 9). Chapter 9 contains ready-made media activities that can be taken directly into the classroom. In Chapter 6, ‘Organizing the Literature,’ the section on ‘Using Young Adult Literature in the Content Classes’ has been expanded.
The content of Using Young Adult Literature in the English Classroom is classroom oriented. In Chapter 1, Bushman and Haas discuss the characteristics of young adults and how this literature meets their interests and needs. In Chapter 2, they focus on the literature itself, providing criteria by which teachers may evaluate young adult literature. The research and theory, along with classroom applications, of the reader-response approach to teaching literature is the subject of Chapter 3. In Chapters 4, 5, and 6, they focus on the classroom itself and how teachers can effectively incorporate young adult literature into the curriculum. Chapter 7 encourages teachers to evaluate their use of the classics Chapter 8 provides literature for a diverse ethnic, cultural, and national population. Chapter 9 emphasizes media and technology and how teachers may use them effectively in conjunction with young adult literature. Chapter 10 focuses on concerns many educators have about censorship. Chapter 11 briefly reviews the history of young adult literature.
To involve readers in this text, Bushman and Haas suggest that they keep a ‘Learning Log’ which will allow them to interact with the book. In addition to jotting down ideas as they read, they suggest readers respond to what they have read, guided by the ‘Learning Log Responses’ located at the end of each chapter. Readers are thus able to participate in the reading-writing connection process that they suggest is beneficial for students to use.
In addition, to make Using Young Adult Literature in the English Classroom as useful and accessible as possible, they have supplied three appendices, one providing general teaching information and two supplementing the young adult literature information given in the text. Appendix A provides readers with a variety of resources (books, journals, and organizations) they may use for support when teaching young adult literature. Appendix B lists the works of literature that they have cited in each chapter and indicates which of these titles are more appropriate for the middle school student. Appendix C contains a long list of young adult books in various categories that are appropriate for use in both middle school and high school classrooms. This information supplements the lists of titles and brief annotations that they provide in Chapter 6 as a representative sample of young adult literature.
Using Young Adult Literature in the English Classroom, Fourth Edition, is written for both prospective and experienced English teachers as they begin and continue the process of selecting the literature curriculum for their students. This practical methods book provides teachers with direction to choose reading selections and to develop ideas for teaching them. Using a highly effective conversational tone, it provides the latest information about young adult literature in a short, concisely written format.
Health, Mind & Body / Alternative Medicine
The Foundations of Chinese Medicine: A Comprehensive Text for Acupuncturists and Herbalists, 2nd ed. by Giovanni Maciocia, with a foreword by Su Xin Ming (Elsevier Churchill Livingstone)
The Foundations of Chinese Medicine, written by a leading authority on Chinese Medicine in the Western world, Giovanni Maciocia, is one of the most successful Chinese medicine textbooks ever published in the English language. This new second edition covers the theory of traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture and discusses in detail the function of the acupuncture points and the principles of treatment, both from the classics and from Maciocia’s own experience. Based on rigorous reference to ancient and modern Chinese texts, this book explains the application of theory in a Western practice context.
Key areas covered include:
- Explanation of the theories of Chinese medicine in relation to clinical practice including the theories of Yin-Yang and Five Elements, Qi, Blood and Body Fluids and the functions of the Internal Organs.
- Detailed presentation of the energetic action and clinical use of over 250 acupuncture points including the use of the eight extraordinary vessels.
- Pathological processes and pathogenic factors are discussed in detail.
- The four diagnostic methods with emphasis on pulse diagnosis.
- The principles of treatment and the combination of acupuncture points.
New to this edition:
- CD-ROM with over 750 self-testing questions in a variety of formats that can be self marked plus 65 surface anatomy images.
- 50 new acupuncture points.
- More Internal Organ patterns and a more detailed identification of patterns according to pathogenic factors.
- Two new chapters on the Functions of the Triple Burner and Pathology.
- An expanded discussion of the mental-spiritual aspects of the Internal Organs.
- An expanded discussion of the Identification of Patterns according to the Six Stages, the Four Levels and the Three Burners.
- Pinyin equivalents have been added to key terms throughout the text to make immediately obvious which original term is being translated.
This comprehensive text contains everything students need for a complete introduction to the theory of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. English style and terminology makes material easy to follow. Concepts are clearly explained, and logical, sequential organization builds from basic theoretical concepts, through functions of individual organs, to disease categories, and the appropriate use of points. The new edition features new and updated material, and a redesigned layout complements the accessible writing style, making the material even easier to follow. The two-color design makes The Foundations of Chinese Medicine easier to access and navigate and summary boxes throughout make the learning process easier.
Health, Mind & Body / Diet / Nutrition
American Heart Association No-Fad Diet: A Personal Plan for Healthy Weight Loss by American Heart Association (Clarkson Potter/Publishers)
Fad diets and get-thin-quick products run rampant in our culture,
and their proponents have their own theory of what is making
Calories in must be less than calories out.
It’s time to leave behind the one-size-fits-all approach to
dieting foisted on us by these fad diets. Now, the American Heart
Association, the nation’s most trusted authority on heart-healthy
living, introduces its first-ever comprehensive weight-loss book.
American Heart Association No-Fad Diet helps readers create a
personalized plan to lose weight in a healthful way. After a simple
assessment of their current habits, readers choose the eating and
exercise strategies that best fit their needs. Readers learn how to
set realistic goals, eat well to lose extra pounds safely, and add
physical activity to keep the weight off for good. The weight-loss
strategies in
American Heart Association No-Fad Diet are based on reliable
scientific research and are backed by respected medical
professionals sponsored by The American Heart Association, the
nation’s most trusted authority on cardiovascular health with
bestselling library of cookbooks.
This book offers more than 190 all-new recipes, including Cream of
Triple-Mushroom Soup, Tilapia Champignon, Chicken Pot Pie,
Pumpkin-Cranberry Pancakes, and Vanilla Soufflé with Brandy-Plum
Sauce. Readers also find two weeks of sample menus, guidelines for
meal planning, useful tips on dining out and food shopping, and
sound advice for staying on track to reach their target weight.
The
American Heart Association No-Fad Diet includes:
- Tips on turning negative thinking into positive rewards.
- Simple quizzes to find the approach that’s best for the individual.
- Diary pages to record and monitor eating and activity habits.
- Strategies to reduce calories and increase activity levels.
- Guidelines to help readers prepare their own nutritious meals.
- More than 190 delicious and healthful recipes.
- Techniques to maintain momentum.
By focusing on a positive attitude about food, activity and body image, the book encourages dieters to create a workable individual plan for weight loss. Readers can adjust their ‘calories-in’ by using one or more of the three basic eating strategies:
- The Switch-and-Swap Approach: Substitute lower-calorie foods for high-calorie foods.
- The 75% Solution: Eat three-quarters the amount of food.
- The American Heart Association Menu Plans: Two weeks' worth of sample menus plans to get readers started. Depending on calorie needs, readers can choose from: 1,200, 1,600, and 2,000-calories menu plans.
Along with the customized diet plan, the American Heart Association No-Fad Diet also includes three different programs to help readers move more. Increasing ‘calories-out’ can be accomplished by following one or more of the three basic exercise strategies:
- The Lifestyle Approach: Perform enough small activities throughout the day – on top of current activity – to add up to an increased amount of total activity.
- The Walking Program: To get started, add at least one 10 minute walk every day to current activity for the first two weeks.
- The Organized Activity: Participate in scheduled classes or play sports to add activity to life.
Readers can also combine and interchange several options for safe and effective weight loss.
The mission of the
American Heart Association No-Fad Diet book is to be a resource
for people, translating the trusted science of the American Heart
Association and our dietary guidelines into their daily lives…. To
lose weight effectively, you need realistic goals and a personal
action plan. This book gives you both, with plenty of options to
make it right for you, no matter who you are. – Alice Lichtenstein,
D.Sc., Chair of the AHA Nutrition Committee and director of the
Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at
For those fed up with fads and want a diet that can provide a lifetime of effective weight control, American Heart Association No-Fad Diet is a great choice – the book helps dieters wise up and slim down – the right way. Readers design their own plan using tools that help them think smart, eat well and move more, the three key concepts that offer safe weight loss.
History / Military / WWII / Biographies & Memoirs / African American
Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free: Memoirs Of A
Two World War II dates live in infamy for me. The first,
In words and images
Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is the extraordinary story of a
unique American hero and the wars he fought, written by Alexander
Jefferson, a retired Lt. Colonel in the US air force, and a retired
teacher and administrator in the Michigan public schools.
Based in
In
Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free
Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free also features photographs as
well as sketches, notes, drawings, and other illustrations
Jefferson, a Tuskegee Airman who was shot down during World War
II and held in a German prison camp for nine months, recalls better
treatment as a prisoner of war than as a black citizen in the
This vividly detailed, deeply personal book is a rare and important gift. One of the few memoirs of combat in World War II by a distinguished African-American pilot, Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is also perhaps the only account of the African-American experience behind barbed wire in a German prison camp.
Home & Garden / Crafts & Hobbies
Diamond Quilts & Beyond: From the Basics to Dazzling Designs by Jan Krentz (C&T Publishing)
As a quilt maker, instructor and designer, I enjoy creating quilts that incorporate a variety of techniques. When I work on a single design, multiple variations develop, with each successive quilt more exciting than the previous one! – from the Preface
Jan Krentz, who has written two previous quilting books, describes Diamond Quilts & Beyond as a quilt adventure, which includes everything from traditional geometric designs to those with an impressionistic flair; using the book readers can create their favorite techniques to create a quilted masterpiece. Based on historic charm quilts, Diamond Quilts & Beyond blends traditional construction techniques, contemporary fabrics, and artful embellishments. Four projects help readers gain confidence. Contents include:
- Inspiration and Design: Paintings; Photographs; Copyright Issues; Garden Landscape; Perspective; Landscapes – Natural Vistas; Travel; Getting Started; Creating a Design Background
- Fabric Selection, Design Techniques, and Equipment Requirements: Fabric Selection; Fabric and Design; Color, Contrast, and Visual Texture; Design Techniques; Equipment, Materials, and Resources
- Construction Techniques: Preparing the Design; Cutting the Fabrics; Piecing the Diamond Background from Individual Diamonds; Borders; Adding Design; Elements with Appliqué; Additional Surface Techniques
- Gallery of Quilts
- Projects: Monet Water Lily; Colorwash Diamonds; Fruitful Harvest Placemats; Colorwash Lone Star
Above all, Krentz teaches inspiration: she shows readers how to recognize the design inspiration surrounds them in landscapes, gardens, mountain vistas, seashores, trees, cityscapes, cultivated fields, produce departments, rows of merchandise for sale, paintings in a gallery, children at play, bouquets of flowers, sunsets, athletic events, calendars, magazines, travel brochures, greeting cards, and books. She recommends investing several hours in studying various styles of paintings by visiting the public library's art section, browsing contemporary art magazines, or searching the Internet, and she advises readers to search for specific artists in these periods/styles: impressionists (1830-1926), post-impressionists (1839-1953), cubists (1881-1973), contemporary artists (1927-present) – her own masterpiece is based on Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and Water Lilly Pool. She also suggests readers begin by making an image file with file folders, consisting, for example of flowers, animals sorted by continent, people, mountains, sky, water, aquatic life, birds, insects, color, texture, and geometric patterns/designs.
Diamond Quilts & Beyond features easy construction techniques, lots of inspirational photos, and a breathtaking gallery. This step-by-step book is strong in a number of areas: inspiration, showing readers how to turn inspiration in the form of paintings into a quilting pattern and in her amazing example and detailed explanations with illustrations. Krentz makes it easy to imagine, plan, and create art.
Home & Garden / Interior Design
Furniture Fix-Ups by the editors of Country Sampler Decorating Ideas (From Drab to Fab Series: Country Sampler Books, Emmis Books)
Furniture Fix-Ups, the second in the From Drab to Fab series,
shows readers how to save money and have fun revitalizing old
furniture and flea-market finds.
The From Drab to Fab series follows the same philosophy that made
Country Sampler Decorating Ideas
Furniture Fix-Ups contains 75 projects compiled from readers’ favorite furniture projects from past issues of Country Sampler Decorating Ideas. The book starts with the basics, introducing readers to the materials and techniques they will use to transform furniture pieces.
Each chapter covers a different style or technique, and then
presents four separate step-by-step projects complete with full
color photos of every part of the process, including before and
after photos. Readers learn to create a crackled paint look, use
punched tin to give a cabinet new life, color an unfinished chest
with dye and oil pencils, and use stenciling to add interest to an
old armoire, plus many more inspiring projects. Along with the
in-depth projects there are also ‘Quick-Hit projects,’ offering
simple techniques that make a big difference with very little
effort.
Furniture Fix-Ups introduces readers to techniques ranging from
decoupage to stains and dyes, painted patterns to transferred
images. It gives readers the skills to transform their homes using
color and personal touches, all while implementing inexpensive, easy
methods.
Literature & Fiction / History & Criticism
Shakespeare: The Seven Ages of Human Experience, 2nd edition by David Bevington (Blackwell Publishing)
What makes Shakespeare great? Why do we still read and perform his works? In Shakespeare, David Beyington argues that Shakespeare continues to live among us today because his representations of the human condition are believable, endearing, and touchingly human. Bevington, Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago, structures the book around Shakespeare's arc of human life from infancy and childhood to adulthood, advancing age, and eventual death, as set out by Jaques in the ‘Seven Ages of Man’ speech from As You Like It.
For this extended second edition, the author has added more material on fathers and sons, the perils of courtship, the circumstances of Shakespeare's own life, the performance history of his plays on stage and screen, and his delicate representation of gender relations. In a new final chapter on Shakespeare Today, he looks at the remarkable diversity of interpretations in modern criticism and performance of Shakespeare as a key to his ‘infinite variety’, and his ability to adapt to a changing world.
Chapters roughly outline the stages:
- All the World's a Stage: Poetry and Theatre
- Creeping Like Snail: Childhood, Education, Early Friendship, Sibling Rivalries
- Sighing Like Furnace: Courtship and Sexual Desire
- Full of Strange Oaths and Bearded Like the Pard: The Coming-of-Age of the Male
- Jealous in Honour: Love and Friendship in Crisis
- Wise Saws: Political and Social Disillusionment, Humankind's Relationship to the Divine, and Philosophical Skepticism
- Modern Instances: Misogyny, Jealousy, Pessimism, and Midlife Crisis
- The Lean and Slippered Pantaloon: Ageing Fathers and their Daughters
- Last Scene of All: Retirement from the Theatre
David Bevington's knowledge of Shakespeare is formidable. In this wonderful new book, Bevington uses the ‘Seven Ages of Man’ speech from As You Like It to weave together Shakespeare's plays and poems with what is known of Shakespeare's life. – Barbara Moirat, Bolger Shakespeare Institute
Recommended for all public and academic libraries in need of fresh introductory materials on Shakespeare. – Library Journal
Essential. A must for lower- and upper-division undergraduates; a
pleasure for graduate students through faculty and for general
readers. – Choice
By design, Shakespeare moves around quite a bit from play to play, from prose to poetry, from early to late, in order to pursue themes and topics that seem to have fascinated Shakespeare. One result is that discussions touch on only certain aspects of a given play or poem in a particular chapter. Bevington keeps coming back to some plays especially, such as Hamlet, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, and The Tempest, from different directions.
According to Bevington, instead of answering our questions, Shakespeare seems to question our answers. And he has become more relevant in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as we have been bombarded by terrorism, onrushing social change, looming environmental disaster, and a decline of political discourse into name-calling and confrontation. This is the real way in which Shakespeare can be our contemporary and why reading and seeing and teaching Shakespeare remain eternally fresh.
With something to engage specialists as well as those who need a handle to make sense of Shakespeare, Shakespeare is a well written, witty and challenging introduction to Shakespeare structured around the seven ages of human experience.
Literature & Fiction / Humor
Better Than Chocolate: A Novel by Susan Waggoner (William Morrow)
In
Better Than Chocolate, Susan Waggoner, first-time novelist,
trains her eye on pop culture, vanity, celebrity, and two of
The novel starts ominously: “Be careful what you wish for…”
Food writer Annie Wilkins is about to step on the express
elevator up to wealth and fame. Her husband, Tom, a research
scientist, has done the impossible. He's invented the ultimate
indulgence: fat-free, carb-free, calorie-free chocolate that tastes
like the real thing . . . only better! When Tom's company proposes
using Annie and Tom as the product's spokespeople, Annie thinks
she's hit the jackpot. Suddenly, she's getting the life most people
can only dream of! Goodbye to writing walleye-on-a-stick articles
for Minnesota Menus! Hello to showcase houses and a (mini)celebrity
lifestyle rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi. Make room for new
furniture, pots of melting chocolate, glossy pictures of
As Annie soon learns, fame does have its price. She's under
corporate orders to lose twenty pounds . . . make that twenty-five
(the cameras!). And her hair? All wrong. Then there's her official
workspace – a kitchen set. And a lovable husband who has become,
overnight,
I am planning to include a copy of Ms. Waggoner's rich and tasty
first novel with each box of Godiva goodies I give in the years
ahead. …. – Donald W. Wigal
If you are a working mom, you may think that you don't have the time to read this book – but you absolutely must. Waggoner's heroine is the new American hero: a middle class mom with smarts and moxie to spare. Annie juggles sudden fame, corporate America, a teen deemed ‘suspiciously well-adjusted’ by his teachers, a four-year-old Francophile, and her own self-doubts with a driving wit that will make you laugh out loud. …welcome to Better Than Chocolate, the book find of the summer! – Abby Stein, mom & college professor
Highly amusing and finely written. – Library Journal
A witty, contemporary fairy tale, as entertaining as it is enlightening, Better Than Chocolate is a warmhearted, dead-on story that reminds us of what's truly valuable.
Medicine / Anatomy & Physiology
The Human Body in Health & Disease, 4th edition by Gary A. Thibodeau & Kevin T. Patton (Elsevier Mosby)
In this time of rapid scientific advance, our understanding of the human body is increasing at an explosive rate. Almost daily, new discoveries cause scientists to overturn old, established hypotheses and replace them with new concepts. Recent advances in medicine, biotechnology, biochemistry, immunology, neuroendocrinology, molecular biology, and other fields are overwhelming. New fields, such as genomics and proteomics, have burst upon the scene with a major role in uncovering new information about human structure, function, and disease. This explosion of new understanding presents instructors with the dilemma of selecting the most appropriate information to present in introductory but rigorous courses. The Human Body in Health & Disease, now in its fourth edition, has been designed to present information that is accurate and easy to comprehend.
Written by Gary A. Thibodeau, Chancellor Emeritus and Professor
Emeritus of Biology,
Offering a student-friendly writing style, The Human Body in Health & Disease presents a body systems approach with a strong emphasis on vocabulary, basic anatomy and physiology concepts, as well as the basic mechanisms of disease and pathologic conditions associated with each body system. The text is dominated by two unifying themes: the complementarily of structure and function and homeostasis. The integrating principle of homeostasis is used to show how ‘normal’ structure and function is achieved and maintained. Failures of homeostasis are shown as basic mechanisms of disease. Using a body systems approach, it emphasizes the basic concepts of anatomy and physiology and applies them to the clinical setting. It also covers the diseases and pathologic conditions associated with each body system. Chapters show students how organized anatomical structures serve specialized functions.
In every chapter of the book the student is shown how organized anatomical structures of a particular size, shape, form, or placement serve unique and specialized functions. Repeated emphasis of this principle encourages students to integrate otherwise isolated factual information into a cohesive and understandable whole. This integration of knowledge is further developed in each chapter as the breakdown of normal integration of form and function is identified as the basis for many disease processes. As a result, anatomy, physiology, and pathology emerge as living and dynamic topics of personal interest and importance to the student.
New to this edition:
- A Mini Atlas featuring full-color pages focused on photographs of pathologic conditions.
- A new Chemistry of Life chapter providing an introduction to basic chemistry concepts.
- Science Applications boxes highlighting the contributions of trailblazing scientists and summarizing professions that make use of the content presented.
- Quick Check questions at the end of each section helping readers evaluate their level of comprehension.
Features include:
- Boxed Essays throughout each chapter containing information ranging from clinical applications to sidelights on recent research or topics.. Boxed information covers Health & Well-Being, Clinical Application, and Research, Issues & Trends, helping readers apply their knowledge to the real world. Brief essays examine current topics such as the possible use of biological agents as weapons of mass destruction.
- Clinical Applications offering short case studies with questions that tie theory to practice, and encourage students to apply their knowledge to specific, practical problems.
- Superior art, with over 450 full-color illustrations, complements text material.
- Chapter Outlines introducing each chapter and previewing the content.
- Measurable objectives for students to identify key goals and master information.
- Self-evaluation activities, and a glossary.
- A companion CD-ROM offers a multitude of exercises, quizzes, and activities that cover basic A&P content and includes an electronic coloring book with 80 detailed anatomy illustrations.
The 24 chapters of The Human Body in Health & Disease present the core material of anatomy, physiology, and pathology most important for introductory students. Information is presented so that students know and understand what is important.
According to Thibodeau and Patton, equally important goal in designing the text was to present information in a conceptual framework on which the student can build an understanding of the human body. Rather than simply listing a set of facts, each chapter outlines the broad concepts that allow students to relate the facts to one another in a meaningful way.
The sequence of chapters in The Human Body in Health & Disease follows that most commonly used in courses taught at the undergraduate level. Basic concepts of human biology – anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, cytology, histology, and pathology – are presented in Chapters 1 through 5. Chapters 6 through 24 present material on more specialized topics, such as individual organs or systems, the senses (Chapter 10), immunity (Chapter 15), or genetics and genetic diseases (Chapter 24). Because each chapter is self-contained, instructors have the flexibility to alter the sequence of material to fit personal teaching preferences or the special content or time constraints of courses.
A series of tables in this appendix summarizes specific pathological conditions by characteristic. The tables serve as a mini-reference tool to supplement material presented in the chapters of the text. Summary tables include:
- Leading health problems
- Viral conditions
- Bacterial conditions
- Fungal conditions
- Conditions caused by protozoa
- Conditions caused by pathogenic animals
- Conditions caused by physical agents
- Endocrine conditions
- Autoimmune conditions
- Deficiency diseases
- Genetic conditions
A list of word parts commonly used in terms related to medicine and pathology is given along with tips on dissecting complex terms to determine their meanings. Many of these word parts are also used within chapters to emphasize how knowledge of medical terminology can help in learning basic concepts.
A major strength of The Human Body in Health & Disease is the exceptional quality, accuracy, and beauty of the illustration program. The truest test of any illustration is how effectively it can complement and strengthen written information found in the text and how successfully it can be used by the student as a learning tool. Extensive use has been made of full-color illustrations, micrographs, and dissection photographs throughout the text. Photos and charts proven pedagogically effective in the previous edition of The Human Body in Health & Disease have been retained or updated to provide accurate information and visual appeal. New diagrams and illustrations have been added where appropriate to demonstrate important concepts.
The Human Body in Health & Disease is a bestselling, student-oriented text. Prepared with the help of medical writers as well as clinical experts and teachers, this is a text that students may read with enthusiasm – one designed to help the teacher teach and the student learn. Written in a readable style, with numerous learning aids that maintain interest and motivation, this book represents the latest and best information available. With enhanced visuals, clear explanations, and the latest findings, the 4th edition of The Human Body in Health & Disease sets the standard for anatomy and physiology texts. It is particularly suited to introductory courses about the human body in various health professions.
Mysteries & Thrillers
The Death Collectors by Jack Kerley
(Dutton)
Few first novelists are touted as ‘a cross between Thomas Harris and F. Scott Fitzgerald’ (The Baltimore Sun), but in Jack Kerley's case it was only the beginning of a long list of praise that made The Hundredth Man one of the most talked about debuts of 2004. Kerley spent twenty years in a successful advertising career before deciding to devote himself to suspense writing. In his eagerly-anticipated, second-in-series thriller, The Death Collectors, Kerley pits veteran homicide detectives Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus against the specter of a serial killer so evil that his disturbing legacy still resonates after more than thirty years.
In 1972, on the day of his sentencing, renowned artist and serial
killer Marden Hexcamp is shot dead in the courtroom by a mysterious
veiled woman. Members of his Mansonesque band of followers are
imprisoned or simply disappear. Decades later, a suspected
prostitute is found murdered in a candlelit motel room, the first in
a series of horrors suggesting that Hexcamp's art remains alive and
treacherous. As Ryder and Nautilus race to solve a thirty-year
conspiracy by following a trail of beautiful – and profoundly
disturbing – artwork, they are thrust into the shocking world of the
Death Collectors, people who spend vast sums to collect
serial-killer memorabilia.
The promise shown in Kerley's first book, The Hundredth Man, is
borne out in the second in the series featuring Mobile, Ala., PD
detectives Carson Ryder and Harry Nautilus. Carson and Harry are the
department's psychopathological and sociopathological investigative
team, nicknamed Piss-it by the other detectives. When a naked female
body buried beneath flowers and surrounded by candles is found in a
seedy motel, the crime is weird enough to be assigned to them. …
Carson is aided once again by his brilliant, homicidal brother,
Jeremy, who, though held in a high-security insane asylum, proves
instrumental in solving the case. Jeremy is a terrifying character,
and we just know he's going to escape someday, at which point Kerley
will truly scare the pants off his readers. This one's another
winner from a writer moving toward the top of the thriller heap. –
Publishers Weekly, starred review
… A genuinely creepy journey into madmen and their devoted
followers. – Wes Lukowsky, Booklist
Like the unforgettable characters Kerley creates, The Death Collectors will haunt readers long after the last page. Featuring a gripping plot, a depth of characterization and expert forensics, this pitch-perfect psychological thriller is first-rate entertainment. Readers can look forward to more in this exciting series.
Mysteries & Thrillers
Bluetick Revenge by Mark Cohen (Mysterious Press)
I was less than two hundred yards from the pavement when a single
headlight appeared and started toward me. Think fast, Pepper, I told
myself. I didn't want to shoot the guy, but I didn't want him to get
a look at my truck either. I could have clipped him, but somebody
might have noticed the damage to my vehicle and put two and two
together. I punched the accelerator and went straight at him...
Written by Mark Cohen, a former JAG, Bluetick Revenge is the second Pepper Keane novel, following up on the highly acclaimed The Fractal Murders.
Karlynn Slade is ready to tell
Private eye Pepper Keane has never dog napped before, but there's something about stealing from the Sons of Satan that appeals to his sense of humor. So when Karlynn's lawyer hires him to snatch Prince, the former Marine JAG packs some roast beef along with his Glock and goes. Before he knows it, he's also agreeing to baby-sit Karlynn, black leather boots and all, until the Feds can set her up in the Witness Protection Program. Everything seems cozy until Rugg asks Pepper to find his ‘wife.’
The money is good, hard cash, and Pepper can't think of a better way to know the enemy and keep him away from his client, so Pepper accepts. Then the wrong someone sees Pepper and Karlynn together – and Bugg's woman disappears.
As Pepper says, "This has got to rank right up there with the worst days of my life. We got the skinheads after us. We've got the Sons of Satan after us. The feds think we helped a critical witness disappear. We've been shot at and we've shot at people. I had to hitchhike in the snow. I spent twenty thousand dollars in drug money that isn't even mine on a new truck. And I just invited Uncle Ray to my house for the holidays. It's hard to imagine how it could get much worse."
In other words, the case of Bluetick Revenge is going to the dogs.
Despite the lack of the underlying complex concept (fractal
geometry) and the philosophical ponderings that distinguished
Cohen's debut, The Fractal Murders, this solid follow-up shows
appealing new facets of rugged
Money may buy you a fine blue-tick hound, but only a terrific
murder mystery like this one can make him wag his tail. – Kinky
Friedman, author of
Bluetick Revenge is a fun read with good, solid characters and a light, wry feel reminiscent of a Charlie Parker mystery.
Outdoors & Nature / Environment / Conservation / Anthropology
Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers: Marginality and Memory in the
Conservation of Biological Diversity by Virginia D.
Nazarea (The
Farmers and gardeners have long appreciated a wide variety of
plants and have nurtured them for meals, medicine, and exchange. But
diversity too often has been surrendered to monocultures of fields
and spirits, predisposing much of modern agriculture to uniformity
and, thereby, vulnerability. Today it is primarily at the individual
level – when an individual grows and saves a strange old bean
variety or a curious-looking gourd – that any lasting conservation
actually takes place. As scientists grapple with the erosion of
genetic diversity of crops and their wild relatives, old-timey
farmers and gardeners continue to save, propagate, and pass on folk
varieties and heirloom seeds. Virginia Nazarea in
Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers focuses on the role of these
seed savers in the perpetuation of diversity. Nazarea, Professor of
Anthropology at the
To me, the mark of a good book is that it helps you to see something that is common in a very new light so that you don't and can't actually see it in the old way ever again. Nazarea's work is particularly powerful in this regard. On almost every page, she gives the reader something to stop and think about. – Cary Fowler, co-author of Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity
Through characters and stories that offer a wealth of insights about human nature and society, Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers helps readers understand why biodiversity persists when there are so many pressures for it not to. The key, Nazarea explains, is in the spaces seed savers inhabit and create, where memories counter a culture of forgetting and abandonment engendered by modernity. A thoughtful book about people as much as practice, it profiles these individuals who march to their own beat in a world where diversity is increasingly devalued as the predictability of mass production becomes the norm. Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers offers a much-needed, researched perspective on the contribution of seed saving that illustrates its critical significance to the preservation of both cultural knowledge and crop diversity around the world. It opens new conversations between anthropology and biology, and between researchers and practitioners, as it honors conservation as a way of life.
Parenting & Families / Self-help
Help Your Kids Get It Done Right at Home and School: Building Responsibility & Self-Esteem in Children by Donna M. Gennet (Quill Driver Books)
What parent wouldn’t want to read a book that claims these benefits?
- Children achieve better grades with less effort.
- Children gain self-esteem.
- Parents and kids enjoy their time together more.
- Children understand and accept their boundaries.
- Parents and kids have more free time for the things they enjoy.
- A caring, team atmosphere develops at home.
- Unnecessary frustration is eliminated for everyone.
- Children fulfill their potential.
Help Your Kids Get It Done Right at Home and School starts from this ‘Symptoms Checklist:’
- Do you find yourself doing things yourself because it is
easier than trying to get your children to do it?
- Do you have to nag your children to get them to do their
chores or homework?
- Do they have the potential to get better grades?
- Are your children struggling to balance school with sports
and other activities?
- Do you find less and less time for family time?
- Is your time together less enjoyable than you'd like?
According to author Donna Gennet, psychologist and business trainer, if readers answered yes to even one of these questions, they should read this book.
First readers have to avoid getting put off by the parenting parable from Gennet’s first book, which features James and Jones, the ‘identical twins’ from the internationally-acclaimed If You Want It Done Right, You Don't Have to Do It Yourself. In this book the twins are back, and this time James notices that Jones's kids achieve more, have more free time and are happier than his and his wife's. James sets out to find out why and discovers the secret to helping children fulfill their potential for success and happiness.
In Help Your Kids Get It Done Right at Home and School, Gennet applies her principles of delegation to parenting, presenting a program that helps parents build responsibility and self-esteem in their children. Parents may be able to apply these principles for the benefit of their children and themselves and change their lives for the better.
Philosophy / Art History
Aesthetics and Rock Art edited by Thomas Heyd & John Clegg (Ashgate Publishing Limited)
Rock art research, the study of paintings and drawings on rock surfaces made by peoples from time immemorial and continuing on into the present, is a field growing in importance in such disciplines as archaeology, anthropology, and art history.
Aesthetics and Rock Art, edited by Thomas Heyd, teacher of
philosophy at the
In Aesthetics and Rock Art the aesthetic perspective contrasts with various other perspectives, such as those given by commercial, religious or political orientations. It approaches the marks on rock with regard to the intrinsic interest that they have in themselves, or because of what they express about their makers' experiential world, their greater or lesser control of techniques for expressing that world and their relative originality in their expression, or because of what they express about the vision of life inherent in the combined experiential worlds that make up cultures to which the artists belonged or belong.
Since little written work has explicitly focused on aesthetics and rock art until now, Heyd and Clegg begin Part I with several essays that discuss the legitimacy of the undertaking. This question belongs to what Heyd calls ‘meta-aesthetics’, since it consists of reflecting, in the context of rock art, about the project of aesthetics itself. Part II considers how aesthetic appreciation comes about. These essays broadly fit into ‘general aesthetics’ and, as such, discuss both what it is like to attend to the contents of our respective perceptual worlds and the objects of that form of attention. The essays in Part III are case studies which relate insights and difficulties in the aesthetic appreciation of particular rock art sites within their specific cultural context. In this way, these latter essays contribute to what Heyd calls ‘concrete aesthetics’.
Part I. The essays in Part I ask the question whether aesthetics can or should have a place in encounters with rock art. The authors of the essays give reasons for the pursuit of aesthetics in the context of rock art from the perspective of various disciplines: philosophy, anthropology, art history and archaeology.
In Chapter 2, ‘Paleolithic Cave Painting: A Test Case for Transcultural Aesthetics’, the philosopher Peter Lamarque takes prehistoric rock paintings as an opportunity to discuss the ability of present-day viewers to make sense of manifestations from societies distant, on almost every cultural dimension, from ours.
Heyd considers in greater depth the question whether rock art aesthetics is legitimately pursued, given potential objections from both ethical and epistemological points of view in ‘Rock Art Aesthetics: Trace on Rock, Mark of Spirit, Window on Land’ (Chapter 3). He concludes that the proposed objections can be overcome and that marks on rock can be a very rich source of aesthetic experience.
The anthropologist Howard Murphy picks up, in his own disciplinary way, on Lamarque's question, concerning the sense that it can make to apply aesthetic categories to manifestations from beyond our own cultural context, in ‘Aesthetics across Time and Place: An Anthropological Perspective on Archaeology’ (Chapter 4). He contributes to the development of a meta-language, opening up new possibilities for the archaeology of rupestrian art.
The neglect of aesthetics in the appreciation of rock art is the topic of Chapter 5, ‘Considerations on the Art and Aesthetics of Rock Art’ by Reinaldo Morales, an art historian. He notes that this approach contrasts strongly with the attitudes of many non-Western people from small-scale societies who have a more integrated way of viewing the objects that surround them.
Concluding Part I, Chapter 6. ‘San Art: Aesthetically Speaking’ by William Domeris, an archaeologist, focuses on San/Bushmen rock art in South Africa and proposes that we consider rock art in terms of the aesthetic of form, of function and of history.
Part II. The essays in Section II seek to uncover the factors that constitute the aesthetic values found in rock art to those that have to do with the reception of marks on rocks.
In ‘The Archaeology, Anthropology and Aesthetics of Understanding Parietal Rock Images at La Greze, Cosquer and Wangewangen’ (Chapter 7) Michael Eastham, an art historian, considers the apparently distorted, perspective of certain ancient rock art pictures. He demonstrates that the odd appearance of these images is probably not due to a lack of technical ability on the part of their makers but, instead, may be the result of a particular way of seeing which we can geometrically reconstruct. In Chapter 8 Masaru Ogawa, also an art historian, keeps the focus on European Paleolithic rupestrian art in ‘Integration in Franco-Cantabrian Parietal Art: A Case Study of Font-de-Gaume Cave, France’. He calls for a reassessment of common assumptions about the aesthetic gaze which animated the prehistoric artists working in Western European caves.
J.B. Deregowski's ‘Perception and Ways of Drawing: Why Animals are Easier to Draw than People’ (Chapter 9) focuses on image-making, particularly on the difficulties of depicting certain three-dimensional objects on two-dimensional surfaces.
In Chapter 10 Ute Eickelkamp, an anthropologist, discusses the development of aesthetic imagination through a case study of women's artistic activity in a particular Australian Aboriginal community. Although her essay ‘We Make Lines, ...” Excerpts from an Ethnography of the Aesthetic Imagination of the Pitjantjatjara’, concerns art-making on surfaces other than rock, it supplies an invaluable source of insight into the factors that influence the making of artworks in a cultural context in which rock art was made until quite recently.
‘Aesthetics, Rock Art, and Changing States of Consciousness’
(Chapter 11) by John Clegg, an archaeologist, offers us an
investigation of particular techniques for creating visual effects,
as displayed in certain rock art images in
Part II closes with an essay on an issue in the reception of marks on rock. Chapter 12, ‘Evolutions of Lascaux’ by Rowan Wilken, from the field of communication studies, invites us to consider the interplay of ‘original’ versus ‘copy’ as it comes to bear on the appreciation of rock art.
Part III. The essays in Part III are case studies in the application of an aesthetic perspective to rock art in a diversity of areas around the world, the emphasis being on the possibilities, as well as the problems, of rock art appreciation, given that this appreciation generally is a cross-cultural enterprise.
Chapter 13, ‘Illuminations and Reflections: Looking at Scandinavian Rock Carvings’ by John Coles, an archaeologist, argues that the rock carvings found in Scandinavia allow us to draw conclusions about their makers and their aesthetic stance, despite the relative dearth of associated archaeological evidence.
In Chapter 14 Pippa Skotnes, an art historian, writes about the lack of impact of San rock art generally had on the discourse of South African art historians. In ‘The Visual as a Site of Meaning: San Parietal Painting and the Experience of Modern Art’ she argues for a new emphasis on formal analysis of rock art.
Maya cave art, as introduced in Chapter 15 by Andrea Stone, an art historian, has offered up a very puzzling phenomenon to researchers. In ‘Divine Stalagmites: Modified Speleothems in Maya Caves and Aesthetic Variation in Classic Maya Art’' she discusses a set of engraved rocks found in underground caves in the Yucatan that present rather rough, unpolished images.
‘The Aesthetic Value of Textual Images: Pallava Script and
Petroglyphic Images on Semi-portable Stones from
Finally, Sven Ouzman, an archaeologist, returns our gaze once more to San rock art. In ‘Seeing is Deceiving: Rock Art and the Non-visual’ he argues that non-visual aspects may be as important as the visual aspects of rock art for an understanding of their cultural and aesthetic significance. Ouzman's essay encourages us to take on a multi-sensory approach to the aesthetic appreciation of rock art sites, arguing that, once this fuller view of rock art sites has been obtained, these manifestations will be understood as signposts of complex mindscapes which encompass both visible and non-visible aspects of the world.
These essays in Aesthetics and Rock Art illustrate how an approach stemming from aesthetics adds to the understanding of rock art and also how a focus on rock art can contribute to new perspectives in aesthetics. Until now, the relevance of the aesthetic perspective in relation to rock art has seldom been considered. The views expressed by the authors in Aesthetics and Rock Art are quite diverse, as is to be expected from an effort encompassing so many disciplines, and they are sure to generate discussion among rock art researchers as well as among aestheticists and the general public. These wonderfully insightful papers should encourage others to look at rock art not only as material for research projects, but as aesthetically appreciable manifestations of people from other places and times with whom, despite many differences, we nevertheless share a common set of joys, hopes, fears and fates. As Ouzman says in the concluding chapter regarding non-visual aspects of rock art, “We need only partially to close our eyes, open our minds and slowly feel our way toward the mindscape of our predecessors in order to appreciate the power and limitations of our sensory perceptions and acknowledge the existence of realities beyond our ken.”
Philosophy / Consciousness
Human Life Is Radical Reality: An Idea Developed from the Conceptions of Dilthey, Heidegger, and Ortega y Gasset by Howard N. Tuttle (Peter Lang Publishing)
The twenty-first century needs a new paradigm for philosophy, because both Anglo-American and Continental philosophy have ended in analytic sterility and deconstructive nihilism. They have ignored the radical reality of human life, which all other realities must presuppose. Three European philosophers in the twentieth century – Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, and Ortega y Gasset – began to develop this idea, but never before has it been systematically conceptualized and adequately expounded. With reference to the works of these philosophers, Human Life Is Radical Reality examines the major categories and essential properties of human life as it is lived, for example, in time, circumstance, history, and understanding.
Contents of the chapters include:
- Chapter One: Wilhelm Dilthey and the Idea of Human Life
- Chapter Two: The Question of Being in Martin Heidegger and Ortega y Gasset
- Chapter Three: Human Life: an Overview
- Chapter Four: The Concept of Categories [Historical Development of the Concept; World and Circumstances; The ‘I’ and Its Circumstances]
- Chapter Five: Historical Time and Care [Clock Time and Lived Time; The Care Structure]
- Chapter Six: Historicity [Defining Historicity; Historicity, Constant and Changing; Heidegger's Historicity; Historicity and Freedom]
- Chapter Seven: The Inner Experience of Human Life [Lived Experience; Embodiment; Thinking; Truth; Knowledge; Meaning; Perspective; Beliefs]
- Chapter Eight: Reason [Vital Reason; Historical Reason; Narration and Prophecy]
- Chapter Nine: The Social Dimension [The ‘I’ and the Other; Dilthey's Verstehen; Heidegger's Understanding; Interpretation; Language; The Anonymous ‘They’; The Vital Elite; Culture; Mood]
- Chapter Ten: The Directions of Human Life [Will, Motives, and Ends; Possibility and Self-Determination; Man the Technician; Generations; Death]
- Chapter Eleven: Summary of Human Life as Radical Reality [Dilthey's Idea of Human Life; Ortega y Gasset and the Radical Reality of Human Life; The New Being of Human Life; A Comparison of Dilthey, Ortega, and Heidegger]
- Chapter Twelve: Conclusions on the Fundamental Datum of Human Life
In this deep and rational exploration of the meaning of life, Howard N. Tuttle, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, shows that while our life is the most immediate, transparent and familiar thing we experience, it is also the most problematical, obscure and distant entity that contemporary humanity can attempt to know. He quotes Nietzsche, who once remarked, “Civilization has existed for five thousand years, and there is still no goal for mankind.” Such a goal must arise within the fragility and care and wonder of human life. We are our life and nothing more according to Human Life Is Radical Reality. Tuttle’s exploration is worth of attention.
Philosophy / Words & Language / Communication
Arguing: Exchanging Reasons Face to Face by Dale
Hample (Communication Series:
Arguing – exchanging reasons – is something that we do every day, with nearly everyone we know or meet. Many arguments are individually inconsequential. Where should we move the couch? What should we have for dinner? What magazine should we subscribe to? Collected together, however, they go a long way toward explaining how we navigate through our lives.
Late in the 20th century, a few American argumentation scholars began to take interest in interpersonal arguments. They drew on centuries of theory and observation about arguments in public oratory, but they found that they needed to develop their own theoretical and methodological apparatus as well. Two threads in this work – minor threads for many years – are cognition and emotion, as these are related to conversational arguing. Arguing is mainly concerned with those matters: our thoughts, our feelings, and our conversations.
Arguing describes the process and products of face-to-face
argument. Author Dale Hample,
Distinctive in its approach, Arguing offers:
- A synthesis of empirical research on situational and individual differences in arguing.
- An exploration of argument frames – perceptions and expectations about arguing.
- An examination of the conversational and rational natures of argument products.
- A psychological description of inventional processes.
- A full chapter on the emotional experience of arguing.
Arguing is divided into two major sections. The first large section deals with argument production, and its motivating question is, Where do arguments come from? Arguments are fundamentally about content, and scholars must account for the meanings to understand arguing. The first consideration is to see what people think they are doing when they argue (chapter 2). It makes a difference, for example, whether a person sees an exchange as a fight or as a discussion. Having taken some notice of people's framing predilections, Hemple addresses invention in chapter 3. The content must be created, and thus he discusses people's capacity for invention and the cognitive processes that nominate meanings for utterance. In chapter 4, the topic is how that nominated material is edited because people (or at least many people) do not say everything that occurs to them. The transition from private thought to public statement is both important and revealing. Arguing is not merely an intellectual exercise – it is also an emotional experience. This view is obvious to ordinary social actors but rarely examined by scholars. In chapter 5, Hemple undertakes the project of trying to describe the emotional side of argument production. Chapter 6 deals with individual differences in arguing behavior and how situational elements affect what people say.
The second main part of Arguing is about public argument. When an argument is written or spoken, it becomes an objectifiable text. Chapter 7 is an examination of what arguments look like; consequently, it deals with conversational structure. Hemple looks at the micro-sociology of interactional arguments, considering adjacency pairs, turn structure, and the requirements of conversation itself. There, too, he deals with the macrostructure of conversational argument as topics evolve and tactics play out in longer passages. Chapter 7 also has a summary of pragmadialectics, the best exposition of the dialectical perspective on argumentation. Procedural rules for good dialectic have been worked out, and he discusses how violation of these standards makes conversation less reflective. Chapter 8 deals with impossible arguments, arguments whose public forms deflect rationality but in a remarkably seductive way. The argument looks like it ought to work, but in fact it is guaranteed not to.
Throughout all the chapters, Hemple concerns himself with argument reception. He takes a pragmatic perspective, inquiring how the reception of an argument changes the person who hears it. He looks at how people understand evidence and how the substantive elements of an argument are processed cognitively. His treatment of the emotional experience of arguing tries to show that supposedly nonrational effects are part of arguing. Individual and situational differences are important to both argument production and reception. At several points, he tracks how these factors affect understandings and other reactions to having been in an argument.
Much of the material in Arguing either is new or is being newly applied in argumentation studies. Some of the topics have well-developed literatures, but others, particularly the emotional material, are in their beginning stages of investigation. Nonetheless, Hemple provides a description of arguing that has enough scope to show the nature of the process.
Arguing is a unique work with a unique focus, appropriate for scholars and graduate students in argumentation, discourse, persuasion, conflict management, interpersonal communication, organizational communication, and message production. Giving the book a verb, or at least a gerund for a title, Hemple focuses on argument production, and only a few chapters at the end concentrate on the actual arguments. Readers more interested in the products, or perhaps also interested in them, might want to read books about debate, informal logic, rhetorical practice, or critical discussion.
Policy / History / State & Local / Economic Development
Lake Effects: A History of Urban Policy Making in
Lake Effects is a history of urban policy making in the large
Midwestern industrial city of
Ronald Weiner, professor of history at
The book examines the successes and failures of these three
regimes. In a nutshell, the successes of the Merchant Regime's
economic development policy made
Weiner says that one could write a long and possibly entertaining
political history about the ignorance, myopia, venality, and
stupidity of
Indeed, throughout the nineteenth and almost all of the twentieth
centuries, the parties and the candidates were virtually
interchangeable. In
Urban policy differs. It aims to cultivate, maintain, and defend
the local region's particular geography of production and
consumption by the creation of a loose coalition of disparate groups
and organizations – the urban regimes discussed in
Lake Effects. A policy-making regime may exist for a
considerable period of time, as did the four regimes of
The somewhat labored phrase ‘geographies of production and
consumption’ is intended to serve as a code signifying several
things. The phrase means, in general, that economic activities, such
as production and consumption, are perceptible in urban space.
Urban policy in
The Populist Regime was a diverse coalition of organizations
striving to cope with the early industrial era geography of
production and consumption. Some of these carried over from the
preceding regime, while others, such as immigrant churches, mutual
aid societies, immigrant clubs, and ward organizations, were
entirely new. These diverse Populist Regime organizations coalesced
around two contradictory value systems: a universalist, professional
ideal held by an emerging class of organization men, and a
particularized neighborhood-based value system held by newcomers to
the city. In its heyday, the Populist Regime reordered policy
priorities and charted entirely new policy directions for the city
of
The Corporate Regime rose from the Populist Regime's inability to manage the industrial era geography of production and consumption. The Corporate Regime overhauled old organizations, built new organizations in the image of the modern industrial business organization, and merged all into a hierarchical policy setting network, which included divisions for each type of policy. The Corporate Regime was composed of entrepreneurs, corporate managers, and professionals alienated from the Populist Regime. At the outset, the values of entrepreneurs, managers, and professionals appeared to be compatible. In the end, the dramatic ad hoc projects favored by the entrepreneurs could not be reconciled with the long-term institutionalization of policy favored by managers and professionals.
For all its organizational brilliance and policy achievements, the Corporate Regime failed to respond adequately to the challenges of the automobile era geography of production and consumption. Its replacement, the Realty Regime, was composed of new and old organizations staffed by local businessmen not affiliated with the industrial era corporation. These were new people with a more expansive, regional vision of social geography and new, self-interested policy priorities. The Realty Regime did not see policy as a comprehensive whole and instead concentrated on a narrow range of policy objectives. The Realty Regime was, however, attuned to the automobile era geography of production and consumption and implemented its narrow range of policies on the scale of the metropolitan region rather than that of the central city.
The Policy Priorities of the Four Regimes
Each of the regimes shaped its own economic development, urban growth, service distribution, and wealth redistribution policies, brought different perspectives to the policies, and ordered them on a descending scale of priorities.
(1) The Merchant Regime established economic development as its primary policy priority and pursued it with dogged energy and good results. Urban growth issues also ranked high with the merchants, but service distribution and wealth redistribution cost actual dollars and political capital which the regime was disinclined to spend.
(2) The Populist Regime emerged because of the merchants' failure to satisfactorily address service distribution issues. Service distribution became the highest priority of the new regime and the one on which the populists would eventually impale themselves. Economic development was not understood by the regime, but urban growth was. The goal of the regime was to bring spatial growth to a halt. Wealth redistribution and service distribution in the Populist Regime were yoked issues, and the unpopularity of the latter leached into the former.
(3) The top policy priorities of the Corporate Regime were urban growth and wealth redistribution. But in all policy areas, the corporate leaders would transfer the planning and management efficiencies of modern business organization to policy making and policy implementation. The lone policy area where this methodology failed was economic development.
(4) Urban growth was far and away the highest policy priority of the Realty Regime. The realtors' growth policy created suburbia, and each politically independent suburb would chart its own direction in service distribution and wealth redistribution. The Realty Regime not only created the geographically expansive urban region, but it also created in its politically independent suburbs balkanized urban policy making.
Weiner says that as
Lake Effects was being written, local leadership and the media
are much vexed by the
Lake Effects shows, among other policy matters, that
Lake Effects is an imaginative and path-breaking analysis of the
history of public policy in a major Midwestern city. No book has so
successfully examined such a breadth of urban policy making in such
a useful fashion. – Robert Fairbanks,
Weiner takes on the problem of
Lake Effects brings clarity to the source of the woes facing
Politics
Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global
Age edited by Jonathan Purkis & James Bowen
(Manchester University Press)
The high ideals of anarchism have inspired generations of activists and political thinkers for over a century and a half, winning respect from even the fiercest of opponents. As the ‘conscience of politics’, anarchism's opposition to all forms of power and its emphasis on responsibility and self-determination has provided a constant benchmark for other areas of political philosophy and practice. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, with popular movements challenging the logic of globalization, Western military imperialism and the assumptions of ‘democratic’ governments, anarchist theory and practice has once again made its presence felt.
Indeed, recent, massive protests against globalization have rekindled interest in anarchism. Changing Anarchism sets out to reposition anarchist theory and practice by documenting contemporary anarchist practice and providing a viable analytical framework for understanding it. Changing Anarchism documents the links between these movements and contemporary anarchism and demonstrates how anarchist ideas are evolving in a global age. In particular, the book examines strands within anarchism concerned with technology, the environment and identity, and suggests that these are useful sociological tools for understanding the pervasive and interconnected nature of power.
Edited by Jonathan Purkis, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Liverpool John Moores University, and James Bowen, Literacy Development Worker for Kirklees Council, the areas covered include: sexuality and identity; psychological dependency on technology; libertarian education; religion and spirituality; protest tactics; mental health and artistic expression; and the ongoing ‘metaphorical wars’ against drugs and terror.
The contributors also offer practical insight into how power is being resisted in a variety of social and political contexts and how anarchist ideals are impacting on many different areas of everyday life. The contributions here, from both academics and activists, raise challenging and sometimes provocative questions about the complex nature of power and resistance to it. The balance of activist perspectives on anti-capitalism, sexuality, narcotics, education and mental health, combined with theoretical material drawn from post-structuralism, ecologism, the complexity sciences and social movement theory, ensures that Changing Anarchism will appeal to general readers as well as to students of politics, sociology and cultural studies. This collection epitomizes the rich diversity that exists within contemporary anarchism as well as demonstrating its ongoing relevance as a sociological tool.
Politics / Government
CQ's Politics in America 2006: The 109th Congress edited by
Jackie Koszczuk & H. Amy Stern (Politics in
Politics in America has been called ‘the ultimate insider's guide to Congress.’
Now in its 13th edition, CQ's Politics in America 2006 offers information on the 109th Congress through unbiased member profiles. Page after page brings portraits of every representative and senator – the headline grabbers and behind-the-scenes dealmakers, the emerging stars and the established powers – describing the personalities and political styles of all 535 members plus the 5 delegates.
This current edition of Politics in America is edited by veteran journalists Jackie Koszczuk and H. Amy Stern and compiled by a team of Congressional Quarterly editors, reporters and researchers. Detailed member profiles offer concise and candid analyses of personalities, political styles, legislative agendas, political ambitions and reputations at home and on the Hill. State and district information, and informative appendixes, round out CQ's Politics in America 2006. Coverage includes:
- Biographical data, committee assignments, election results, CQ Key Votes, interest group ratings, CQ Vote Studies and contact information.
- New and detailed descriptions of each member's congressional district, including updated maps and voting trends.
- An analysis of each member's priorities, personal style and achievements.
- The 2004 vote for president in each House district.
- Key information on governors and every state.
- Campaign finance statistics.
- Little-known facts about members of Congress.
This is an absolutely invaluable reference for anyone who cares about Congress, what they do and why. The sketches of the home districts plus the background on the individuals themselves tell you just about everything you need to know. – Cokie Roberts, Political analyst
This is the congressional guide that delves into each member's
legislative history, with insights only CQ's unrivaled reporting
staff can provide. – Ron Elving, Senior
Indispensable for anyone interested in Congress – scholars as
well as journalists. My colleagues and I use it in both our research
and our teaching. And, for the Congress junkie, it is really fun to
read. – Barbara Sinclair, Professor,
Reflecting Congressional Quarterly's distinguished tradition of straight and superb reporting, CQ's Politics in America 2006 is lively, comprehensive, insightful and essential. – E. J. Dionne Jr., Syndicated columnist and senior fellow, The Brookings Institution
CQ's Politics in America is the resource that journalists, policy analysts, students and educators reach for first when they want reliable facts on the current Congress and this 13th edition will be no exception. With more than 60 years of experience covering Capitol Hill, The Congressional Quarterly is in a good position to profile Congress without bias or hyperbole. CQ's Politics in America 2006 continues that same level of CQ expertise in this indispensable, candid, reliable and readable resource.
Politics / International Relations
The Opportunity:
According to Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on
Foreign Relations, formerly, Director of Policy Planning for the
State Department and a principal adviser to Colin Powell, the
principal reason the 21st century shows such promise is that the
potential for armed conflict involving today's major powers is
remote. This remarkable development reflects not just
The combination of these circumstances will not stay unchanged.
If we are not careful, the world could see its energies diverted by
a new cold war – or, even worse, descend into anarchy defined by
terrorism, disease, the spread of nuclear weapons, genocide, and
extreme poverty.
More than anything else, it will be how well and how wisely the
What will it take to get the world's support? The answer to this question is what makes The Opportunity important reading.
At a pivotal moment in history, one of the wise men of our own time has brought us a brilliant, original and compelling portrait of our troubled 21st century world – and an often surprising prescription for making it better. Richard Haass's fascinating book should be essential reading for every leader and citizen who understands what is now at stake for all of us. – Michael Beschloss
In this essential book, Richard Haass describes the enormous
opportunity
Since the end of the Cold War, the country has searched for an integrating concept for the new conditions, a role performed for a generation by Kennan's containment theory. With The Opportunity, Richard Haass has undertaken to close this gap with imagination and insight. It is an important book for any period. – Henry Kissinger
Haass has a unique seat from which to weigh the direction of our relations with the rest of the world. In The Opportunity he provides a much-needed foreign policy compass, one with the potential to do for this post-Cold War, post-9/11, post-Iraq world what the containment doctrine did for the previous era. His conclusion, that we must learn to get along with the rest of the world or be overwhelmed, is sobering and thought provoking.
Politics / Religion / Christianity
It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good by Rick Santorum (ISI Books)
Among politicians of national stature today, there is perhaps none more respected as a principled conservative than Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA). In It Takes a Family, his first book, Santorum articulates the humane vision that he believes must inform public policy if it is to be effective and just. According to Santorum, an appreciation for the civic bonds that unite a community lies at the heart of genuine conservatism. Santorum demonstrates how such an approach to political, social, and economic problems offers the most promise for those on the margin of life: the poor, the vulnerable, and minorities who have often been excluded from opportunity.
Santorum argues that conservative statesmanship is animated by a sense of stewardship for an inheritance. But what do we inherit as Americans? And how can we be good stewards of that inheritance? Building on Robert Putnam's discussion of social capital, the habits of association and trust that are the preconditions of any decent society, Santorum assesses how well, in the past generation, Americans have cared for the fabric of society. He explores in detail various dimensions of social and cultural connection that are the foundation of the common good. And he presents policy proposals for the renewal of American society at all levels.
In this era of adult self-centered behavior, minimally concerned with the well-being of children, this book is a welcome response. I am amazed at the depth and breadth of information, wisdom, and sensitivity. This is the book that will soften people's hearts to the blessing of commitment to family values. – Dr. Laura C. Schlessinger, Internationally Syndicated Talk Show Host
It Takes a Family is a very important book. It is a
reaffirmation of the moral, spiritual, and ethical characteristics
that have blessed
Throughout the book, Santorum emphasizes the central role of the
family in contradistinction to the metaphorical village of the
federal government. With a sustained argument touching on first
principles throughout, this ambitious and original book is a major
contribution to contemporary political debate.
It Takes a Family may help establish Santorum as a leader of
reform-minded civic conservatives in
Reference / Education
Fiske Guide To Colleges 2006 by Edward Fiske (Fiske Guide to Colleges Series: Sourcebooks, Inc.)
First published more than 20 years ago, this college guide to more than 300 schools has been the indispensable source of information for thousands of students and their parents. Each college is rated on a scale of 1 to 5 stars on Academics, Social Life and Quality of Life. The series is written by Edward B. Fiske who served for 17 years as education editor of The New York Times, where he realized that college-bound students and their families needed better information on which to base their educational choices.
The
Fiske Guide To Colleges 2006 has been fully revised and updated
and is based on new surveys of thousands of students and
administrators. It includes:
- Percentage of financial aid
- Number of applicants and percentage of acceptance
- Rating of academics
- Each school's strongest programs
- Campus culture and lifestyle
- Listing of each school's strongest departments and majors
- The 40+ schools that deliver the best education at the most
reasonable costs
Hip, honest and straightforward, the
Fiske Guide To Colleges 2006 delivers an insider's look at the
academic climates and the social and extracurricular scenes at the
‘best and most interesting’ schools in the
In addition to the candid essays on each school, readers will find:
- A self-quiz to help them understand what they are really looking for in a college.
- Lists of the strongest majors and programs at each college.
- How to apply, including admissions and financial aid deadlines, required tests and each school's essay questions.
- ‘Overlap’ listings to help readers expand their options.
- Selectivity statistics and SAT/ACT scores.
- Indexes that break down schools by price and state.
- A list of schools with strong programs for learning disabled students.
- All the basics, including email addresses and university websites.
- A special section highlighting the 45 public and private Best Buy schools – colleges that provide the best educational value.
The best college guide you can buy…. Most readable and
informative… –
Fiske Guide To Colleges 2006 is the guide the San Francisco Chronicle called ‘the bible.’ Packed with tips from current students about the ins and outs of their schools, this is the one to satisfy both college-bound students and their parents.
Religion & Spirituality / Christianity / Philosophy
Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love by Rowan Williams (Morehouse Publishing)
To arrive at the point where the world can be truthfully named in
its relation to God involves some grasp of the world as pointless
futureless love.
In
Grace and Necessity Rowan Williams, the present archbishop of
Canterbury, sketches out a new theological aesthetic or, put more
simply; a new understanding of how human beings open themselves to
transcendence. In this, his first major new work of original
theology for some years, Williams, formerly Lady Margaret Professor
of Divinity at
Profoundly influenced by some of the most original and creative minds in the recent Catholic tradition (French philosopher Jacques Maritain, the artist Eric Gill), he explores the concept of an artwork as a structure in itself and not as a ‘reproduction’. In Williams' development of his theme he discusses modern philosophy, in particular, Wittgenstein's aesthetics, but also examines modern art, including the work of the American novelist and short-story writer, Flannery O'Connor and the writings of the poet and artist David Jones on art and sacrament and the underlying theology of artistic production.
The influences are as broad as Williams's perception is deep. Through the poetic and creative imagination of these influences, we read of a new doctrine of God that puts gift and dispossession at the foundation of everything.
… Human creation that is more than practical, Williams argues, "gives us some clue as to what the theologian means by creation, the setting in being [of] something that is both an embodiment of what is thought or conceived and a radically independent reality with its own logic and integrity unfolding over time." Unabashedly erudite in tone, this book, originally given as the Clark Lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, may appeal to scholars and readers interested in grappling with a debate that has probably been engaged as long as there have been artists and theologians. – Publishers Weekly
In a real sense, Williams fulfills his stated ambition for Christianity to engage with contemporary culture, at least in its more imaginative aspects. Though the material is often complex, Grace and Necessity is written with clarity and breathes fresh air into a theological enterprise, which may seem to amount at times to little more than intellectual pirouetting. That a man who holds highest office in the Church has the time and intellectual energy to write such original theology is encouraging for us all.
Religion & Spirituality / Christianity
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament by George J. Brooke (Fortress Press)
The Dead Sea Scrolls have provided Old Testament scholars with an enormous wealth of data for textual criticism as well as theology, and resources that has thus far been underutilized by NT Scholars.
In
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, George J. Brooke,
Rylands Professor of Biblical Studies at the
The Dead Sea Scrolls from the
The
A few features of the
The second point concerns the details to be found in many of the
scrolls, not just the sectarian ones. The fascination with the Dead
Sea Scrolls among scholars of the New Testament arose not least
because of the messianic and eschatological views to be found in
some
Lastly, though some few manuscripts are in Greek, almost
certainly no copies of any of the writings of the New Testament have
come from any of the caves. Those few scholars who persist in the
view that a direct link can be made between
Undoubtedly, much in the New Testament is appropriately set in
the complex world of the eastern
From what has been preserved of the teaching of Jesus it is
likely that he based his message of both the immanence and the
imminence of the kingship of God on some Jewish Scriptures more than
others. The New Testament as a whole seems to have a similar set of
preferences to those found in the
Although there are similar scriptural starting points, there are also some distinct emphases. For example, the use of Isaiah in the scrolls is far more comprehensive than the seemingly more selective use of Isaianic proof-texts by the writers of the New Testament. The appeal to Deuteronomy both in legal traditions and in poetry and prayer is more energetically serious in the Qumran community and the wider movement of which it was a part than the Deuteronomic cherry-picking observable in New Testament authors who are still feeling their way in relation to the place of the Law in their new forms of Judaism.
Differences underpin the contribution of Chapter 5 on shared intertextual interpretations in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament. There are several instances in the scrolls and in the New Testament in which the same two or more scriptural texts are combined together for some reason. The thesis of the chapter is that seldom, if ever, is this the result of either direct or indirect literary dependence of one author upon another, in this case of the New Testament author upon the interpretative traditions found in the scrolls. Rather, when the scriptural combinations are looked at closely, the exegetical differences in detail are usually more significant than any apparent similarities. The solution to this conundrum may rest in the way in which the same combinations of authoritative texts suggest themselves independently to a range of authors.
If differences between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament
characterize several of the five essays in the first section of
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, in the second
section of this collection there is greater emphasis on the
similarities. The six studies assembled in Part Two juxtapose
particular compositions from the
It cannot be denied that some subtlety has to be used in the analysis of individual Dead Sea Scrolls and particular sections of the New Testament texts. It is not always straightforward to see how texts might illuminate one another. In Chapter 8 Brooke suggests that the collection of references to Isaiah in the Apocryphon of Levi indicates that its compiler was aware of traditions about an eschatological high priest who could have the language of the Suffering Servant applied to him. Such a combination of descriptors provides an argument that scholars should revisit the issue of the place of the Suffering Servant as a description of Jesus in the New Testament; perhaps its limited use can be explained by its strong associations with cultic motifs in contemporary Jewish interpretation. Given that many details in Luke-Acts were illuminated by the first generation of Qumran scholars, in Chapter 9 attention to the ideological assumptions of Migsat Ma`ase ha-Torah is used to illuminate some of the cultic concerns of the author of Luke-Acts, from the place of Jerusalem to the interest in who should be included in temple worship; from some similar premises, the two compositions reach radically different answers. Chapter 10 highlights the exegetical interests which exercised the compiler of the Commentary on Genesis and asks whether any of the same interests or the ways in which they are expressed are discernible in the New Testament. Some are, some are not; those that are can now be set within a broader exegetical framework. The juxtaposition of two words in specific contexts in Chapter 11, rwgmh in the Damascus Document and exousia in 1 Corinthians 11.10, demonstrates how in some cases interpretative difficulties can receive mutual illumination, even if they cannot necessarily be decisively solved.
The third section of The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament contains five essays which are focused on the mutual illumination of the Scrolls and the Gospels. In Chapter 12 Brooke argues that in the light of Beatitudes the beatitudes in Matthew's Gospel in particular should be seen as the development of a traditional pattern of Wisdom instruction in contemporary Judaism and, vice versa, in light of Matthew's use of the beatitudes at the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, their use in 4Q525 might be understood in terms of religious initiation. In Chapter 13 the detailed analysis of the parable of the vineyard in light of 4Q500 puts the parable realistically into a tradition of Jewish exegesis with which even Jesus himself could have been familiar; the parable in turn supports the discernment of various features of the vineyard in 4Q500, Fragment 1, a piece which otherwise might have easily been ignored by New Testament scholars.
The closing three chapters contain some attractive exegetical
surprises. In Chapter 14, among other matters, there is discussion
of the begetting of the Messiah by God. The Rule of the Congregation
shows that the divine engendering of the Messiah was conceptually
possible though not in a literal sense, while the birth narratives
in the Gospels give permission for this particular reading of a very
difficult
As Brooke points out, the concern of these essays with the ways in which scriptural traditions are transmitted and interpreted in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament is true to his own longstanding research interests in early Jewish exegesis. However, these essays should also be taken as indicating two new directions for scholars to take. Those concerned to appreciate some of the exegetical details preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls would do well not to omit the evidence of the New Testament in their search of contemporary Jewish literature which might help in the explanation of challenging fragmentary passages. New Testament scholars in turn should recognize that the value of the Dead Sea Scrolls for the better appreciation of the Jewish background of much in the New Testament does not lie exclusively in particular matters of organization or messianic belief, but much more broadly in the ways in which Jews contemporary with Jesus and Paul constructed their own self-understandings and identities through highly intricate and sophisticated interpretations of inherited traditions, interpretations which gave life to texts written in earlier generations. Brook says that with attention to such matters it can readily be seen that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament are entering a new era of mutual illumination.
Publishing a collection of George Brooke's essays on the scrolls and the New Testament is to be applauded. Brooke, basing himself on his extensive knowledge of and experience with both bodies of literature, sets forth intriguing cases for interrelations between them and does so with his accustomed care and thoroughness. An excellent volume! – James VanderKam, John A. O'Brien Professor of Hebrew Scriptures, University of Notre Dame
The publication of a set of essays like this will likely
contribute to a fresh engagement with the scrolls, not only for the
fascination which they have in themselves, but also for what they
can contribute to the better understanding of the writings of the
New Testament and the multifarious sources they reflect. And Brooke
skillfully demonstrates in
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament the extent to which
New Testament scholars can use the Scrolls to learn more about the
linguistic, historical, religious, and social contexts of
Religion & Spirituality / Old Testament
Introduction to the Book of Isaiah: With an Appendix Containing the Undoubted Portions of the Two Chief Prophetic Writers in a Translation by T. K. Cheyne (Wipf and Stock Publishers)
In 1895 T.K. Cheyne published
Introduction to the Book of Isaiah through Adams and Charles
Black (publishers). The book pioneered the critical study of the
book of Isaiah, and it is now available, reprinted in its entirety.
Isaiah is important because Isaiah created the most normative
expectations for the Messiah and also because Jesus inaugurated his
ministry by quoting Isaiah.
T. K. CHEYNE (1841–1915) served as Fellow at
The book of Isaiah is the first and longest of the books of the
Major Prophets in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It
derives its name from the prophet Isaiah, who lived in
Isaiah, of course, is a part of the Jewish Hebrew Bible as well as the Christian Old Testament, containing prophecies attributed to Isaiah. This book is often seen by scholars as being divided into at least two sections, and is generally acknowledged to contain the work of more than one individual.
(1) ‘First Isaiah.’ The first
thirty-five chapters, almost wholly prophetic,
(2) Four chapters are historical (36–39), relating to the times of Hezekiah. These chapters have been taken directly from 2 Kings 18:13–20:18.
(3) ‘Second Isaiah.’ Prophetical
(40–55),
(4) ‘Third Isaiah.” Chapters 56 to 66,
Trito – Isaiah, were written by authors unknown in detail but
working around the end of the 6th century (525–500 BC) or the
beginning of the 5th (500–475 BC). Some of the material may be
derived from a period even later than these times (c. 375–250 BC).
Isaiah contains some of the most beautiful and best known
passages in the Bible. Two manuscripts of the book were found among
the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In his introduction to
Introduction to the Book of Isaiah, Cheyne addresses himself ‘To
the Reader’… For what after all is the Bible? Certainly it is a
channel for spiritual messages from above to spiritually susceptible
minds; this all evangelical preachers see clearly enough. But it is
also a record both of the development of the higher life among the
Israelites through a combination of natural and spiritual causes,
and of the gradually expanding thoughts of this gifted people on
some of the greatest subjects. And considering that out of the old
Israel arose – strange as it seems – He who is the Root of the new
Israel, and that out of the religious society of the Jews sprang, in
part at least, the religious societies of the Christians, and that
some at any rate of the greatest and deepest of our religious
thoughts can be studied in their growth in the Old and the New
Testament, and have there received in some respects a classic form,
why should preachers be impatient of a criticism which does but show
the stages of this long development, and make credible what without
it might well appear a beautiful but scarcely credible fairytale?
I shall not be surprised if for the present many of my brother-preachers hesitate to follow me. It has been so long repeated that there are two Isaiahs (a strange caricature of the older critical view), or at any rate that the prophecies of the two greater writers of the Book of Isaiah have come down to us in substantially their original form, without later insertions or additions, that when, not merely in articles, but in a volume, a different view is advocated, ordinary students may not unnaturally shake their heads. Still the path of progress ought to have been made a little easier for them by a pioneer, and I may hope that some preachers will assimilate the main results of these researches. Should this be the case, and should such students with due caution let their congregations share in the benefit, I think that I can say from experience that no injury will arise to true edification. Criticism of the Bible does indeed destroy some views of history and prophecy which were accidentally connected with the higher life of the soul, but it only destroys to build up again better. Like Hagar's angel it opens our eyes to unsuspected ‘wells of water,’ and he who allows it to revolutionise his view of the Book of Isaiah will not only find his insight into the divine training of the Jewish people greatly deepened, but feel the true Isaiah of Jerusalem and the true Second Isaiah of Babylon becoming more and not less of prophets to himself – more and not less capable of bringing the self-revealing God nearer to him than before….”
Cheyne says that he has addressed himself especially to preachers, because to them the precedence in the work of popular enlightenment rightly belongs. And, indeed, in many ways these writings ring as true today as they did in 1895. Scholars, especially evangelists, are still contesting whether a single individual wrote all of Isaiah. In any case, Wipf and Stock Publishers are to be acknowledged for making this landmark work Introduction to the Book of Isaiah widely available to us today.
Social Sciences / Anthropology
Drinking Cultures: Alcohol and Identity edited by Thomas M.
Wilson (Berg)
Despite grim health warnings, alcohol’s consumption is at an all-time high in many parts of the developed world. Perhaps because drinking has always played a key role in identity, its uses and meanings show no signs of abating.
Alcohol is an essential part of social relations in so many
cultures that its global importance may be outdistancing its
critics. What does sake tell us about
Answering these intriguing questions,
Drinking Cultures, edited by Thomas M. Wilson, Department of
Anthropology,
- Drinking Cultures: Sites and Practices in the Production and
Expression of Identity – Thomas M. Wilson, Professor of
Anthropology at
- Drinking Country: Flows of Exchange in a
- ‘Cold Beer, Warm Hearts’: Community, Belonging and Desire in Irish Pubs in Berlin – Cliona O' Carroll, a postdoctoral fellow with the Department of Folklore and Ethnology, National University of Ireland at Cork, Ireland.
- Pivo at the Heart of Europe: Beer-drinking and Czech
Identities – Timothy M. Hall, who completed his Ph.D. at the
- Drunk and (Dis)Orderly: Norwegian Drinking Parties in the Home – Pauline Garvey, lecturer in the Department of Anthropology in the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
- Consuming Wine in
- Romantic Moods: Food, Beer, Music and the Yucatecan Soul – Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz, researcher in Yucatan, Mexico, and Gabriela Vargas-Cetina, Professor of Anthropology at the Facultad de Ciencias Antropologicas of the Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan.
- Cheers and Booze: Football and Festa Drinking in
- Drinking Rituals, Identity and Politics in a Basque Town – Sharron Kasmir, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Hofstra University.
- Alcohol and Masculinity: The Case of Ethnic Youth Gangs – Geoffrey P. Hunt, social anthropologist, Principal Investigator on two National Institutes of Health-funded research projects and Kathleen MacKenzie, project manager on a National Institute of Health-funded research project on street gangs, motherhood and violence, and Karen Joe-Laidler, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong.
- Drinking Politics: Alcohol, Drugs and the Problem of US
Civil Society – Anthony Marcus, a Lecturer in the
There is a wide range of ethnographic case studies and rich
portraits of drinking practices
Themes which run through the book include the history of the anthropology of drinking and alcohol, recent changes in ways anthropologists have approached culture and identity, and the relevance of anthropological studies of drinking, ethnicity and national identity to wider scholarly concerns with the differentiating processes of culture. The chapters review various aspects of drinking places and spaces, memories, economics and politics, and wider expressions of culture and identity. Other thematic threads run through them, such as gendered drinking consumption and identity, religion and identity, and the interplay of national and regional identities.
While the themes of the individual chapters often overlap and complement each other, many of them deal simultaneously with ethnic and national identities and their construction and expression in drinking memories, economies, politics, places and communication, many also engage other issues of identity and differentiation, in terms of age, class, race and locality. These similarities and differences provide a rich environment in which to investigate the intersections of culture and identity and drink.
An ethnographic pub crawl around the world. By examining drinking
habits from rural
The ethnographic cases in Drinking Cultures help to direct anthropologists to further consideration of drinking as an important expression of identity and culture, particularly ethnic and national identity, but one which also influences scholars to construct innovative comparative research designs which are not unduly tied to the nation, the nation-state or the ethnic group as the units for comparison. This volume's contributions invite more scholarly attention to the utility of developing ethnographic perspectives on drinking as a socially constructive act.
Social Sciences / Gender Studies
Embodying Gender by Alexandra Howson
(Sage Publications) provides students and academics with a critical
overview of body concepts in both sociology and feminism.
Previously, sociologists have attempted to gender the body and
feminists have attempted to embody gender but Alexandra Howson's new
text draws these two literatures together, pointing to ways of
integrating feminist perspectives on the body into sociological
theory.
Surveying all the key concepts in the field, Howson, Visiting
Scholar at the Beatrice M. Bain Research Group, Women’s Studies,
University of California at Berkeley and formerly sociologist at
Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Abertay Dundee, in
Embodying Gender introduces readers to an extensive range of
‘narratives of embodiment’ and presents a full analysis of the most
important texts in new feminist theories of the body.
Key questions covered include:
- What can sociology say about the body?
- What impact has the body made on sociology?
- What conceptual frameworks are used to address the body? How
do these relate to issues of gender and embodied experience?
- How do feminist conceptual tools sit within sociological
analysis?
Alexandra Howson has done a wonderful job pulling together
different strands of scholarship on the body in sociology,
philosophy and feminist theory… I think this is a potentially
important book, which can have a great impact on the field of gender
studies and sociology of the body. – Kathy Davis,
Written in a clear, accessible style,
Embodying Gender is an invaluable text for undergraduate
students, postgraduates and academics in the fields of women's and
gender studies and sociology, and is particularly relevant to those
specializing in sociology of the body, feminist theory and social
theory.
Social Sciences / Popular Culture / Health, Mind & Body
Intoxication: The
There is a silent spring of intoxicants that flows through our lives and bodies. Whether we wake up with a sip of coffee or a sniff of cocaine, take a break with a cigarette or a beer, relax with a cocktail or marijuana, drift to sleep with a pill we purchased at the pharmacy or from our neighborhood dealer, we use drugs to change the way we feel. Nobody wants this to be unhealthy or dangerous. Nobody wants people to live out their lives inside crack houses, to die from tobacco cancer, or to be killed by drunk drivers.
Ronald K. Siegel says that over the years since he wrote the first edition of Intoxication, most governments of the world have continued to wage a war on drugs.
In Intoxication Siegel, psycho-pharmacologist on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA School of Medicine, draws upon his twenty years of research to provide countless examples of the intoxication urge in humans, animals, and even insects. The detailed observations of his so-called psychonauts – study participants trained to explicitly describe their drug experiences – as well as numerous studies with animals – have helped him to identify the behavior patterns induced by different intoxicants.
Siegel says that history shows that we have always used drugs. In every age, in every part of this planet, people have pursued intoxication with plant drugs, alcohol, and other mind-altering substances. Surprisingly, we're not the only ones to do this – almost every species of animal has engaged in the natural pursuit of intoxicants. This behavior has so much force and persistence that it functions like a drive, just like our drives of hunger, thirst, and sex. This ‘fourth drive’ is a part of our biology, creating the irrepressible demand for drugs.
The inherent futility of the war on drugs is illustrated by the very nature of the warfare itself. Our major drugs and medicines were originally produced millions of years ago by plants as chemical defenses against animals and pests that could browse them. Our brains – three pound sacks of sophisticated chemicals with molecular structures and pharmacological actions similar to the substances found in the plants – gave us an affinity for these plant compounds. As intelligent primates we evolved the ability to extract the plant compounds, synthesize their chemical relatives, and develop ways to introduce highly concentrated forms directly into our bodies.
Siegel says that when he first sat down to write Intoxication the silent spring had become a river of cocaine. Today it has turned into the speeding white water of the methamphetamine epidemic as he predicted. Methamphetamine has now become the number one enemy in the war on drugs. Unlike most other intoxicants, methamphetamine (also known as crystal or speed) has both medically approved and proven beneficial effects as well as nonmedical uses. It does not stupefy and impair like alcohol or heroin but clarifies and improves. Medical science has discovered that methamphetamine-like drugs are indeed wonder medicines while nonmedical users have discovered they are wonderful euphoriants and empathogens (chemical agents that induce feelings of empathy). They deliver the benefits of the desired effects but not without costs. Yet, according to the tilted economic scale that governs both medical and nonmedical drug use, when even a few benefits seem almost too good to be true, they tip the balance in favor of continued use despite heavier costs.
And if that wasn't enough, clandestine designer drug labs are turning out still more intoxicants, some with deadly hallucinogenic properties, while users continually prowl through exotic gardens searching for sources of new chemical delights. Prohibition, he says, will never work. Users have already developed potent genetic variants of traditional mind-altering plants such as marijuana that are suitable for indoor or backyard cultivation while methods for cultivating homegrown opium poppies, Ephedra, the Middle Eastern stimulant khat, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and several other plants are being promoted. New epidemics are looming on the horizon. And so the war on drugs continues.
Some people want to stop the war, and put an end to its enormous societal costs, by legalizing drugs such as cocaine or heroin. Legalization is a risky proposal that would cut a major drug-crime connection and reduce many social ills, yet it would invite more use and abuse, thereby increasing treatment costs. Saying ‘Yes’ to a drug and calling it legal doesn't change its basic pharmacology or safety any more than saying ‘No’ changes our basic drive to pursue intoxication. But the public health crisis would ensue if a drug such as cocaine, which ignites the fourth drive better than any substance known, was suddenly stamped with the legal equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. The consequences would be even more severe if cocaine prohibition was totally successful and all cocaine users switched to legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco.
Outlawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing sex in order to win the war against AIDS. We recognize that people will continue to have sex for nonreproductive reasons despite the laws and mores. Therefore, we try to make sexual practices as safe as possible in order to minimize the spread of the AIDS viruses. In a similar way, we continually try to make our drinking water, foods, and even our pharmaceutical medicines safer.
What, Siegel asks, would be wrong if we had perfectly safe intoxicants – drugs that delivered the same effects as our most popular ones but never caused dependency, disease, dysfunction, or death? According to Siegel, there are such intoxicants available right now that are far safer than the ones we currently use. If smokers can switch from tobacco cigarettes to nicotine gum, why can't crack users chew a cocaine gum that has already been tested on animals and found to be relatively safe? Even safer substances may be just around the corner. But we must begin by recognizing that there is a legitimate place in our society for intoxication. Then we must join together in building new, safe intoxicants for a world that will be ready to discard the old ones like the junk they really are.
Intoxication is a field guide. It begins in Part I in an
evolutionary
Our ancestors learned much about the nature of these chemicals and bonds by watching animals, an activity that led to the discovery of many useful substances. The poisons that killed animals were easy to find. So were strong intoxicants like the hallucinogens, which dramatically altered behavior. Neither the animals nor the humans who copied them seemed to have difficulty in learning how to use these intoxicants for specific purposes. For example, monkeys and baboons, which share our tastes and temperaments, learned to use hallucinogens and tobacco to relieve boredom with all the shrewdness and zest of human users.
Next Intoxication examines the other major drugs and finds that many creatures follow paths to natural and artificial sources of intoxicants. For example, alcohol found in fermented fruit, grain, or sap has almost universal appeal. Animals use it for food, for fun, for medicine; yet they avoid the human problems of abuse because the availability of alcohol is regulated by seasonal fermentations or other acts of nature. Nonetheless groups of captive animals subjected to humanlike conditions of overcrowding will use it to relieve stress and they develop patterns of alcohol drinking lust like our own. And when Intoxication looks at animal reactions to opium, hashish, marijuana, or cocaine, we can see other reflections of our own behavior. Yet there is little abuse among animals who use the low doses found in the natural plants and who avoid participating in social behavior while they are intoxicated.
In Part II, the book looks at people, and
Compelling ... tact-packed.... The author carefully surrounds any potential pro-drug interpretation with ample (and graphic) examples of the dangers of drug abuse. ... thought-provoking. – Booklist
A fascinating eye-opening book that challenges conventional
wisdom… –
Psycho-pharmacologist Siegel draws on his years of groundbreaking research to provide countless examples of the intoxication urge in humans and animals in Intoxication. Presenting his conclusions on the biological as well as cultural reasons for the pursuit of intoxication and showing that personality and guidance often define the outcome of a drug experience, Siegel offers a broad understanding of the intoxication phenomenon as well as recommendations for curbing the negative aspects of drug use in Western culture by designing safe intoxicants.
Social Sciences / Research Methods / Criminology
Research Methods: A Qualitative Reader by J. Mitchell Miller & Richard Tewksbury (Pearson Prentice Hall) exposes readers to the realities of criminal research, and focuses on the planning, design, conduct, analysis, and ethical aspects of this qualitative research.
Fieldwork, or ethnography, is vital to our understanding of crime
and deviance and has a rich tradition in the history of social
science dating to the 1920s and the Chicago School of Fieldwork.
Often discredited or dismissed, fieldwork has been forced into a
secondary or supplemental role deemed inferior to positivistic,
variable analytic approaches.
Research Methods contains selections that argue and demonstrate
otherwise – that qualitative approaches are vital to our
understanding of social – especially crime and deviance-related –
phenomena and feature considerable potential for discovering new
knowledge. Using real-world examples, reader-friendly discussions
and ample illustrations, J. Mitchell Miller,
According to Miller and
A longstanding issue in criminology centers on the fact that much of the knowledge base is derived from known criminals and identified crime. This information is pieced together after the fact in a variety of ways, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Studying crime that has already occurred relies on accuracy of memory, honesty, and the absence of selection biases. Such reliance is likely problematic when the subject group is comprised of criminals and deviants who naturally resist inspection from outsiders and often make no distinction between criminal justice system representatives and researchers. In short, it is almost always in the best interests of criminals to hide and minimize their behavior, while the goal of research is to expose it. So, in order to understand the realities of crime and the behaviors of criminals, fieldworkers study criminals in their natural settings to observe crime as it occurs – a form of inquiry known as ‘edge ethnography.’
The three parts of Research Methods include these chapters, several of which are written by the authors:
Part 1 Crime and Deviance Fieldwork
1.1 Acting Like an Insider: Studying Hidden Environments As a Potential Participant – Richard Tewksbury
1.2 Covert Participant Observation: Reconsidering the Least Used Method – J. Mitchell Miller
1.3 Criminological Verstehen: Inside the Immediacy of Crime – Jeff Ferrell
1.4 Honesty, Secrecy, and Deception in the Sociology of Crime: Confessions and Reflections from the Backstage – Ken Tunnel
Part 2 Down and Dirty Ethnography: Illustrations of Qualitative
Research
2.1 Assumed and Presumed Identities: Problems of Self-Presentation in Field Research – Richard Tewksbury and Patricia Gagne
2.2 A Snowball's Chance in Hell: Doing Fieldwork with Active Residential Burglars – Richard Wright, Scott H. Decker, Allison K. Redfern, and Dietrich L. Smith
2.3 Drug Enforcement's Double-Edged Sword: An Assessment of Asset Forfeiture Programs – J. Mitchell Miller and Lance H. Selva
2.4 Women in Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs –
2.5 The Business of Illegal Gambling: An Examination of the Gambling Business in Vietnamese Cafes – Tomson H. Nguyen
2.6 Graduating from the Field: Disengaging from Ethnographic Field Sites – Richard Tewksbury
Part 3 Danger & Stigma in Crime and Deviance Fieldwork
3.1 Personal Safety in Dangerous Places – Terry Williams, Eloise Dunlap, Bruce D. Johnson, and Ansley Humid
3.2 "God, She's Gonna Report Me": The Ethics of Child Protection in Poverty Research – Lisa Bostack
3.3 Studying Sexuality: Strategies for Surviving Stigma – Tania Israel
3.4 Sex with Informants as Deviant Behavior: An Account and Commentary – Erich Goode
3.5 On Having One's Research Seized – David Sonenschein
3.6 Collecting Sensitive Data: The Impact on Researchers – Barbara Johnson and Jill Macleod Clarke
Research Methods, practical, well written and understandable, is an excellent book for those in the field of criminal justice and research fieldworkers. The authors make a strong case for ethnographic fieldwork.
Guide to This Issue
Contents: Home & Arts:
Fix-Up Furniture, Homes, Quilts,
Digital Photography of Nature, Harold
Weston's