SirReadaLot.org
We Review the Best of the Latest Books
ISSN 1934-6557
October 2009, Issue # 126
Managing by Henry Mintzberg (Berrett-Koehler Publishers)
Learning First!: A School Leader's Guide to Closing Achievement Gaps by Carolyn J. Kelley & James J. Shaw (Corwin Press)
Barron's AP Chinese Language and Culture:
with Audio CDs by Yan Shen (Barron’s Educational Series)
Have a Good Laugh: Jewish Jokes for
the Soul by Ron Isaacs (KTAV Publishing House)
The United States Presidents Illustrated
by Robert M. Reed (Schiffer Publishing)
The Zinn Reader: Second Edition by
Howard Zinn (Seven Stories Press)
Deadly Descent – A Lottie Albright
Mystery by Charlotte Hinger (Poisoned Pen Press)
Critical Inquiry: The Process of
Argument by Michael Boylan (Westview Press)
Urban Wind Energy by Sinisa
Stankovic, Neil Campbell & Alan Harries (Earthscan)
Rethinking Ghosts in World Religions
edited by Mu-chou Poo (Numen Book Series: Brill)
Business & Investing / Management & Leadership
Managing by Henry Mintzberg (Berrett-Koehler Publishers)
Perhaps the world's premier management thinker. – Tom Peters
Over the years I have asked many groups of managers what happened the day they became managers. First I get puzzled looks and then shrugs. Nothing, they report. You are supposed to figure it out – like sex, I suppose, usually with the same dire initial consequences. And from there, while we can find plenty of effective managers – if we can figure out what that means – we see a great deal of dysfunctional and often bizarre managerial behavior too. The costs are immense. – Henry Mintzberg
A half century ago Peter Drucker put management on the map. Leadership has since pushed it off. Henry Mintzberg aims to restore management to its proper place: front and center. We should be seeing managers as leaders," Mintzberg writes, "and leadership as management practiced well."
Today we idolize and scrutinize managers and leaders, filling the pages of newspapers with their exploits and the shelves of bookstores with books for their edification. We try hard to train huge numbers of students in MBA programs to become them. We have even created a special class for them in airlines. Yet we know surprisingly little about what management means and what it means to be a manager.
With Managing Mintzberg sets out to recover the essence of managing. It is a book about managing addressing the big questions such as:
- Are leaders really more important than managers?
- How is anyone supposed to think, let alone think ahead, in this frenetic job?
- Where has all the judgment gone?
- Has management style been overrated?
- Is email destroying management practice?
- How are managers supposed to connect when the very nature of their job disconnects them from what they are managing?
According to Mintzberg, those befuddled by some or all of management – which hardly excludes managers themselves – should be able to reach for a book that provides comprehensive evidence-based insights on this essential practice. This book considers the intense dynamics and untold variety of this job, as well as its inescapable conundrums, and how managers become effective.
Managing draws on Mintzberg's observations of twenty-nine managers, in business, government, health care, and the social sector, working in settings ranging from a refugee camp to a symphony orchestra. What he saw – the pressures, the action, the nuances, the blending – compelled him to describe managing as a practice, not a science or a profession, learned primarily through experience and rooted in context. But context cannot be seen in the usual way. Factors such as national culture and level in hierarchy, even personal style, turn out to have less influence than we thought.
Every manager is flawed, Mintzberg writes: the best of them have flaws that are not fatal in the context. He offers a compelling vision of what constitutes effective management, "a tapestry woven of the threads of reflection, analysis, worldliness, collaboration, and proactiveness."
Mintzberg highlights key sentences throughout this book in boldface, to serve as a running summary of its main points. If readers are the busy managers described in Chapter 2, or anyone else short of time, they can use these sentences to follow the thread of the argument, probing around the points they find of greatest interest. The first two chapters of the book are its shortest and sharpest: they set the tone. The next two are longer and more involved, because they address the substance of managing. And the last two, of intermediate length, are more applied.
Chapters include:
Chapter 1: Managing Ahead.
Chapter 2: The Dynamics of Managing.
Chapter 3: A Model of Managing.
Chapter 4: The Untold Varieties of Managing.
Chapter 5: The Inescapable Conundrums of Managing.
Chapter 6: Managing Effectively.
The Appendix describes a day in the life of eight of the managers discussed in the book.
One of the most original minds in management. – Fast Company
Henry Mintzberg's views are a breath of fresh air which can only
encourage the good guys. – The Observer
Managing, a landmark book, makes sense of what might be the world's most important job. This book is vintage Mintzberg: iconoclastic, irreverent, carefully researched, myth-breaking, perhaps the most revealing book yet written about what managers do, how they do it, and how they can do it better. The book is for everyone interested in the practice of managing – managers themselves, people who work with managers (in selection, assessment, and development, etc.), and others who want to understand managing better (scholars, teachers, students, other non-managers).
Business & Investing / Small Business & Entrepreneurship / Science / Technology / Reference
Innovation and Entrepreneurship edited
by David B. Audretsch, Oliver Falck & Stephan
Heblich (The International Library of Entrepreneurship Series,
Volume 14: Edward Elgar Publishing)
Innovation and Entrepreneurship integrates
scholarship from two interrelated fields – innovation and
entrepreneurship – with the chapters showing the link between the
two. The editors introduce and contextualize some of the most
important research. Topics covered include: history of thought,
innovation and growth, the innovation process, role models of the
entrepreneur, knowledge flows and institutions.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship is edited by David
B. Audretsch (also the series editor of The International Library of
Entrepreneurship Series of which this volume is a part), Director,
Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena, Germany and Ameritech Chair
of Economic Development, Indiana University; Oliver Falck, Senior
Researcher, Department of Human Capital and Innovation, Ifo
Institute for Economic Research, University of Munich; and Stephan
Heblich, Senior Researcher, Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public
Policy Group, Max Planck Institute of Economics.
Entrepreneurship, or its absence, becomes increasingly prominent as the process of change accelerates in a rapidly globalizing economy. Yet the scholarly traditions focusing on entrepreneurship have been relatively underdeveloped and dispersed across a broad spectrum of academic disciplines. The purpose of The International Library of Entrepreneurship Series is to bring together the most seminal and compelling scholarly research on entrepreneurship which provides the intellectual framework and foundations underlying entrepreneurship as an important field of scholarship.
Bringing together seminal scholarship from two interrelated fields – innovation and entrepreneurship – must begin with Schumpeter, who identified the entrepreneur as the driver of the innovation process. The innovation process evolves in a dynamic way over the product life cycle: innovation is followed by imitators who are induced to enter the market by the excess rents. Once all excess rents from improvements have been exploited, innovation is the only way to create new rents and, in doing so, restart the process. Research founded in this initial concept either concentrates on the outcome of this process, which is the field of modem growth theories, or on the innovation process from the birth of a new idea to its commercialization. In the latter case, we are interested in knowledge flows supporting the emergence of new ideas and the person or people who commercialize these new ideas by transforming them into marketable products, as well as institutions that might support or hinder the innovation process.
The editors start off by asking, What drives the wealth of a
nation? According to the classic economic literature on comparative
advantage, the answer to this question is that it is specialized
goods production and international trade. However, in his concept of
industrial districts,
Although economic thinking was largely dominated by neoclassical theories until the late second half of the twenty-first century, the ‘young’ Schumpeter, in 1912, rediscovered the entrepreneur in his Theory of Economic Development (1934, Chapter 4). Schumpeter views the independent entrepreneur as the ultimate source of economic development. As to what drives the entrepreneurial spirit, Schumpeter rather romantically describes it as ‘the will to conquer,’ ‘the dream and the will to found a private kingdom,’ and ‘the joy of creating, of getting things done’ (1934).
This concept of the entrepreneur may serve as connecting factor with Frank Knight, also an economist, who contributed a more rational understanding of the entrepreneurial decision-making process. His work (1921), contained in Chapter 5, reflects the scientific debate of his day concerning subjective and objective probabilities. Arrow (1962) advances this discussion in Chapter 6 when he argues that under uncertainty information becomes a commodity with economic value.
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy which is introduced in
Chapter 7 of
Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the ‘old’
Schumpeter (1942), now living in the
Building on the distinction between the ‘young’ and the ‘old’ Schumpeter, Nelson and Winter (1982) in Chapter 11 argue that the two modes are valid characterizations of distinct technological regimes that represent differences between particular industries and, therefore, can coexist at any stage of an economy's development. Klepper (1996), in Chapter 12, further extends the ‘old’ Schumpeter idea in his knowledge-based interpretation of the product life cycle, which describes how systematic changes occur in the sources of innovation over the life cycle. The cumulative stock of innovations operates as an entry barrier. A recent topic of interest in this field concerns ‘user innovations’ (von Hippel 2005) and is the focus of Chapter 13. These most frequently occur in a ‘pre-stage’ of Klepper's product life cycle.
Duranton and Puga (2001), in Chapter 14, add a spatial dimension to the theory of industry life cycle. They argue that new products are developed in diversified areas (i.e., metropolises), where it is more feasible to experiment with processes borrowed from different activities.
Both the more sociologically oriented ‘system of innovation’ literature and the management literature on clusters (see Porter 1998) contained in Chapters 15 and 16 are aimed at shedding more light on the interactions between the actors in the innovation process and thereby emphasize the fact that innovation does not take place in isolation.
In Chapter 17 (Kirzner 1973) entrepreneurial opportunities can also arise from arbitrages on established markets, that is, entrepreneurial activity can also manifest in taking advantage of opportunities overlooked by others or stepping into place when other actors do not fully exploit their own advantage. When this Kirznerian entrepreneur as arbitrageur along with the ‘young’ and ‘old’ Schumpeter's entrepreneur as pioneer are integrated into the innovation process, we can see how Baumol (2002), in Chapter 18, derives the progression.
Chapter 19 (Kihlstrom and Laffont 1979) represents the occupational choice literature, where the entrepreneur is defined as an individual who starts and runs his or her own business. What skills are most characteristic of entrepreneurs? In Chapter 20, Lazear (2005) finds that a balanced portfolio of skills is most conducive to becoming an entrepreneur. Initial empirical support for the spillover assumption is provided in Chapters 21 and 22 by Griliches (1979, 1994) and in Chapter 23 by Acs et al. (1994).
In Chapter 24 Jaffe et al. (1993) add a geographic dimension to this discussion when they trace the paper trail left by patents and find evidence that regionally developed knowledge is most likely to boost the accumulation of further knowledge within the same region. Working at a more individual level, in Chapter 25, Audretsch and Feldman (1996) concentrate on the tacit knowledge embodied in persons and find that it, too, is at least in part bound to a certain region and embodied in skilled labor. In Chapter 26 (Glaeser et al. 1992), a community's social life acts as a knowledge multiplier, increasing the pool of geographically bound knowledge. This, in turn, fosters regional dynamics and growth.
In Chapter 27 (Jacobs 1969), Jacobs externalities are based on her theory that urban diversity is more conducive to competition for new ideas and, hence, innovation. New firms are often referred to as ‘spin-offs’ and have been analyzed by Klepper and Sleeper (2005) in Chapter 28. Jaffe (1989) in Chapter 29, Jensen and Thursby (2001) in Chapter 30, and Jaffe and Lerner (2001) in Chapter 31 analyze academic research in public R&D laboratories and the accompanying spillovers.
The role of institutions in the innovation process is especially
emphasized in the ‘systems of innovation’ and the cluster
literature. In Chapter 32, at the regional level, the role of
institutions is made obvious in Saxenian's (1994) well-known
comparison between the evolution of the famous
Like the other volumes in The International Library of Entrepreneurship Series, Innovation and Entrepreneurship provides authoritative overviews of its subject areas, drawing together careful selections of the key articles. Path-breaking and seminal scholarship from innovation and entrepreneurship are provided, and the volume puts the most compelling articles of both topics into one volume to provide a deeper understanding of the connection between them. The volume is comprehensive, and taken together, the chapters provide a compelling link between innovation and entrepreneurship. Just as entrepreneurship is needed for the innovative process, without innovation, entrepreneurship would be of little economic interest.
Computers & Internet / Web Development
Scriptin' with JavaScript and Ajax: A
Designer's Guide by Charles Wyke-Smith (Voices
That Matter Series: New Riders)
Scriptin' with JavaScript and Ajax is the third in a series of books aimed at introducing designers and programmers to the process of developing browser-based interfaces. The first, Stylin' with CSS, focuses on the structure and styling of content, and the second, Codin' for the Web, focuses on the three-tier architecture of browser, middleware, and database that are the core components of almost every Web site.
The focus of this third book is JavaScript, and a
JavaScript-based programming technique called
Today’s application-like Web experiences, such as Salesforce.com
and Google Maps, and Web 2.0 sites, such as Flickr.com and Twitter,
are powered by JavaScript and
JavaScript is the brains of readers’ Web pages – it enables them
to modify a document’s structure, styling, and content in response
to user actions without requesting new pages from the server – it
enables them to make
Scriptin' with JavaScript and Ajax teaches readers
how to:
- Start developing with JavaScript.
- Write lightweight but powerful object-oriented code.
- Modify the Document Object Model (DOM).
- Progressively enhance their pages to provide more accessibility to users.
- Learn sophisticated techniques for making their pages respond to user actions.
- Use the downloadable Scriptin’ library of helper functions to speed development and ensure cross-browser compatibility.
- Use
- Create powerful interface interactions, such as sliding panels, tree menus, auto-complete and carousels.
- Evaluate frameworks such as jQuery, Prototype, YUI, and Spry to find the best one for their needs.
- Build an online application that looks and responds like a regular desktop Application.
- Adapt the downloadable Scriptin’ code examples for use in their own projects.
Scriptin' with JavaScript and Ajax provides readers with a solid understanding of how JavaScript is written and the possibilities it offers, and how to develop robust and compact code that runs reliably in all modern Web browsers. The book uses numerous examples that build on each other. All the examples can be readily added into their own pages, which is a great way to start using JavaScript. Along the way, Wyke-Smith shows readers techniques, shortcuts, and pitfalls learned from the development of many projects.
While this is a book about JavaScript, it has, by necessity, a
broader scope. JavaScript cannot be used in isolation: its purpose
is to enhance a Web page with behaviors. It acts on a page's
structure (the HTML markup) and its presentation (the CSS styling)
to provide interactivity in what would otherwise be a static page.
Through
This means that HTML, CSS, and server middleware must all be considered when discussing JavaScript. Therefore, readers should not be surprised to find that many pages of this book illustrate HTML, CSS, and PHP code: This code is the context within which JavaScript operates. Wyke-Smith provides detailed explanations of the purpose of such code, but readers will benefit most from Scriptin' with JavaScript and Ajax if they already have a good grounding in HTML, CSS, and PHP or another middleware language such as .NET or Java.
The book does not provide comprehensive coverage of JavaScript. While Wyke-Smith shows plenty of real-world examples using coding techniques that are far beyond the basics, he doesn't cover the most advanced topics such as prototypal inheritance and closures. However, after reading the book, such subjects will certainly be more understandable to readers, and throughout, he provides many references to resources that can further grow skills.
In Scriptin' with JavaScript and Ajax, readers learn how to design Web sites that provide the best experience to users with JavaScript, and yet still provide an acceptable and functional experience for those users who, for whatever reason, cannot run JavaScript in their browsers or cannot interact with the more complex interface features JavaScript can provide. The book gets readers up and running fast with accessible, easily adaptable downloadable code examples. As with Wyke-Smith’s other books, the focus is on developing practical, professional, and, hopefully, profitable skills.
Education / Leadership & Administration
Learning First!: A School Leader's Guide to Closing Achievement Gaps by Carolyn J. Kelley & James J. Shaw (Corwin Press)
Diversity is the greatest strength of public schools, and their greatest challenge. Public schools provide opportunities for students from different cultural, economic, and social backgrounds to work side by side, excel, and appreciate one another's strengths and weaknesses, similarities and differences. Diverse learning environments also have the potential to accelerate learning for all students. And yet, few public schools have been successful in overcoming obstacles to learning associated with poverty and diversity. Significant gaps in learning opportunities and outcomes persist and adversely impact all of us.
Carolyn Kelley, professor of educational leadership and policy
analysis, and James J. Shaw, superintendent of schools in
- Advancing equity and excellence in student learning.
- Developing teachers' instructional capacity.
- Managing and aligning resource.
- Building and engaging community.
Learning First! offers an approach that strengthens principals' leadership skills, delineates shared goals for professional communities, and helps educators keep their eyes on the prize – closing the achievement gap in their schools. The premise of the book is that school leaders can significantly raise student achievement and successfully overcome opportunity gaps. Addressing achievement gaps and significantly advancing learning for all students is not only possible, it is a moral and economic imperative.
A departure from a checklist of popular interventions, Learning First! describes the findings from an intensive process of documenting mastery in leadership practice undertaken by the University of Wisconsin-Madison between 2002 and 2008. During that time, Kelley and Shaw sought input from hundreds of educational leaders, reviewed research on educational leadership, examined the contents of the few professional development programs that exist for master educational leaders in the United States and England, and worked intensively with about 75 principals and district administrators responsible for significantly advancing equity in student learning in their schools and districts. Throughout this process, they refined a definition of mastery in educational leadership, including consideration of work done by numerous highly skilled scholars in the field, who have themselves defined various forms and characteristics of expert educational leadership.
Looking across schools, they found common themes in the ways leaders approach decision making; the ways they motivate and engage teachers, staff, students, parents, and community members around a clear and focused goal of high-level learning outcomes for all students; the ways they create energy and enthusiasm for collaborative learning among staff; and the ways they focus their work. There were important differences in context that leaders had to be responsive to, including the length of time the leader had spent in the school, the history of the school, resource levels, teacher and student demographics, and level of community support for and involvement in education. These context factors shaped leader behaviors, educational interventions, and political dynamics in important ways.
Broadly, Learning First! defines educational leadership as the ability to build school or district organizations that produce learning environments in which all leaders reflect on their work and self-assess, they examine what value has been added by leadership interventions in terms of student learning gains and other relevant outcomes.
Thus, Socio-Cognitive Leadership relates to key principals of learning, cognition, and motivation: all learning is social; learning is based on experience; an engaged community with a shared cognitive framework for moving forward will be motivated to pursue high levels of learning for all students.
School leaders apply Socio-Cognitive Leadership to the four Dimensions of Leadership for Learning: 1) advancing equity and excellence in student learning, 2) developing teacher capacity, 3) managing and aligning resources, and 4) engaging community. The core dimension is Advancing Equity and Excellence in Student Learning. This dimension focuses the school community on outcomes and helps to define and address existing gaps between the vision for equity and excellence in learning for all students and the current reality. The three process dimensions provide mechanisms to address these learning gaps by focusing on critical dimensions of leadership: improving instruction, acquiring and aligning resources targeted to improve student learning outcomes, and engaging community to support student learning.
The Levers of Change address the social nature of leadership and the interaction between the leader, the school organization, and the larger school community. The Levers of Change highlight the reciprocal nature of leadership and learning. The leader impacts the school and community and is impacted by them. Caring, respectful relationships are needed to support learning. The Levers of Change emphasize building shared understandings, expectations, and commitment to the success of every child.
Throughout Learning First!, Kelley and Shaw provide case examples of schools that have closed achievement gaps to illustrate how school leaders put Learning First into practice. They provide tools that school and district leaders can use with their school communities to build shared understandings and advance learning for all students. For each of the four Dimensions of Leadership for Learning, they provide audits with guiding questions that help school communities effectively examine school data and processes and identify areas of focus for improvement efforts. They provide a list of best practices that research evidence – and the experience of our Learning First leaders – shows can overcome hurdles to advancing learning for all students. And they provide tools shared by Learning First schools that can be used to advance learning for all students.
Learning First! is divided into four sections. Chapters 1 and 2 make up the introduction, which provides a context and overview of the Learning First framework. This introduction lays the foundation for the remainder of the book, which provides more detail about the Learning First framework, and how to carry it out.
Kelley and Shaw have found the Learning First framework to be more powerful than a list of knowledge, skills, and dispositions for principals because it provides guidance on how to approach the role of leader for learning: specifically, how to approach leadership and decision making, where to focus leadership efforts, and what mechanisms are most likely to move change efforts forward.
Socio-Cognitive Leadership is introduced in Chapter 2 and described more fully in Chapters 3 and 4. Chapters 5 through 8 examine how to advance each of the dimensions of leadership for learning. Next, they examine three Levers of Change: the individual leader, the school organization, and internal and external community. Chapters 9 and 10 examine the roles of the principal and district in advancing Learning First through the Levers of Change and provide example tools that principals and districts can use to support the change process at the individual, organization, and community levels.
Learning First! is a guide for principals, superintendents, and school communities to close achievement gaps and advance learning for all students. The book guides principals and leadership teams in the implementation of the Learning First framework. Each chapter provides a description of leadership practice that puts learning first and examples of how master principals have applied the framework to advance learning in their schools. Audit tools designed to be tailored to the school's specific context and vision provide guidance on the types of data the team should analyze to clearly define the status quo and identify vision gaps that need to be addressed. Examples of evidence-based practices provide an initial menu of ideas for strategies the school might take to address vision gaps.
This text is the product of considerable research and disciplined
reflection on closing the student achievement gap in schools,
unquestionably the most important challenge facing schools at this
time. It offers a wealth of well-illustrated advice, especially to
those in school and district leadership roles, about how to go about
addressing this challenge in their organizations. It should be
required reading for every principal and superintendent. – Kenneth
Leithwood, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy, Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education,
The Learning First framework provides a much-needed bridge between
the current research in leadership and instruction and the
day-to-day practice of leading a school. – Art Rainwater, Associate
Visiting Scientist, University of Wisconsin-Madison
In a time when the spotlight is on schools and the achievement of
subgroups of students, educators need to read this book and reflect
on the guiding questions. Then we need to take the challenge and do
what we know is right so we are doubling student performance and
closing achievement gaps. – Leslie Standerfer, Principal,
Learning First! provides an excellent resource as a text in leadership preparation programs for school and district leaders. It brings together in one place a clear, cognitive approach to the principalship, emphasizing important features of strong leadership that focus and build a shared approach to problem solving and target the efforts of the individual leader, the school, and the community. For a beginning principal or as professional development for an experienced principal, the model guides and focuses principal leadership practice. This book would be an excellent book study for a team of principals from across the district. It could also be used as a manual for a leadership development program for all employees including school board members, teachers, and teaching support staff.
Education / Foreign Language / Chinese / Reference
Barron's AP Chinese Language and Culture:
with Audio CDs by Yan Shen (Barron’s Educational Series)
This brand-new manual, written by Yan Shen, Department of Asian
Languages and Cultures, UCLA, prepares students for a subject that
has just been added to the Advanced Placement program – Chinese.
Separate sections review all parts of the new exam: Listening,
The AP Chinese program offers high school students an opportunity to earn credit for Chinese courses at the college level. Like other College Board programs, it is available to anyone worldwide who wishes to participate. The AP Chinese Language and Culture exam was first held in May 2007 and is used to assess a student's proficiency in Chinese equivalent to completing a fourth-semester Chinese course in college.
The AP Chinese exam consists of two essential aspects: Chinese language and Chinese culture. Because language and culture are so closely intertwined, culture is acquired in the process of learning a language, and language is learned when studying culture. As such, students should try to absorb as much Chinese culture as possible while learning the language, because it is impossible to separate the two.
In order to prepare for the AP Chinese exam, students are strongly encouraged, although not required, to enroll in an AP Chinese course in high school. Like other AP courses, the AP Chinese course should match the level of a fourth-semester university/college course in Mandarin/Putonghua Chinese. This level requires students to complete approximately 250 hours of classroom instruction. In the AP Chinese course, students should intensively practice Chinese in three modes: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational.
Like other AP foreign language exams, the AP Chinese exam measures fluency. Students should be able to recognize and understand both spoken and written Chinese at a sophisticated level. In addition, they should demonstrate their ability to speak and write Chinese fluently and accurately in a culturally appropriate manner.
Barron's AP Chinese Language and Culture provides a variety of cultural materials to help students understand Chinese culture and society. It also provides sample topics for preparing for the writing and speaking portions of the AP Chinese exam. The selected materials cover a variety of topics, including school, family, clothing, food, sports, entertainment, jobs, housing, transportation, education, festivities, customs, travel, art, literature, history, society, science, climate, environment, and animals.
Barron's AP Chinese Language and Culture contains the most up-to-date review and practice tests currently available. It is intended for students preparing for the AP Chinese language and culture exam, and for teachers who are coaching students in preparation for the exam. This book contains review materials that they will find useful as a study aid and as a tool to succeed on the AP exam. It will also help students organize their thoughts, express them effectively, and use vocabulary accurately.
Entertainment / Humor
Have a Good Laugh: Jewish Jokes
for the Soul by Ron Isaacs (KTAV Publishing House)
Throughout the centuries Jews have used humor to cope with their history of trauma and stress. They have been sharpening their wits for over two thousand years and have used jokes and humorous characterizations as teaching aids and as a means to illustrate, enlighten and improve. Have a Good Laugh presents an array of Jewish jokes to tickle readers’ fancy. They are categorized by topic for easy access for readers to use at lectures, parties and presentations. There are no crude or offensive jokes in this book, just clean fun. We can’t resist providing some sample jokes:
The Unexpected Delivery. Moshe, the owner of a small Kosher New
York deli, was being questioned by an IRS agent about his tax
return. He had reported a net profit of $80,000 for the year. “Why
don’t people leave me alone?”, the deli owner said. I work like a
dog; everyone in my family helps out; the place is only closed for
Jewish Holidays and Shabbat. And you want to know how I made
$80,000?” “It’s not your income that bothers us,” the agent said.
“It’s these travel deductions. You listed ten trips to
On the Sixth Day. On the sixth day of creation, God turned to the
angel Gabriel saying: “On this day I shall create a magic land. It
shall be called
Oy, Yoy, Yoy. Three bubbes (Jewish grandmothers) sitting on a park
bench. The first one lets out a heartfelt “Oy.” A few minutes later,
the second bubbe sighs deeply and says, “Oy, vey.” A few minutes
later, the third lady brushes away a tear and moans, Oy, vey iz mir.
To which the first bubbe replies, “I thought we agreed we weren’t
going to talk about our children.”
Have a Good Laugh delivers a wide array of Jewish
jokes to give readers a good laugh. And professional and amateur
speakers will find it useful to beguile their audiences.
EEntertainment / Sports / Reference / Encyclopedias
Total Patriots: The Definitive
Encyclopedia of the World-Class Franchise by Bob Hyldburg with a
foreword By Gina Cappelletti (Triumph Books)
The New England Patriots' first Super Bowl championship in 2001, followed by dramatic back-to-back Super Bowl victories in 2003 and 2004, marked the culmination of more than 40 years of spirited competition on the gridiron and the arrival of a football dynasty. Along the way, the Patriots endured their fair share of trials and tribulations and forged a proud franchise that featured the talents of legends including Gino Cappelletti, /span>Steve Nelson, Ben Coates, Babe Parilli, Russ Francis, Willie McGinest, Nick Buoniconti, Steve Grogan, Ty Law, Jim Nance, Stanley Morgan, Adam Vinatieri, Jim Plunkett, Andre Tippett, Tedy Bruschi, John Hannah, Doug Flutie, Randy Moss, Sam Cunningham, Drew Bledsoe and many others.
Total Patriots is a comprehensive New England Patriots encyclopedia. The volume includes game and player statistics, game-story recaps, player profiles, and dramatic photographs that chronicle the franchise's rich history. The book delves into that history with enthusiasm for the statistics and stories that comprise one of the most respected franchises in professional sports. This illustrated volume contains profiles of the more than 960 players who have worn the uniform, from Rabih Abdullah to Scott Zolak; season-by-season narratives spanning five decades of Patriots football; a battery of statistics and records; and unforgettable moments, anecdotes, and facts.
Author Bob Hyldburg, who has worked for the NFL as a photographer for every Patriots home game since the 2005 season, says he was fortunate to be among the original Patriots players in 1960, and he has maintained a relationship with the Patriots either as a player, a coach, a newsman, or as a radio broadcaster ever since. He has witnessed a lot of Patriots history but has never been able to sit down and see all of it so meticulously detailed in one book.
Total Patriots also contains detailed statistical and interesting personal information on every player who has ever worn the red, white, and blue of the Pats. Not only is every imaginable Patriots historical statistic presented, but the book is also filled with entertaining vintage photos and illustrations – including rare original Patriots program covers and other long-forgotten Patriots-related material.
Hyldburg has created a book for football ‘fanatics’ to savor and help them recall the most memorable moments in Patriots history in amazing detail. It is sure to be a book that every Patriots fan will enjoy and go back to time and time again to recall a special season, game, player, or play. It is a trivia aficionado's dream, and a volume that is sure to be the definitive source when settling a friendly football dispute or two! – Gino Cappelletti, from the foreword
Hyldburg has completed the most comprehensive compilation of Patriots statistics ever assembled in one volume. Total Patriots is an amazingly detailed accounting of every Patriots regular season and playoff game, recalling all the most significant touchdowns, field goals, extra points, fumbles, interceptions, safeties, and other memorable moments in Patriots history. The book is for anyone who considers him- or herself a die-hard Patriots fan, as well as for anyone who loves the game of football enough to appreciate this franchise's unique place in NFL history.
Entertainment / Music / Biographies & Memoirs / Social Sciences / History / African American Studies
Give My Poor Heart Ease/span>::
Voices of the
I reveled in these stories. – Toni Morrison/p>
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, folklorist William Ferris toured
his home state of
Here are the stories of artists who have long memories and speak
eloquently about their lives, blues musicians who represent a wide
range of musical traditions – from one-strand instruments,
bottle-blowing, and banjo to spirituals, hymns, and prison work
chants. From celebrities such as B. B. King and Willie Dixon to
artists known best in their neighborhoods, they express the full
range of human experience – joyful and gritty, raw and painful.
In an autobiographical introduction, Ferris reflects on how he fell
in love with the vibrant musical culture that was all around him but
was considered off limits to a white Mississippian during a troubled
era. Ferris, former chair of the National Endowment for the
Humanities, whom Rolling Stone named among the top ten professors in
the
Give My Poor Heart Ease first explores the musical roots of the blues, starting with the stories and hymns of Mary Gordon and Reverend Isaac Thomas in the Rose Hill community. The voices of Scott Dunbar (traditional songster), Louis Dotson (one-strand guitar player), Fannie Bell Chapman (gospel singer and faith healer), Otha Turner (fife player), Johnny Lee ‘Have Mercy’ Thomas (former Parchman Penitentiary inmate), Tom Dumas (fiddle and banjo player), and Lee Kizart (blues pianist), among others, come next. Each speaker describes musical traditions that shaped the blues in significant ways.
Give My Poor Heart Ease's second section is set in
black neighborhoods like
The third section looks back on the blues through two of the most significant figures in blues history: composer and performer Willie Dixon and performer B. B. King.
The fourth and final section joins sacred and secular worlds by
presenting a Rose Hill church service and a
Each speaker's narrative is transcribed from Ferris’s field recordings. In some cases Ferris says he worked with many hours of recordings, and in other cases, very few. Some names mentioned in the narratives have been changed. As in the films and sound recordings that accompany this book, Ferris’s voice is not included in the published text. Instead, he tries to present an authentic, flowing, dramatic monologue, a narrative that has both literary and documentary value.
Together, speakers in each of these four sections offer a portrait of the blues and of the worlds that shaped the music. Give My Poor Heart Ease closes with a selected bibliography, discography, filmography, and list of websites that helps frame the lives of these musicians and their music.
I have only begun to dig into this trove of American culture, and I have already listened to ‘Jaybird in the Air’ about a hundred times. It is the greatest song of the Trickster I've ever heard. This book, these films, and this music are filled with the history of both blues and American music. These powerful voices use music to rise above and to survive tragedy, and their lives are an inspiration. – T Bone Burnett
These voices express the blues in a deep and truthful way. They
touched my heart. – B. B. King
Like Bill Ferris, I grew up in
Blues and jazz are
This book is indispensable for anyone who cares to know the roots
of
These stories and photographs evoke memories of my childhood and
a world gone by but still with us – the blues are now and forever. –
William Christen
A powerful book that presents a deep and probing look at music,
culture, and
This magnificent and invaluable volume illuminates blues music,
the broader African American experience, and indeed the history and
culture of
Health, Mind & Body / Nutrition / Reference
Bowes and Church's Food Values of Portions Commonly Used,
19th edition (Spiral-bound) by Jean A.T.
Pennington &, Judith Spungen (Lippencott Williams & Wilkins)
The purpose of this book is to supply authoritative data on the nutritional values of foods in a form for quick and easy reference. In teaching nutrition to students of medicine, dentistry, dental hygiene, and public health nursing, food values based on common measures of portions frequently served have been found most useful. This basis of calculation is particularly well suited to the practical study of comparative food values, as well as to the approximate analysis of diets from records of daily food intake. For calculations of diets from weighed portions, the actual weight of each food is given in grams or ounces. – from the preface to the first edition by Anna dePlanter Bowes & Charles F. Church, 1937
This classic guide to nutrition has helped put the ‘balance’ in balanced diets since 1937. The preface to the first edition of Bowes and Church's Food Values of Portions Commonly Used placed an emphasis on providing nutrient values per typical serving portion (as opposed to 100 grams or one pound as purchased), and indeed, this volume was the first food composition book in the United States to do this. Now completely updated for the 19th edition, Bowes and Church's Food Values of Portions Commonly Used continues to supply authoritative data on the nutritional value of foods in a form for quick and easy reference. The book's main table reflects the current food supply and contains data on the nutritional content of foods, organized by food groups. The book contains:
- Information on calorie content, weight of serving, macro food components, vitamins, and minerals.
- Supplementary databases offering values on other common food components
- Updated DRI (Dietary Reference Intake) values.
- Bibliography of sources for food composition information.
The front material provides information on standards for the dietary intake of food components in the United States (US). The standards for macronutrients, vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, water, and energy are those established by the Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine (IOM), National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The standards for the nutrition labeling of food are those developed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Also provided are food component definitions, abbreviations and symbols used in the text, reference codes that identify the data sources used for this edition, conversion tables for measures of heat, weight, and volume, and a table of gram-ounce conversion equivalents.
The main food composition database provides values for 31 food components for over 6300 foods. The foods are grouped into 32 sections on the basis of food type with considerations for common usage. The foods within each of the 32 sections are arranged in a hierarchical structure and are listed alphabetically. The two-line heading at the top of each page of the main database identifies the food components and units of measurement for the numerical values listed in the two lines of values for each food. For Section 32, Special Dietary Foods, there are four lines of data per food to include the complete profiles that were available for these formulated products. Special Dietary Foods includes infant formulas, formulated products used for medical purposes, and meal replacement or enhancement products typically described as sport, energy, or weight-reduction products.
Each food is identified by name, description (e.g., color, maturity, preservation method, cooking method), brand name (if applicable), serving portion, and gram weight of the serving portion.
Foods are presented primarily in their as-consumed form, although ingredient items (e.g., flour, baking soda, herbs) are also listed in the database. Where available, brand names are used to help identify commercial products such as ready-to-eat breakfast cereals, desserts, candy bars, soups, and entrees. The serving portions are those provided by food companies or by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) food composition databases. Foods are assigned to one of the 32 sections, although some foods may be applicable to several food group sections. The index may be used to locate foods for which classification may not be apparent, and the section Food Name Synonyms and Cross-References provides a means to locate foods known by several different names. Values for foods such as gelatin desserts, icings, puddings, granola bars, and ice cream may reflect a specific flavor or may be averages for different flavors; the values were averaged if the different flavored items had similar profiles.
The supplementary databases, which follow the main database, provide information on the levels of ethyl alcohol, amines, amino acids, caffeine, carotenoids, coenzyme Q, dietary fiber components, omega-3 and trans fatty acids, flavonoids, glutathione, gluten, three additional minerals, plant acids, plant sterols, purines, resistant starch, individual sugars, total antioxidant capacity, and several additional vitamins or vitamin-like components. The supplementary databases allow efficient use of book space for food components with limited information and/or for food components that occur only in certain types of foods.
CChanges from the 18th Edition. Updated sources of information
were obtained from USDA databases, food companies, food company
web-sites, food labels, and the scientific literature. The format
for the main database was altered slighted to include one new
component – sugars. Like the eighteenth edition, the nineteenth is
available as a CD-Rom to allow for electronic searching and
retrieving of data. The CD-Rom is accompanied by an instruction
manual, which is primarily designed for teaching purposes.
Bowes and Church's Food Values of Portions Commonly Used supplies authoritative data on the nutritional values of food in a form for quick and easy reference as was the goal established for the first edition and has remained the goal for all subsequent editions. The organization into 32 food groups and alphabetically within each food groups makes it easy to locate the information needed, and the index plus a food name synonyms and cross-references section helps readers locate foods known by more than one name. With this new edition, nutritionists, dietitians, and other health professionals can continue to turn to Bowes and Church's Food Values of Portions Commonly Used – as they have for more than 70 years – for information on the composition of foods. It will be of use to research nutritionists, students of nutrition and dietetics, and individuals who are on special diets or who want to know more about the composition of foods.
Health, Mind & Body / Psychology & Counseling
The Salmon of Knowledge: Stories
for Work, Life, the Dark Shadow and Oneself by Nick Owen (Crown
House Publishing)
The rational mind is a faithful servant, the intuitive mind a divine gift; the paradox of modern life is that we have begun to worship the servant and defile the divine. The ancient Irish legend of the Salmon of Knowledge, written in the third century AD makes exactly the same point: the mature human being is connected to both his rational marketplace self and his intuitive spiritual self. – Einstein
How can we develop deeper and more satisfying relationships with our work, our world, with others, and most of all with ourselves? How can we go beyond the current limited understanding of `wealth' as the ownership of material possessions to a deeper recognition that true wealth embraces so much more?/p>
The Salmon of Knowledge contains over 140 stories,
from ancient to contemporary,
from all points of the compass and organized by theme. The book is
written by Nick Owen, an experienced trainer; consultant and coach
with successful careers as a professional actor and theatre
director, radio and print journalist, writer and storyteller. He
combines work in the corporate and professional sectors with work in
the arts and education, bringing a broad range of creative and
innovative perspectives to the work at hand. The stories are divided
into seven sections or Chautauquas entitled:
- Finding One's Own Path
- Beyond the Surface of Things
- Flow
- Difficult Conversations
- Stuckness
- All
- Not Knowing Mind
Owen says he calls the sections of
The Salmon of Knowledge Chautauquas because that
seems to describe them well. The original Chautauquas were North
American in origin, named after the county in
Then there is a brief explication of each of the stories in the Chautauqua in terms of its particular themes and messages.
Four key themes are also highlighted in the book: Work, Life, Dark Shadow and OneSelf:
1. Work. The stories in The Salmon of Knowledge do not offer answers, but they do put forward various perspectives for looking at the nature of work and the contribution it enables us to make to ourselves, others, and our world in a variety of different ways.
The stories explore possibilities for deepening the personal and professional satisfaction we can derive from our work, enhancing the level of contribution we can make at many different levels, and recognizing that the more we notice the systemic and interconnected nature of the world we inhabit, the more we can make wiser and more mature decisions and choices. The stories suggest that the more of ourselves, particularly our core values and beliefs that we bring into the workplace, the more we and our work are likely to thrive and flourish.
2. Life. Life is a dance between what happens to us, over which we have no control, and how we respond to what happens to us, over which we appear to at least have some control. Life offers us a constant series of opportunities and challenges that we have to navigate as best we can. We make choices, some easy, some difficult, and then have to live with them. And even if we recognize that everything we do will have consequences, it's very hard to see far enough ahead to predict what some of those consequences might be. The stories in The Salmon of Knowledge on the theme of life raise important existential questions like: Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose? What and whom do I serve? They also encourage us to laugh at ourselves, to treat ourselves and others with greater compassion, and to explore some of the great paradoxes of life – such as coming to terms with our twin and seemingly contradictory blessings of magnificence and insignificance, wisdom and foolishness, rationality and intuition, and many more besides. What wisdom might we gain, the stories enquire, through working to integrate these great opposing qualities that possess each one of us at different times in our lives?
3. The Dark Shadow. In the first part of our lives we tend to be idealistic and think of ourselves as indestructible, even immortal. Death exists but as a distant figure, one that can be fought if necessary – especially in the service of a noble ideal – and conquered. Mid-life is the time when we stop counting the years since birth and begin wondering how much time remains till the exit strategy. And so at this stage in our personal development it is not uncommon to want to explore more deeply into ourselves; to start finally being more truthful with ourselves and about ourselves. It is time to face up to our own Dark Shadow.
The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung was the first to bring Western attention to the idea of our Shadow but its origins go way back. The 'shadow' consists of those parts of ourselves that we find hard to come to terms with, the bits we don't much like about ourselves, the parts we suppress or ignore. Unless we fully own these parts of ourselves, parts we spend a huge amount of energy suppressing, and hiding from the judgment of convention, we cannot begin truly to know ourselves or liberate ourselves from the 'stuckness' of our pretense. The stories in The Salmon of Knowledge on the theme of the Dark Shadow invite readers to take a step back, to a safer more contemplative space, and look at ourselves with greater serenity and compassion, to laugh at our ridiculousness, and to open ourselves to new possibilities of self-honesty and truth.
4. OneSelf. The idea of the One and the Self – OneSelf – has fascinated humankind way back to the beginnings of time. It is the notion that perhaps other worlds, or parallel worlds, or interior worlds exist as well as the one we so materially inhabit. This is a notion that exists not only in the spiritual, contemplative, and wisdom traditions, but also in a great deal of modern scientific thought: particularly in quantum physics, relativity, systems theory, and chaos theory. These post-rational scientific theories perceive the universe in terms of indivisible integration and interconnection – 'implicate order' to use the terminology of theoretical physicist, David Bohm.
Drawing from a wide variety of traditions both spiritual and secular the notion of OneSelf recognizes the existence of two strands of human experience and awareness. The first is a separate individual self – an egoic, relative, rational, doing self –It is busy and practical and it gets things done. The other is an extended self that has the effortless ability just to be, to flow and merge with - and into – all other things, material and non-material. This OneSelf has a sense of infinite connection. This extended or awakened self goes under many names depending on the tradition: Empty Mind, Beginner's Mind, Big Mind, Essence, Oneness, True Nature, the Source, the Non-Dual, and countless others. Whatever we call it, it's a space where we can find inner space and time to contemplate, reflect, and experience a much vaster canvas of awareness than we are able to do when inhabiting the busy marketplace self of our everyday world.
The many stories in The Salmon of Knowledge on the theme of OneSelf explore what it means to inhabit the spaces of the Self and the One, sometimes separately, and sometimes together. They examine the idea that if we wish to operate in our marketplace world at deeper levels of insight, wisdom, and consciousness, then perhaps a readily available place to bring that mindfulness from is the absolute space of No-Self, Oneness, the Awakened Self. The stories also describe from a variety of perspectives and traditions how life is ultimately unknowable, just as we ourselves are beyond full description, and that if we wish to fully engage with this life, we need to do so with faith, trust, and intuition just as much as with logic, analysis, and reason.
I loved this book, it is full of wisdom. It brought me joy, and quiet illumination. May it lighten your way. – Adrian Mahon, Director, Executive & Leadership Development, Corporate Leadership & Organizational Development, GlaxoSmithKline
This book of bite-sized stories, anecdotes and metaphors provides a wealth of material for self-reflection, leading to deep insights. – Wendy Sullivan, Co-author Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds
This is a book to which I can return again and again for both solace in the face of life's challenges and stimulus to embrace the richness of life and living. – Russ Volckman Publisher, Integral Publishers: Editor, Integral Leadership Review
Whether you need a practical guide, creative inspiration or a philosophical companion, it's all here. – Alex McKie, The Next Step
Highly recommended whether you want to apply this wisdom to yourself or offer it to clients. – David Pearl, Creative Coach to Senior Business leaders, David Pearl Group
... another fabulous collection of short stories that anybody who
is serious
about transforming their lives, workplaces, families, communities or
even the world should not be without. – Keith Bellamy, Independent
Futurist
A wake up call, an opportunity to stop, consider, and evaluate how we can truly be delivered through a series of insightful, timeless and often humorous stories, anecdotes and observations. The Salmon of Knowledge is a compelling reading both in its entirety or as a coaching, leadership development and personal development aide. – Richard Coulthwaite, Finance Director, Underwriting Brit Insurance
The 140 plus stories in The Salmon of Knowledge invite readers to wake up, stop taking ourselves so damned seriously, look at the world from perspectives other than our own, and recognize that only by changing ourselves can we reconnect with what is truly important in life.
History /
The United States Presidents Illustrated by
Robert M. Reed (Schiffer Publishing)
From childhood to adulthood the concept remains that presidents are important people; perhaps even some of the most important people in the world. Their actions and inactions become history. Countless lives are changed, altered, or ended as a result of presidential judgment. Often their influence on events continues long after they leave the power and pomp of the presidency. Sometimes it did not.
The United States Presidents Illustrated/span>, written by Robert M. Reed, award-winning journalist who has authored 16 books and hundreds of articles on antiques and collectibles, includes all 44 American presidents, from the nation's first to the most recent. Concise text highlights their lives, the times, and the political climate in which they lived. American presidents all appear on a postcard or two, as well as engravings, newspapers, product premium cards, trading cards, magazine illustrations, and official White House photographs.
Some American presidents we know better than others. Some we wish we could sit down with today and chat about their days in the White House. The United States Presidents Illustrated explores those ideas.
There are at least two things these American presidents have in common. One will be forever compelling. The other might just be incidental. Number one is that each of them – every single one – came from our midst. They too had been more or less ordinary citizens. "We draw our presidents from the people," President Calvin Coolidge once said. "It is a wholesome thing for them to return to the people. I came from them. I wish to be one of them again." Another thing these American presidents had in common was that sooner or later they appeared on a postcard or two. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were featured on virtually hundreds of different postcards over the years. Franklin Pierce and Chester Arthur have appeared on considerably less. Further, what some would call the modern presidents – those who have been elected in the past 20 years or so – have not been so flattered with their image on postcards simply because the use of the postcard as a medium has dwindled considerably.
Taken on the whole, the American presidents and illustrations in which they appear convey history and become a fascinating and worthwhile study. To that end they are presented in The United States Presidents Illustrated..
This highly comprehensive volume covers all the presidents. The
remarkable illustrations bring the faces to life and make this an
enjoyable and essential reference for historians, students of
presidents, postcard collectors, and those interested in
History /
A Mighty Long Way:: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School by Carlotta Walls LaNier & Lisa Frazier Page, with a foreword by Bill Clinton (Ballantine/One World)
When fourteen-year-old Carlotta Walls walked up the stairs of st1:place w:st="on">
As told in
A Mighty Long Way, Carlotta was descended from a
line of proud black landowners and businessmen and raised to believe
that education was the key to success. She embraced learning and
excelled in her studies at the black schools she attended throughout
the 1950s. With Brown v. Board of Education officially erasing the
color divide in classrooms across the country, the teenager
volunteered to be among the first black students – of whom she was
the youngest – to integrate nearby
So when Carlotta signed her name on a simple sheet of paper passed
around the ninth grade classroom of her all-black public school,
little did she know she was not only expressing interest in
attending the all-white Little Rock Central High School, but also
changing the course of her life, her family's, and that of countless
black students for generations to come. In
A Mighty Long Way, LaNier takes readers on a
journey through America in the early 1950s, into the heart of her
family's past, and to that fateful first day of school when she and
eight other black students were met on the steps of Central High
School by an angry white mob and the National Guard, who had orders
from the Arkansas governor to bar them from entering the school.
But for Carlotta and her eight comrades, simply getting through
the door was the first of many trials. Angry mobs of white students
and their parents hurled taunts, insults, and threats.
LaNier recounts in detail her difficult first year, the
continuing integration battle that dominated the next two years, the
much publicized bombing of her family's home, and her senior year at
Central, when she became one of only three of the original nine –
and the only female to march across the stage to receive their
diploma. And finally, she reveals her life's journey after
LaNier is a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor and
sits on the board of the
… Her memoir provides a firsthand account of a seismic shift in
American history. … Away from school, the Nine were honored and
feted, but their parents found their jobs – even their lives – in
jeopardy. Lanier's house was bombed, and a childhood friend, Herbert
Monts, was falsely accused and convicted. Monts's account of his
experiences, shared with Lanier, 43 years later, is historically
newsworthy.… In a sense, Lanier didn't make history, history made
her. Her plainspoken report from the front line is, nevertheless, a
worthy contribution to the history of civil rights in
This hindsight account suggests that the nation still has not
achieved closure about the painful events at
This is a marvelous book. It is a personal account that describes a
moving period in the transformative struggle for civil rights and
social justice in
Carlotta Walls LaNier’s memoir,
A Mighty Long Way, is a searing and emotionally
gripping account of a young black girl growing up to become a strong
black woman during the most difficult time of racial segregation in
Little Rock, Arkansas.… This book is a must read and should be
required reading for every child of every race who may be trying to
appreciate the values of education and the challenges that they
might present for people who are different.… – Professor Charles
Ogletree, Harvard Law School
A half-century later, other young Americans draw their inspiration
from Carlotta Walls. I am proud that she continues to carry the
torch in the struggle for civil rights and to share her story of
individual and collective courage with
In
A Mighty Long Way, this revered American and
special friend boldly tells how her high school days have evolved as
the central experience of her life. I commend Carlotta for the
legacy she has left and for the lessons she and her colleagues have
taught us all with such nobility. – Nancy Rousseau, Principal,
Sharing her story for the first time, LaNier has written an inspiring, thoroughly engrossing memoir that is not only a testament to the power of one to make a difference but also of the sacrifices made by families and communities that found themselves a part of history. In this memoir, she offers an inside look at the most famous school integration in American history and reveals how this experience shaped the rest of her life. Complete with compelling photographs, A Mighty Long Way shows that determination, fortitude, and the ability to change the world are not exclusive to a few special people but inherent within us all.
History /
My first published writings came out of my seven years in the
South, teaching at
My years at Spelman were 1956 to 1963, and I became involved,
with my students, in the Southern movement against racial
segregation. My very first published article, in Harper's Magazine
in 1959 ("A Fate Worse Than Integration"), became the basis for a
larger essay "The Southern Mystique," which appeared in The American
Scholar.
I was invited to become a member of the executive board (as an
‘adult adviser’) of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), which had come out of the sit-ins and was, I think it is
fair to say, the leading edge of the Southern civil rights movement.
In the next several years I became an observer-participant in
demonstrations in
No other radical historian has reached so many hearts and minds as Howard Zinn (1922- ). His A People's History of the United States has sold over two million copies.
The Zinn Reader represents Zinn, professor emeritus
of political science at
The Zinn Reader, completely updated for a new decade, gives people a chance to sample Zinn’s work: books out of print, books still in print, essays, articles, pamphlets, lectures, reviews, newspaper columns, written over the past thirty-five years or so, and often not easy to find. The organizational structure of the book reveals the six areas of deep interest in Zinn's work: "Race," "Class," "War," "Law," "History," and "Means and Ends." In each part, Zinn has chosen what he considers to be his best writings on the topic, whether from previously uncollected magazine or newspaper pieces, or from his books. Zinn has written a new introduction for each essay or article placing it in its historical context.
In The Zinn Reader, in Zinn's inimitable prose: the hard fact of racism, in the South and in the North, at the start of the civil rights movement; LaGuardia, the Ludlow Massacre, and "Growing Up Class-Conscious"; questioning the very idea of a ‘just war’; LBJ, the CIA, Nixon, and the bombing of Hiroshima; civil disobedience and the role of punishment in our society; on Upton Sinclair, Sacco Vanzetti, and "Where to Look for a Communist"; why historians don't have to be ‘objective’ and how the power of the academy is wasted; on anarchism, violence, and human nature, and "The Spirit of Rebellion."
The Zinn Reader, Second Edition, has been updated and revised by the author to give readers a current and comprehensive representation of his concerns in a single volume.
As Zinn says in the introduction, this is a big book to swallow,
and he blames it on the fact that in 1978, when he was teaching in
Zinn says there was never, for him as teacher and writer, an obsession with ‘objectivity,’ which he considered neither possible nor desirable. He understood early that what is presented as ‘history’ or as ‘news’ is inevitably a selection out of an infinite amount of information, and that what is selected depends on what the selector thinks is important. As he told his students at the start of his courses, "You can't be neutral on a moving train." That is, the world is already moving in certain directions – many of them horrifying. Children are going hungry, people are dying in wars. To be neutral in such a situation is to collaborate with what is going on.
Another Zinn tidbit: reading on his own, he became fascinated by
the history of labor struggles in the
In the tumultuous years of the movement against the Vietnam War, the issue of civil disobedience, the role of law in society and its relation to justice, became for him important philosophical problems, as well as practical ones. (He was arrested himself a number of times for protesting the war.) Readers will find reprinted in this volume some of his writings on this issue, as well as descriptions of his experience as witness in the Pentagon Papers case and other trials of war protesters. In one essay, he examines critically the views of Plato on obligation to the state.
Zinn says that he is ‘by profession a historian, by choice an
activist’, and the tension between the two was something he thought
about constantly. Reprinted in
The Zinn Reader are several essays illustrating his
approach to history, as in the talk he gave at the
And what should be the function of a university when the world
outside is in turmoil? At
Throughout his activity and his writings, questions arose, both practical and theoretical, of how injustice can be remedied. How does social change come about, and what tactics are both effective and morally acceptable in that process? And what reason do we have to be hopeful? The final set of essays, dealing with such issues, are drawn from The Nation, ZMagazine, the Boston Globe, from other periodicals, and from his memoir You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.
A welcome collection of essays and occasional pieces by the dean
of radical American historians. A worthy gathering for Zinn fans and
fledgling historians alike. – Kirkus Reviews
Zinn ... illuminates here his passionate commitment to social
justice and political and economic democracy. – Library Journal
Readers raised on the consensus history of mid-century were
startled by the insights generated by Zinn's bottom-up approach;
those who still remember and value those insights will relish this
collection. – Booklist
What can I say that will in any way convey the love, respect, and
admiration I feel for this unassuming hero who was my teacher and
mentor, this radical historian and people-loving 'trouble-maker,'
this man who stood with us and suffered with us? Howard Zinn was the
best teacher I ever had, and the funniest. – Alice Walker
Professor Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in
the leaden prose of academic history, and his text is studded with
telling quotations from labor leaders, war resisters, and fugitive
slaves. – Eric Foner in the New York Times Book Review
The Zinn Reader is a monumental book, a hearty book, a rich and welcomed volume, and one that will remain, alongside A People's History of the United States and La otra historia, as an essential and necessary Zinn text. Whether his subject is war, race, politics, economic justice, or history itself, each of his works serves as a reminder that to embrace one's subjectivity can mean embracing one's humanity, that heart and mind can speak with one clear and compassionate voice.
Home & Garden / Professional & Technical / Architecture
The Nature of a House: Building
a World that Works by George M. Woodwell, with a foreword by
William A. McDonough (Island Press)
We can conduct a creative and principled dialogue with Earth that generates a living architecture for our time – a technologically sophisticated, aesthetically rich language that celebrates people and place, community and creativity, sunlight and landscape. Imagine these goals for a project – lofty indeed, but achievable in the lifetime of a visionary like George Woodwell. – from the foreword by William A. McDonough, founding principal, William McDonough+Partners
Is it possible for a group of the world’s most respected environmental scientists to truly practice what they preach?
The Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) is an international leader in identifying the causes and consequences of environmental change. When the WHRC needed a new administration building, its scientists and staff decided that the building should utilize ‘state-of-the-shelf’ green building techniques and materials. However, the new office had to conform with the laws and building codes of the time, and with materials that were available – no matter how frustrating these requirements were to the resident scientists and contractors.
The author, George M. Woodwell, founder of the WHRC, was
intimately involved in the design and construction of the Gilman
Ordway Campus, which was completed in 2003 in collaboration with
McDonough+Partners. In
The Nature of a House he details the challenges
they faced, some of which are familiar to everyone who tries to
‘build green’: the vagaries of building codes, the whims of
inspectors, the obstreperousness of subcontractors, the search for
appropriate materials, and the surprises involved in turning an old
house into a modern office building. Woodwell was the founder and
director of the
In The Nature of a House, Woodwell puts the building in a larger context, not only within the work of the Center and the tradition of Woods Hole, but in the global need to minimize our carbon emissions and overall environmental impact. Building a world that works requires rethinking how we design, reuse, and live in the built environment while preserving the functional integrity of the landscape.
In the foreword, McDonough says that he thinks about design as the first signal of human intention. Woodwell sees into the science of the effects that humans have on nature. One manifestation of his vision, perspicacity, and design is the Ordway Campus of the WHRC, a small complex of buildings and landscapes where researchers discover not only what is wrong is about humans in the world but also what behaviors might set things right.
So read this book, wonder at the story of this marvelous journey, and recognize the healing act that it represents – a celebration of human creativity and the abundance of a planet fused with the goodwill of its people. – William A. McDonough, FAIR, Int. FRIBA
Nobody understands the connections between the global and the local better than George Woodwell. The Nature of a House is at once sobering and inspiring. It shows what can be done – what has to be done – to achieve true sustainability. – Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer, The New Yorker and author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Woodwell, always at the cutting edge, offers a practical yet
visionary model, and contagious inspiration, for rethinking how we
live, work, and dream about the future, both for ourselves and our
planet. – James Gustave Speth, dean of Yale School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies and author of Global Environmental Governance
and The Bridge at the Edge of the World
The Nature of a House is a candid, charming, and illuminating book. Woodwell tells a story that will interest anyone who has ever thought about doing a ‘green’ rehab, has tried to build green, or just wonders what is actually possible.
Linguistics / Reference
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching
edited by Ludmila Isurin, Donald Winford & Kees de
Bot (Studies in Bilingualism Series: John Benjamins Publishing
Company)
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching presents a selection of contributions by leading scholars in the field of code switching, i.e., the shift from one language to the other by bilinguals. In the past the phenomenon was studied within different subfields of linguistics and they all took their own perspectives on code switching without taking into account findings from other subdisciplines. This book raises a question of a much broader multidisciplinary approach to studying the phenomenon of code switching, calls for integration of disciplines, and illustrates how frameworks from one subfield can be applied to models in another.
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching includes survey chapters, empirical studies, contributions that use empirical data to test new hypotheses about code switching or suggest new approaches and models for the study of code switching, and chapters that discuss principles and constraints of code switching, and code switching vs. transfer.
As explained in the introduction by the editors, Ludmila Isurin
and Donald Winford, both at
The editors say that their goal in Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching is to promote the developing tradition of research that crosses disciplinary boundaries. In December 2007 they organized a three-day workshop at Ohio State University where the contributors to got together to conduct a dialogue across disciplines in order to arrive at a better understanding of the process, its mechanism and causes, and the cognitive costs involved. The participants were well-recognized scholars in linguistics, socio-linguistics, contact linguistics, psycho- and neuro-linguistics, who have done an extensive amount of research on code switching. The result was this volume, which consists of 13 chapters.
To make the book easier to read, the contributions in Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching are presented in two sections comprising psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic/linguistic studies respectively. Nevertheless, all the authors made attempts to reach across the disciplines and discuss code switching from different perspectives.
The Psycholinguistic section of the volume opens with three survey chapters that present overviews of recent developments in psycholinguistic approaches to CS. These are followed by four empirically-based studies that explore various aspects of CS from a psycholinguistic perspective.
Altarriba & Basnight-Brown`s chapter provides an overview of current work in a relatively new area of research, the study of how code-switched words in a sentential context are processed, interpreted, and remembered by bilinguals during reading. The contribution by Meuter presents a detailed overview of empirical psycholinguistic studies that attempt to shed light on how multilinguals optimize their language performance. The third survey chapter, by Van Hell & Witteman, gives an overview of the new neuro-imaging (NI) studies that have been carried out on different aspects of CS.
The next three chapters in Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching are primarily psycholinguistic contributions that use empirical data to test new hypotheses about CS, or suggest new approaches and models for the study of CS, which are empirically driven. De Bot, Broersma & Isurin's contribution aims at developing a general framework for triggering in CS, based on earlier work by Clyne, and going beyond a purely lexical approach to one that investigates different types of triggers and their interaction. In line with the previous chapter, Broersma, Isurin, Butlena & de Bot explore the extent to which trigger words affect the rate of code switching at the lexical level. The contribution by Kootstra, van Hell & Dijkstra opens another new avenue to the study of CS by proposing that research should treat dialogue as the basic unit of analysis in the study of CS and interactive alignment as the main cognitive mechanism. On the whole, the approach used in this chapter recognizes that CS is an interactional strategy that speakers employ in conversation. It therefore lays the groundwork for further integration of sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic approaches to CS.
The final contribution in the psycholinguistic set of Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching addresses an important issue that is often overlooked in the CS debate, i.e., transfer and its interrelation with code switching. Marian adopts a psycholinguistic approach to this issue, investigating two types of cross-linguistic influence in bilingual language production: overt influences or switches into the other language, and covert transfer of semantic or syntactic patterns but no overt materials from the non-target language.
From the empirically based studies that look at CS from a psycholinguistic perspective the editors take readers to the contributions that take a primarily linguistic or sociolinguistic perspective on CS. Bullock & Toribio's contribution is a sociophonetic study of the production of voiceless stops by Spanish/English bilinguals. In line with several of the other contributions, they argue that the two contributing languages in a CS setting are not completely stable and unchangeable entities, but that CS itself has an impact on the languages used. Their study supports the idea that switching can take place in only one part of the language system and does not necessarily affect all other components. Jake & Myers-Scotton's contribution is a continuation of their well-known work on the various principles that regulate what is possible in CS. The paper argues that, while content and early system morphemes as well as certain bridge system morphemes can be incorporated from the embedded language, there are strict constraints on the incorporation of outsider system morphemes. In their chapter, Cantone & MacSwan describe code-switching patterns within Determiner Phrases (DPs) in bilingual Italian-German sentences, based on grammaticality judgments from 10 subjects and natural speech by young children. The paper employs the framework of the Minimalist Program to argue that the differences in word order patterns fall out from differences in the strength of agreement features between German and Italian.
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching continues with the contribution by Winford who tries to link frameworks from contact linguistics to psycholinguistic models of language production in order to show how the same type of processes that play a role in the creation of bilingual mixed languages can be found in individual language users' CS production. The paper attempts to explain these phenomena in terms of a psycho-linguistically based notion of borrowing, which involves the agency of speakers who incorporate elements from a less dominant language into a more dominant one.
The contribution by Backus shows how bridges between contact linguistics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics can be built in the study of CS. The paper attempts to explain contact induced change in terms of social, communicative and linguistic factors. The contribution by Odlin continues the debate about the differentiation between transfer and code switching from the linguistic perspective. In his work, he attempts to sort out the relationships between CS and transfer, defined broadly as any kind of cross-linguistic interference.
From the above brief review of Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching, it becomes clear that the contributions discuss practically every level of linguistic structure where CS phenomena can be found. The contributions confirm that the cross-disciplinary approach to CS is long overdue and highly welcomed by scholars coming from different fields. In addition to explicit calls for interdisciplinary perspectives on CS and consistent cross-referencing to other works in the book, there are recurring themes in this selection of papers. An area of concern is the linguistic modality where CS is traditionally studied, i.e. production vs. comprehension. The contributions to Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching discuss practically every level of linguistic structure where CS phenomena can be found. Another theme is the issue of possible constraints on CS and the extent to which they are predictive. Another theme, much discussed in both the psycholinguistic and linguistic literature, concerns the question of language activation and how it can shape CS. They all recognize that a crucial role is played by the notion of `asymmetry', the finding that in bilingual speech the two or more languages do not contribute equally and in the same way to the utterances produced. It remains unclear whether the different status and contributions of each language is a stable factor that defines the speaking style of an individual or community, or is instead a dynamic and unstable factor.
According to Isurin, Winford and de Bot, we may never fully understand why people code-switch, what causes them to change their language in the course of conversation or why certain linguistic items fail to fall into those beautifully structured models. But we will definitely benefit from crossing the boundaries of the disciplines and studying the same phenomenon by bringing in our approaches, knowledge and our own language of academic discourse. Multidisciplinary Approaches to Code Switching takes one more step in this direction. This highly informative book is easily accessible to anyone who is interested in the phenomenon of code switching in bilinguals. Readers from any related field like general linguistics, socio and psycholinguistics, contact and neuro-linguistics, as well as psychology and sociology, would benefit from it and find it interesting.
Literature & Fiction / History & Criticism / Women’s Studies
Women and Death 2: Warlike
Women in the German Literary and Cultural Imagination since 1500
edited by Sarah Colvin & Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly (Studies in German
Literature Linguistics and Culture Series: Camden House)
Warlike women are a recurring phenomenon in German literature and
culture since 1500. Amazons, terrorists, warrior women –
Women and Death 2 contains essays by leading
scholars from the
Contributors include: Bettina Brandt, Sarah Colvin, Mererid Puw
Davies, Peter Davies, Christine Eifler, Ute Frevert, Kathrin
Hoffmann-Curtius, Ritchie Robertson, Daria Santini, Ruth Seifert,
and Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly. The editors are Colvin, Eudo C. Mason
Chair of German at the University of
In the first of the companion volumes to this one, Women and Death: Representations of Female Victims and Perpetrators in German Culture 1500-2000, editors Helen Fronius and Anna Linton explored the associations made between ideas of woman and death in cultural production – a connection that may, they suggest, be ‘the shadow-side of [women's] connection with birth.’ It emerges that whether visual, literary, and musical representations of women and death communicate a positive or negative notion of womanhood (or of the woman represented) seems to depend heavily on the level of sexual and/or social self-determination that she or her sex are seen to embody: "female goodness is estimated in reverse proportion to female agency," they observe.
The chapters in
Women and Death 2 demonstrate again how often
subversive agency and passive obedience coexist. And again we see
how Christian and Germanic cultural traditions interact and mingle
with the Classical myths and legends that informed European culture
from the Renaissance on. But where Fronius, Linton, and their
contributors focus on the significance of passivity and agency in
cultural imaginings of gender, this volume (which emerges from the
same major research project) gives an account of a different aspect
of the woman/death connection: the manifestations and significance
of warlike and warrior women in the German imagination from the
early modern period to the late twentieth century. In this volume,
scholars of literature and of social and cultural history, including
military history in East and
The examples presented in Women and Death 2 can be seen as representative, or at least as indicative, of a tendency in German scholarship, writing, and visual art after 1500 to demonize warrior women who are deemed sexually emancipated or self-determining, while holding out the possibility that those who are virginal (like Joan of Arc), or at the very least chaste wives and good mothers, in proper female dress, can be redeemed. A connection between properly gendered dress and categorizing tropes such as ‘good mother,’ ‘harlot,’ or ‘monster’ is in evidence. Clothing and linguistic categories have the function of safeguards – if the potentially subversive subaltern (in this case, woman) can be recognized for what she is, then she can probably be mastered.
In the older representations examined, a woman may apparently defend the nation if she is, in fact, not yet a ‘woman,’ but a virgin. If, as Fronius and Linton suggest, the woman/death connection is culture's construction of a shadow-side to women's biological function as life-givers, then a woman who kills (even in defense of the nation) can only escape that nightmarishly fearful association if she is dissociated from the reproductive process: if she is virginal. (That may, in some representations, not rule out de facto motherhood – the Virgin Mary as desexualized mother, is of course the model that permits the contradiction.)
Furthermore, if there is latent anxiety about the justification of masculine acts of violence (whether perpetrated by individual men or by the state), a weak woman in need of protection will allay them. A strong, sexually assertive woman will not: sex is often fantasized in culture as men's Achilles heel, and sexual activity in women is therefore understood as an indicator of power that disqualifies the woman in question from protection. The contributors to Women and Death 2 suggest that sexually active or promiscuous women are constructed as damaging to the nation (which means – given that maternal women and the nation are the same thing – they are also damaging to other, life-giving women). In fin-de-siecle discourse, the positive counterpart of the fascinatingly terrifying femme fatale is the femme fragile or femme enfante, who is sexually passive and considerably less fascinating, but confirms dominant masculinity by providing a perfectly balanced counterpart to it. Masculinity studies have suggested for some time now that the cultural narrative of masculinity is relational: i.e., that there is no masculinity as such, only non-femininity. That means not only that men are permanently at pains to construct themselves as non-women, but that women are culturally required to fulfill functions men eschew. If men are to be represented as strong, then women are required to be weak, psychologically and physically. Warrior women, then, are not only a threat or moment of anxiety, they upset the very narrative of masculinity, and therefore the narrative of culture.
Two questions remain: Is the figure of the woman warrior particularly prevalent in German culture? And if so, why? The evidence suggests that the answer to the first question is yes. While there are well-established tropes of the woman warrior in other Western cultures – the heroines of the Italian Renaissance epic, for instance – the warrior woman, Colvin and Watanabe-O’Kelly contend in Women and Death 2, is both a more continuous and a more central figure in German culture from the Middle Ages to the present than in other Western cultures.
Women and Death 2 explores the recurring image of the woman warrior in the context of the question whether the woman with the sword is a foundational myth of the German nation. Once again, both the notion that Amazon society is a primitive step on the way to an ordered patriarchy, and the chastity of individual warrior women are at issue.
The collective narrative thus far indicates persuasively that
images of war-like women and death exist in a cultural context that
exerts pressure and seeks to control via ideas of the masculine as
well as of the feminine. In an essay on masculinity, femininity, and
war in the nineteenth century, Ute Frevert points out that men were
heroicized not when they killed, but when they died in battle – the
death of the male hero is the prerequisite for his heroicization.
Frevert examines conceptions of war and gender between the
Revolutionary Wars of the late eighteenth century and the First
World War. In monumental terms, Frevert points out how stone figures
of real male generals coexist (for example in
It thus begins to emerge that cultural narratives – even though they are ‘only’ ideas – powerfully affect the real lives of women and men.
The question of who is licensed to kill and commit acts of
violence, and under what circumstances, must be asked not only with
reference to individual men and women at arms but with reference to
the state or nation. When is war legitimate? The last two essays in
Women and Death 2 investigate ideas about women,
war, and legitimacy in the later twentieth century. In the course of
the 1960s the Vietnam War became, both literally and figuratively, a
burning issue for many West Germans. Mererid Puw Davies's essay
analyzes images of Vietnamese women in West German writing, but
finds that the schematic representations that emerge contradict what
was known at the time about the real situation of women in
The final essay of
Women and Death 2 takes readers into the period
after 1968. Colvin assesses representations of the West German
terrorist Ulrike Meinhof, specifically by those who seek to defend
her. Meinhof may now have been dead for more than thirty years, but
in the context of Germany's resurgence of interest in 1968 and
beyond, Colvin suggests that she is still notionally on trial – not
least in the minds of her biographers, who repeatedly mobilize the
tropes (of chastity, for example) that are likely to support a
woman's case before the law. The film Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex,
based on the book by Stefan Aust and released in
The essays in Women and Death 2
Mysteries & Thrillers / Thrillers
Deadly Descent – A Lottie
Albright Mystery by Charlotte Hinger (Poisoned Pen Press)
Charlotte Hinger is a Western Kansas historian convinced that mystery writing and historical investigation go hand to hand, turning her imagination to different kinds of writing, as she does to produce her first mystery, Deadly Descent.
Layers of deadly intrigue bind generations of families in
Deadly Descent. In historian Lottie Albright’s
Soon the twins join forces but endanger their own lives as they race to connect past, present, and future. To help her sister, Josie adds her expertise in untangling the web of families bound by a lethal legacy of prideful secrets. Soon Lottie is stalked by a clever killer threatened by the twins’ ability to connect the dots. Blindsided by her protective husband’s disapproval of the new job, and aghast at a bizarre attempt to sabotage her academic credentials, Lottie knows her obsession is destroying her marriage and her reputation.
With
Deadly Descent, Charlotte Hinger again displays her
deft and amazing talents as an accomplished novelist, this time in
the mystery genre. Her characters sparkle with credibility, and the
tension in this complex, compelling and often lyrical story is
mesmerizing. Lottie Albright is a central character you will not
soon forget. – Bob Cherry, author of Little Rains, one of the Denver
Post's ten notable books of 2003
Fast-paced, intelligent, and as cunningly woven as a spider's web, Deadly Descent is a mystery-lover's dream. A crackling great story! – W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear, New York Times bestselling authors of People of the Thunder
… Fascinated by an old murder case, Lottie hopes to gain at least
Sam's approval by coming up with new answers. The connection she
finds between the old murders and the new puts her life and her
sister’s in danger from a desperate killer willing to do anything to
keep past sins buried. Historical research is anything but dull in
Hinger's debut, which holds your attention every exciting step of
the way. – Kirkus Reviews, starred review
… Readers who stick with the often awkward plotting will be rewarded
by a nail-biting climax, when Lottie makes a life-altering choice. –
Publishers Weekly
This author specializes in genre jumping, and does a pretty good job of it too in Deadly Descent.
Outdoors & Nature / Environmentalism / Religion & Spirituality / Christianity
The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth by
Thomas Berry, edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker &
John Grim (Ecology & Justice Series: Orbis Books)
In the decades ahead, more and more people, tens of millions at
least, will fully recognize that the ecological crisis has the
ultimacy that
The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth contains reflections on Christianity, the sacred community of life, and the story of the universe by one of the foremost thinkers of our time. For half a century this seminal Christian thinker raised a prophetic voice regarding Earth's destruction and the urgent need for human response.
In
The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth,
celebrated author and ‘geologian’ Thomas Berry reflects on
Christianity and the environmental crisis of our times. He presents
a vision of the sacredness of the universe and the interrelatedness
of the Earth community. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas and
As told in the introduction to The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth by John Cobb, by Earth Day 1970 it had become clear that one danger loomed over all others for the whole of humanity and indeed the whole earthly biosphere. When this realization struck, most of them were already involved in multiple causes. There were injustices everywhere. The response of many people was to add the ‘environmental crisis’ to this list of important concerns. But it was obvious to others that this was not enough.
Those in the church who understood the situation decided that
what was needed was to build alliances between environmental, peace,
and justice-oriented groups. The World Council of Churches added
‘sustainable’ to its characterization of the good society as ‘just’
and ‘participatory.’ In the
One Christian did not allow himself to be diverted by other
issues. His name was Thomas Berry.
While working on
The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth
Thus it was after he retired from teaching at the age of
sixty-three that
This book may be the best guide yet to the work of Thomas Berry –
and so to the Ecozoic Age! It recapitulates with his earthy grace
and delightful succinctness the key moves of the new cosmology. It
is as though these essays embody the bonding force he calls ‘the
Great Compassionate Curve’ of the universe. – Catherine Keller,
Professor of Constructive Theology,
Can the best learning of the day – in science, the arts and humanities, religion – be integrated and brought to bear on the most compelling issues of the day, in the manner, say, of an Augustine or Aquinas? The answer is ‘Yes!’ It's the work of Thomas Berry and the evidence is in this and his other volumes. – Larry Rasmussen, author of Earth Community Earth Ethics
The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth is a
collection representing a timely distillation of
Philosophy / Logic & Reason / Reference
Critical Inquiry: The Process
of Argument by Michael Boylan (Westview Press)
Critical Inquiry is a necessary companion for anyone looking for the secrets of successful persuasion - organizing, constructing, and communicating arguments. It is an authoritative guide to logical thinking and effective communication. First, the text defines the nature and uses of argument, explaining how to read argument carefully. Such analysis then requires the student to reconstruct arguments in his or her own words. Finally, readers are taught how to create a critical, reasoned response, thus constructing their own arguments. To increase its accessibility and expand its range of application, Critical Inquiry uses, in addition to textual examples, advertisements from print media as ‘texts’ for applying its principles to subjects outside the traditional mode of academic presentation. Throughout, carefully selected reading questions and exercises pace readers and ensure that the material is securely grasped and successfully applied.
Critical Inquiry, written by Michael Boylan,
professor of philosophy at
After twenty years of continual classroom adoptions, Boylan felt that there was good reason to update and reorient the book. The new emphasis is upon how to read and respond critically to argumentative texts. In this way the text has transformed into one that emphasizes critical inquiry through the three areas of reading, reconstructing, and responding to argumentative texts. This is an important skill that is necessary in many courses in the curriculum. For example, in philosophy all the texts presented are argumentative so that the book can instruct students in achieving the requisite skills needed to read and analyze texts. But these skills are not confined to philosophy. In literature classes, it is commonplace to teach two sorts of essays: (a) the expository (or research) essay and (b) the argumentative essay. Critical Inquiry would be useful for courses in the latter domain. It might also be useful for upper-level literature courses that want to incorporate critical theory. This is because the bounds of critical theory are the logically acceptable categories of deductive and inductive reasoning (both represented here). Students of composition classes as well as upper-level theory classes could profit from exposure to a succinct handbook on argument – including rules on understanding, reconstructing, and responding to the same.
Other classes in the curriculum such as politics, economics, and business also require facility in confronting argument successfully. The crossover between disciplines respecting argument is very high. Boylan says that for fourteen years he led a faculty seminar on ethics and logical argument to professors across the disciplines, and this book reflects his experiences. Boylan says he has also used this method of teaching argument when he was first an English literature teacher in 1976 and later, a philosophy teacher from 1979 onward. So Critical Inquiry represents thirty-two years of classroom experience.
The presentation is divided into three parts: reading the text, reconstructing the text, and responding to the text (the three r's). In reading the text students are presented with critical tools so that they might not simply accept the text as given. Instead, students are encouraged to go through some self-examination that will enable them to understand their own critical standpoint. This is essential so that they may ascertain what the speaker is saying and subsequently whether the presentation is correct.
In reconstructing the text students are presented with a self-contained system of informal logic. The rules are few and focused on the practical outcomes of enabling the student to confront an argumentative text and to reconstruct the important arguments contained within. These reconstructed arguments are formally presented according to the rules of the system. By making students go through this process, they are forced to give an interpretation of the logical argument contained within. This constitutes another level of understanding that will facilitate better critical inquiry.
Finally, there is the level of responding to the text. In this case students are enjoined to write a clear pro or con essay. The point of making this decision is to promote straightforward argumentative thinking. This is always best achieved when students must make difficult choices. Many students want to be fence-sitters and avoid taking a stance. But this mars their ability to create clear arguments.
Critical Inquiry offers an excellent introduction
to the principles of good thinking and clear writing. Michael
Boylan’s precise, witty prose reveals the shape of rigorous thinking
in the context of everyday discourse. I highly recommend this book
for teaching and for general readers interested in sharpening their
skills in self-expression and persuasion. – Rich Halverson,
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Students asked to read and critically respond to an argumentative
text now have a guide that is both informative and engaging. This is
a book that I would recommend to anyone attempting to understand
logical argument and prepare for a written assignment. – Shaun D.
Pattinson,
Critical Inquiry provides clear and concise
explanations of critical thinking, critical reading, and
argumentation. The interactive text encourages the reader to respond
to and practice the concepts being discussed, most notably through
the use of real-world examples like advertisements and 'phishing'
emails. –
Comprehensive and accessible, this informative book is a necessary companion for anyone seeking to uncover the secrets of successful persuasion. Critical Inquiry promotes the three r's: reading, reconstructing, and responding to the text; it can facilitate student outcomes in creating argumentative essays.
Philosophy / Logic & Language
All We Need Is a Paradigm: Essays
on Science, Economics, and Logic from the Harvard Review of
Philosophy edited by S. Phineas Upham, with a foreword by Stanley
Cavell (
I know of no more rational and attractive place to begin and to continue to survey the reaches of philosophical possibility than that provided in the pages of The Harvard Review of Philosophy. This is amply verified by the quality and range of the essays in All We Need Is a Paradigm and its companion volume, The Space of Love and Garbage, by the high quality of the contributors to these volumes, and by their quite unmatched (in any comparable journal I am aware of) range of subjects and modes of thinking. – from the foreword by Stanley Cavell
Do we view the world as it is and can we trust our intuitions about it? How can math and science help us structure and make sense of the world around us, and what are the limitations of this approach?
All We Need Is a Paradigm, edited by S. Phineas Upham, former Editor-in-Chief of The Harvard Review of Philosophy, collects for the first time some of the most important essays from that journal. The chapters provide insights into the philosophical underpinnings of the way our world works. Whether they explore rationality, quantum physics, mathematics, or music, the authors strive to deepen our ability to understand the what and how of our surroundings. Exploring the unexpected ways that philosophy impacts our world, this book considers the discipline as an essential element in our understanding of science, economics, and logic.
Israel Kirzner examines the assumptions about human nature made by economists and the ‘science of human action,’ George Boolos challenges us with the ‘hardest logic puzzle ever’ and gives us its subtle solution. The avant-garde composer Luciano Berio writes about music as a text open to remembering and forgetting, a process which involves developing a personal and active relationship with the text. Simon Saunders looks at the inescapable and disquieting consequences of holding quantum mechanics to be fundamental and suggests solutions. Rupert Read explores the usefulness and limitations of Kuhn's paradigms for social scientists.
This book contains fourteen philosophical essays. According to Upham in the preface, at The Harvard Review of Philosophy they stress the value of philosophy's rigor for exploring the widest range of fields and issues. Indeed, perhaps one of its chief strengths is that it is useful as a versatile methodology for analysis, that it can be used in conjunction with other disciplines rather than only in isolation from them. They believe philosophy can be as enriching to the lawyer, the physicist, the craftsman, and the musician as to the professional philosopher.
Contents of All We Need Is a Paradigm include:
- Human Nature and the Character of Economic Science: The
Historical Background of the Misesian Perspective –
- The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever – George S. Boolos
- Saying and Showing and the Continuity of Wittgenstein's Thought – Marie McGinn
- Text of Texts – Luciano Berio
- Frege's Theorem: An Introduction – Richard G. Heck, Jr.
- What is the Problem of Measurement? – Simon Saunders
- Making Sense of Others: Donald Davidson on Interpretation – William Taschek
- Analyticity and Holism in Quine's Thought – Peter Hylton
- On Wanting to Say, ‘All We Need Is a Paradigm’ – Rupert Read
- Causation and Ceteris Paribus Laws – Ned Hall
- The Mysteries of Self-Locating Belief and Anthropic Reasoning – Nick Bostrom
- Structuralism and the
- The Deep and Suggestive Principles of Leibnizian Philosophy – Julian Barbour
- The Modern Neo-Positivist: A Tribute to W.V. Quine – Warren Goldfarb
In particular, the authors in All We Need Is a Paradigm employ philosophy to better understand important topics in the hard and social sciences. There is a burgeoning and productive study at the intersections of philosophy and science of evolving scientific paradigms and of the assumptions underlying the ‘laws of nature’. Many of the authors in this collection find philosophy particularly helpful in understanding the principles that underlie the experimental and theoretical ideas in these other fields and in unfolding and resolving the paradoxes that confound traditional approaches.
Three major themes come up again and again in the essays and often lead to fruitful philosophical insight – the nature of language, the nature of causality, and the nature of human cognition. Many authors point to the problem Wittgenstein critiqued as the confounding vagaries of language itself – "deep disquietudes, their roots are as deep in us as the forms of our language." Secondly, causality is not surprisingly a concern for physicists and others involved in the physical sciences given their need to predict outcomes, but it is surprising to see how applicable philosophical insights from Kant, Hume, and Leibnitz are to such problems in the hard sciences that might seem unrelated to philosophical inquiry. An exploration of human cognition also plays a significant part in these essays – asking questions about whether events in the world are real or perceived, whether human action is rational or irrational, whether arithmetic is logical, analytical or even ‘true’.
Israel Kirzner in his essay "Human Nature and the Character of Economic Science" traces the conception of the wealth-seeking Homo economicus of Adam Smith to the purposeful rationality of Ludwig von Mises's Homo agens. Kirzner examines how an exploration of the ‘laws of the human mind’ leads to the epistemic uniqueness of economic science and how it has contributed to our understanding of human nature – man as not only an aggregator of wealth but with more complex desires, more broadly defined goals, and fears. For Mises, man acts purposefully to improve his situation with worthwhile but previously unconsidered ends and with always evolving means so that "in any real and living exchange every actor is always an entrepreneur." For Kirzner human rationality is not an expression of optimal constraint maximization but essentially entails alertness to new opportunities.
In "Frege's Theorem: An Introduction" Richard Heck examines the
epistemic status of our understanding of arithmetic – is arithmetic
an outcome of reason and are its principles analytically true, or do
they depend on human intuition and cognition? Frege tries to resolve
this tension by showing that arithmetic truths can be drawn directly
from premises that are fundamental truths of pure logic without
extraneous assumptions. Since existing systems of logic were
insufficient to this task, Frege tried to develop a system he calls
Begriffsschrift which is a full second-order logic which
accommodates quantification over ‘concepts’. This system of logic
restricted inferential steps to syntactic criteria revealing all
assumptions being used in all proofs. Frege transforms the
epistemological problems of arithmetic with his system and
mathematical argumentation making proofs possible. Frege's system
contributes to axiomizing arithmetic as
"What Is the Problem with Measurement?" Simon Saunders asks in his essay on the paradoxes within quantum mechanics. The problem, both physical and philosophical in nature, centers on the finding that in quantum mechanics two states of the atomic world can exist until the moment of the discrete change in the action when ‘the quantum jump’ and ‘the collapse of the wave-packet’ are observed and they then are collapsed into one outcome. Physicists and philosophers have grappled with this problem in various ways. Saunders describes Bohr's powerful Copenhagen Interpretation where "an objective phenomenon is only defined relative to an observation" and "any observation of atomic phenomena will involve an interaction with the agency of observation . . . with its inherent ‘irrationality’." The origins, implications, and resolutions of Bohr's `Quantum Postulate' have not only a philosophy background but as Sanders points out in this essay, they all depend on philosophical arguments "of a metaphysical order that we have not seen since Descartes."
In an unusual and very amusing philosophical tribute, Warren
Goldfarb of
All We Need Is a Paradigm consists of challenging and often entertaining articles, mostly on the philosophy of language, science, and mathematics, but also on economics and music. The authors prove among other things that if you think cars in the other lanes are going faster than yours, they probably are and that you ought to change to another. Any book that solves "The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever" and contains verse to and about W.V. Quine is worth reading. – Al P. Martinich, author of Hobbes: A Biography
This fine collection of essays from The Harvard Review of Philosophy is representative of the best contemporary work in Anglo-American philosophy. It presents an image of philosophy as a humanistic practice intimately bound up with the sciences according to which philosophy retains a distinctive and important role as a discipline of interpretation, understanding, and conceptual problem-solving. Taken together the chapters deepen our understanding of the logical, mathematical, and metaphysical underpinnings of the physical and human sciences as well as providing powerful interpretations of such modern masters as Frege, Wittgenstein, Quine, Kuhn, and Davidson. The issues are topical and the line-up of philosophers and scholars is first-rate. – David MacArthur, co-editor of Naturalism in Question
The Harvard Review of Philosophy has long been a forum for new thoughts in the field – this collection includes some of the most important essays from that publication. This fascinating read for both laypeople and those familiar with philosophical concepts delves deep into questions of human nature, intellectual thought, and the manner in which our world operates. In All We Need Is a Paradigm, the authors productively tackle important questions about the world in ways one would not expect. They show how valuable the rigor and insight of philosophical analysis and thought are in a broad array of fields, including, perhaps especially, economics, physics, and logic. Using several different approaches, including puzzles, essays, and songs, the book challenges our basic assumptions about how things work. It asks questions that are crucial to general readers as well as philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, and other scholars.
Professional & Technical / Engineering / Architecture / Science / Environmental
Urban Wind Energy by Sinisa
Stankovic, Neil Campbell & Alan Harries (Earthscan)
Towns and cities are essential to human development, with the majority of the population now living in urban areas. Buildings and their occupants are large consumers of finite energy and material resources and, therefore, major cumulative contributors to global environmental issues.
Cheap, secure, reliable energy supplies are key to the growth of modern industrial economies and there is often little incentive for large developers to explore the potential for local or decentralized electricity supplies. This is beginning to change in response to volatility in the fossil fuel markets, concerns about energy security, national and international commitments to sustainable growth and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Many countries and regions have climates that are well suited to harnessing their wind resources for electricity generation. While there are now many projects where photovoltaic cells have been incorporated into buildings to take advantage of ‘free’ solar energy, the number adopting wind energy is much smaller.
Integration of wind turbines into the built environment does pose
challenges to be overcome – reductions in energy yields due to lower
mean wind speeds in urban areas and associated environmental impacts
due to their close proximity to people and property. However, in
certain urban areas possessing suitable conditions, there is
potential for successful wind energy generation and small wind is
expanding fast, particularly in the
Responding to growing international interest in wind energy and
decentralized energy production, this book focuses on the potential
for exploiting wind power in urban areas. With radical implications
for the generation of renewable energy in the city and hence our
environment as a whole,
Urban Wind Energy helps pave the way for
significant developments in low-energy design and high-rise
architecture.
Having outlined the fundamentals, authors Sinisa Stankovic, Neil
Campbell & Alan Harries examine wind enhancement and integration
techniques and address aesthetic, aerodynamic, architectural,
environmental, and structural constraints. Turbulence levels are
discussed in detail, design guidance is given to aid performance
prediction, and a methodology is provided to assess UWECS (urban
wind energy conversion systems) from economic and environmental
perspectives. International case studies are included, complemented
by the results from a project field-testing a two-story prototype
building with an integrated wind turbine.
As told in Urban Wind Energy, wind energy generation currently accounts for around 1.3 per cent of worldwide electricity demand. This is expected to grow rapidly in the foreseeable future, driven by our responses to fossil fuel price volatility, energy security, climate change and sustainable development. Urban wind turbines account for only a small fraction of global wind energy generation but are one of the fastest-growing and most diverse sectors within the wind energy market. Projects can range from very large machines installed on `brownfield' sites undergoing regeneration down to very small turbines installed on residential buildings. However, these can be poorly conceived, leading to expense, disappointment and frustration.
Urban Wind Energy helps identify and assess the potential of new wind energy projects in urban areas. These include: the potential owners (investors, developers, businesses, communities and homeowners), suppliers (manufacturers), distributors (utility companies and district network operators – DNOs), legal representatives (planners, policy-makers, funders and grant distributors), and designers/installers (architects, engineers and technicians). The following Parts cover all relevant areas with the exception of: self-build turbines, detailed mechanical and electric equipment design, in-depth structural aspects, highly theoretical aspects and offshore wind.
Part 1 –Wind Energy in Context.
Urban Wind Energy begins by tackling the
fundamental question: `why should we be interested in generating
energy from wind?’ – and 'why in an urban context?’ The main drivers
are identified and a series of wider contextual questions addressed
to help establish the relative importance of urban wind energy in
our energy futures.
Part 2 – Urban Wind Energy Potential. Three main categories for wind energy integration in the built environment are considered: small wind and retrofitting, large-scale stand-alone turbines and building-integrated turbines (where the buildings are designed with wind energy in mind). A variety of case studies are presented and reviewed.
Part 3 – Urban Wind Energy Feasibility Study. How should one determine the viability of a potential project? This section examines the areas that make up a formal feasibility study – necessary when progressing an urban wind energy project through the planning permission application stage, including methods for wind resource estimation, predicting performance, evaluating environmental impacts and making economic assessments.
Part 4 – Turbine Technology. This section contains a detailed overview of wind turbine technology – including the fundamentals of horizontal and vertical axis turbine design and general wind energy yield enhancement techniques. A focus on practical implementation is maintained in relation to the pros and cons of working with the current available turbine technology but combined with a solid theoretical grounding.
Part 5 – Building-Integrated Wind Turbines. In the final part of Urban Wind Energy, design issues related specifically to building-integrated wind energy are considered. This includes exploring generic integration techniques and the application of 'state-of-the-art' computational simulation to ensure energy production levels are maximized while keeping environmental impacts low.
Urban Wind Energy provides practical and theoretical design advice, real-world examples and a framework for assessing project viability in energy, environmental and economic terms. This comprehensive, landmark guide to urban wind energy is suitable for researchers and students in wind energy, energy consultants, architects, engineers, planners, developers, investors, policy-makers, manufacturers and students, as well as community organizations and home-owners interested in generating their own clean electricity.
Professional & Technical / Medicine / Pharmacology
Laboratory Procedures for Pharmacy Technicians (Spiral-bound) by Jahangir Moini (Delmar Cengage Learning)
Compounding is one of the major tasks of pharmacy technicians. Nonsterile compounding is one of the most challenging activities in the pharmacy, and pharmacy technicians must have specific education and training in this area.
Laboratory Procedures for Pharmacy Technicians, written by Jahangir Moini, physician and instructor for the past 35 years, Professor and Former Director, Allied Health Sciences, Pharmacy Technician Program, Everest University, Melborne, Florida, focuses on general lab concepts, non-sterile compounding, and sterile compounding – and Self-Evaluation. The book is designed to facilitate reading comprehension and includes many illustrative figures, hands-on exercises, compounding procedures, and alert boxes for important material. It also features examples of Compounding Formulas and Dosage Calculations as Appendices. Abundant photos display a wide range of procedures the pharmacy technician will encounter in real-world practice. Self-evaluation activities sharpen skills for each of the topic areas discussed. Appendices present examples of compounding formulas and dosage calculation.
This textbook provides students with hands-on, step-by-step procedures that they will find essential for laboratory work. Key principles of laboratory activities are described in this text, as well as explanation of equipment and the laboratory environment.
Laboratory Procedures for Pharmacy Technicians is organized into two parts, "Theory Review and Procedures," and "Self-Evaluation." The first part consists of three sections, "General Concepts," "Nonsterile Compounding Products," and "Sterile Compounding Products;" which collectively contain eleven chapters. The Self-Evaluation part of this book features one test for each of the three sections found in Part One. Following Part Two is an answer key, appendices, a glossary, and an index.
Each chapter contains an outline of the key topics, objectives that students must be able to meet upon completion of the reading, and a list of key terms (which are bolded in the chapter text). Overviews serve to introduce students to the key concepts of the chapter. Figures serve to accurately illustrate chapter principles and related information. Accurate tables focus on essential information that must be fully understood in order to master each chapter's content. Step-by-step procedures are listed which correspond to the figures to show equipment, materials to be handled, and actual tasks. Special "Alert" features are distributed throughout each chapter, highlighting key information. Chapter summaries serve to reinforce the chapter content and focus on key ideas from the text. At the end of each chapter, review questions are given that help students to test the knowledge they have gained from their reading. The questions are given in a variety of forms to encourage more complete comprehension. Lab activities are listed so students may practice their skills. Book and web-site references are given so that students may seek out additional information to complement their studies.
Laboratory Procedures for Pharmacy Technicians is accompanied by an Instructor Resources CD containing:
- Critical Thinking Activities.
- Skills Checklists for Laboratory Procedures.
- Image Library.
- Material and Equipment Lists.
- Grading Rubrics.
I feel the author did a great job of covering all the topics
related to law and ethics. I liked the approach that was taken and
also the order in which the topics were listed. If published, I feel
it will be a great asset to the law and ethics course. – Sandi
Tschritter,
The book facilitates reading comprehension and helps students apply concepts through examples, step-by-step-procedures and self-evaluation. Prior study of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and pathology is helpful in understanding the skills that are taught in Laboratory Procedures for Pharmacy Technicians.
Religion & Spirituality / Biblical Studies
Exploring the Old Testament Book by Book: An
Expository Survey by John Phillips (The John Phillips Commentary
Series: Kregel Academic & Professional)
Taking a telescopic view of the Bible,
Exploring the Old Testament Book by Book and
Exploring the New Testament Book by Book enable readers to see the
big picture behind the Book of books, to see how the various parts
of Scripture relate to one another. These volumes from John Phillips
show how taking a few steps back offers new insights into the
message, meaning, and art of the Bible.
Phillips, now retired, served as assistant director of the Moody
Correspondence School as well as director of the Emmaus
Correspondence School, one of the world's largest Bible
correspondence ministries and taught in the
He says that what the microscope is to the scientist in his laboratory, structural analysis is to the Bible explorer in his study. And he also says that what the telescope is to the astronomer in his observatory, Bible survey is to the Bible student in his place of study.
Exploring the Old Testament Book by Book is about Bible survey. It is an instrument that enables readers to see the big picture, to see how the various parts of the Bible relate one to another. The higher one climbs up the mountain, the more of the surrounding countryside can be surveyed. It is this survey view of the Bible readers apply in Exploring the Old Testament Book by Book. It helps readers sort things out; see how the Bible fits together. The prophets, for instance, judging by their close proximity, look like next-door neighbors. Some hundred years, though, separate them. Isaiah had to deal with the Assyrians, Jeremiah with the Babylonians.
Genesis begins with a creation and ends with a coffin. But what vast changes lie between.
The lists of names so characteristic of 1 Chronicles actually reflect the gospel of Matthew, which begins with a corresponding list of names. Yet four silent centuries lie between. Still, Romans 9 is not to be divorced from Exodus 5-14. Jonah should be set alongside Nahum. Malachi and Matthew need to be compared with Daniel 11. The ‘silent centuries’ were not silent at all.
According to Phillips, God's act of creating all the worlds of space is dismissed in five short words ("He made the stars also," Gen. 1:16). By contrast, the form and function of the tabernacle is spread over some fifty chapters of the Bible. And readers should consider the genealogies. Why such choice and arrangement of material? Phillips says the Holy Spirit has taken the Bible and, in all its pieces and parts, has given to us a perfect portrait of God's beloved Son. Old Testament History is covered in Part 1, chapter by chapter, and Part 2 focuses on Old Testament Poetry and Prophecy. Exploring the Old Testament Book by Book closes with the Jewish Religious Calendar.
No one analyzes the biblical text better than John Phillips. I
have benefited greatly from his commentaries and recommend them
heartily to pastors, teachers, and Bible students everywhere. – Dr.
David Jeremiah, Senior Pastor,
Dr. John Phillips is one of God's great Bible teachers. His books
have been a great blessing to pastors, Sunday school teachers, and
Christian workers throughout the world - and will continue to be
until our Lord comes. Read his books and learn more about the
precious Word. – Dr. Jerry Vines, Pastor,
Exploring the Old Testament Book by Book teaches
the importance of using a telescopic approach and applies it to gain
fresh insight into the Bible.
RReligion & Spirituality / History
Rethinking Ghosts in World Religions edited
by Mu-chou Poo (Numen Book Series: Brill)
Where are we headed after death? This question has provoked endless speculations and emotional responses throughout human history. There are those who do not believe that there is another existence after death, whether human or animal. The ancient Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi, for example, regards life as a chance congealment of the qi in the universe, and when life ends, the qi will disperse into the universe. The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus of Abdera would have agreed with this view, except he would have substituted the ‘atom’ for qi.
The central theme of
Rethinking Ghosts in World Religions is to
re-examine the concepts and images of ghosts in various religious
cultures ranging from the Ancient Near East and
Just as many scholarly projects that expand from personal interests
into larger issues shared by other colleagues,
Rethinking Ghosts in World Religions originates in
Mu-chou Poo’s (Research Fellow in the
In Jerrold S. Cooper's opening article we find the ancient Mesopotamian idea of ghost, the etemmu, as being part of the divine essence in the human body, reflecting the early Mesopotamian cosmology that human beings are created by the gods using clay mixed with blood and flesh of a god. The Mesopotamians realized that there is a clear interdependence between the living and the dead: the living owe their existence to the dead, while the dead depend upon the offerings of the living. As for the place where the ghosts dwell, or the fate of the ghost in the world of the dead, the dead possess no physical substance, and lead a miserable and shadowy life in the netherworld.
As Christopher Eyre points out, the way in which a spiritual entity is imagined may provide a key to understanding the culturally and environmentally conditioned differences between societies. In the case of ancient Egypt, unlike Mesopotamia, when existence after death was imagined, it was informed by what the Egyptians considered as essential characteristics of ‘life,’ i.e., a manifestation focused essentially on the physical faculties of the dead, encapsulated in the faculty of movement, the ba; the life form and energy associated with the visible statue, that takes the offerings, the ka, which in Egyptian is etymologically connected with ‘food’ and ‘sustenance’; and the ability to be part of the community of both the living and the gods, the akh. These three faculties of the living are equally present in the gods, the difference between divine beings and deceased humans lies not in their nature, but in the power they possess.
According to Sze-kar Wan, there is a reason why few ghosts are
recorded in the Hebrew Bible. In the few cases where ghosts are
mentioned, they are mostly weak and powerless. Is this due to the
lack of imagination on the part of the authors/redactors of the
Hebrew Bible? Wan points out that this should be understood as the
result of the victory of Yahwism when the biblical authors won over
those segments of Israelite society in which the ancestor spirits
are worshipped.
Looking from a comparative angle, Steven Shankman inquires about the reasons why the spirit-cult is strictly prohibited in the Old Testament and about the relationship between this prohibition and the notions of holiness and responsibility. Shankman argues that, for the Israelite authors, to worship a ghost is an act of defilement, since God was holy, and all other spirits or demons are thus unholy. It is also an act of moral degradation, since to divine the future from the spirits would amount to abandoning one's responsibility to create one's own future and to serve the elders in society. Shankman's examples from the Old Testament, Confucius and Plato suggest how ethical considerations might shape ideas and attitudes toward ghosts. It is interesting to note that neither Confucius nor Plato denies the existence of ghosts, or their possible influence on the life of human beings. On the contrary, their arguments are based on the premise of popular conceptions, except that they propose a better, or at least a more rational, approach.
Charles King's article confronts one of the most tenacious problems in religious studies, i.e., how to discover our modern or cultural biases and presumptions in understanding ancient, or ‘other,’ religious traditions. His example is the Roman concept of manes. King's point is that the manes were in fact like deities that the Romans invoked to address major issues in their lives. Although it is often said that manes are worshipped by family members, especially the financial heir, King points out that in fact manes could be worshipped by those with or without financial inheritance relations, as the obligation to worship might not be determined solely by financial ties. King's article exemplifies how modern scholars understood an idea of the ghost by implicitly following the Christian ideology, and how the Romans conceived their idea of ghosts under the constraint of their received tradition and according to their need of a reciprocal principle between the living and the dead.
As Alan Bernstein points out in his article, when the church writers failed to eradicate Roman, Germanic, or Celtic pagan traditions that considered the dead to be active in the world, they tried to incorporate these older, more general ideas, such as that of the Ghostly Troop, into their own mental framework, while demonizing those that resisted assimilation. In the popular mentality that survives in scattered written texts, we see an enduring need to imagine a close tie between the living and the dead, or the need to imagine that the dead could still be active and powerful in the world of the living. These two trends, according to Bernstein, persist in the modern world.
Fernando Vidal further explores the problem that Bernstein points out regarding the authority of the church and the popular conception of ghosts. Vidal discusses the eighteenth-century Benedictine Dom Calmet's "Treatise on the apparitions of spirits." Calmet, influenced by Enlightenment thought, tried to conceptually and ‘scientifically’ deal with the tenacious appearance of ghosts, revenants, and vampires. Because the Church had to allow the possibility of miracles, given that the examples in the Bible could not be denied, such examinations of the reports about ghosts and vampires cannot but be wrought with ambiguities and difficulties. For Calmet, the existence of ghosts cannot be doubted, but those incidences that can be verified as true must be approved by the doctrine and examination of the church; that is, the story must play a role in the Church and have a certain influence on salvation.
The scientific mind developed further in the nineteenth century. As Li Shang-jen argues, in some English ghost novels of this period, the authors' interests in the minor details and physiognomy of the apparitions were related to their scientific background. Li Shang-jen discusses the origins and applications of some of these scientific measures and their relevance to the detection of ghosts in nineteenth-century ghost novels. In the end, however, no sure result emerged from the mechanical objectivity that the scientific methods vowed to pursue. Any possible detection of ghosts, therefore, lies in the extraordinary capacity – even the pathological nature – of individuals who, because of such unusual capacities, could somehow come into contact with the immaterial ghosts. The epistemological difficulties encountered by nineteenth-century psychical researchers demonstrate once more that, in the battle between scientific naturalism and spiritualism, both sides tried to construct an idea of ghosts, or their non-existence, according to acceptable ideological assumptions.
Given the extremely complex situation in Indian religion, Huang Po-chi's article highlights only one aspect of Indian ideas of death and the dead: a cult related to the worship of the strange deity/demon Vetala. Simply put, Vetala are a kind of spiritual being, usually evil, who were believed capable of inhabiting corpses. It was thought that they possessed the power to know human destiny, and people thus worshipped Vetala, or tried to control them through exorcistic methods in order to gain their power. Huang Po-chi studies Vetalapancavimsatika in the Kathasaritsagara, a collection of fantasy tales, which uses the cult of Vetala as its frame story. The image of Vetala in the stories is lively and witty, unlike that of a pale ghost or ferocious demon that terrifies people. Thus, literary imaginations were mixed with popular religious ideas.
Turning to
Liu Yuan-ju's contribution concentrates more on a narrative model represented by the anomaly tales of the Six Dynasties period, which she calls ‘guiding the deviant towards the norm.’ The anomaly tales, however, are not merely traditions inherited from the past. They are in a sense creative works that reorganize the categories by which the world is ordered and evaluated. Using as evidence three sets of Six Dynasties narratives representing traditional, Daoist, and Buddhist tales of the strange, Liu demonstrates how this narrative form attempted to solve the troubled relationship between the human and the spirit worlds through rituals informed by shamanistic, Daoist and Buddhist practices, and how it symbolically expressed a dialectic relationship between the normative and the anomalous in an age of upheavals. Liu's discussion concurs with the observation that the idea of ghost demonstrates a collective need of the time: people needed to see a world back to the norm, and a society in which injustice could be eliminated, even though only in the imaginary tales.
FFinally, from a more theoretical approach, P. Steven Sangren looks at the problem of ghosts in Chinese culture in light of psychoanalytic and structuralist/Marxian perspectives. Sangren argues that previous anthropological discussions of the nature of Chinese attitudes toward their ancestors, their family ghosts so to speak, mostly agree that it reflects the socially and culturally defined filial piety toward one's parents. While some argue that Chinese ghosts/ancestors are benevolent, others argue that they are far less so. Sangren further discusses how a practice-oriented theoretical approach might accommodate both structuralist and psychoanalytic interpretations of Chinese ethnographic materials. The ancestors, remembered by means of tablets on domestic and lineage alters, are icons of social order in the abstract, and basically benign and positive. In contrast, the ancestor's spirit in the grave is more problematic, likely to exercise both negative influence and, less predictably, positive fertility upon descendants and others. It can be seen that the Freudian concept of ambivalence toward the ancestor/ghost finds an expression or converging point with the structuralist view.
Rethinking Ghosts in World Religions provides readers who are interested in the religious mentality and its embodiment in the figures of ghosts with some comparative material for further reflection. As the essays demonstrate, the idea of ghost can be approached from various cultural contexts as an example that embodies social values and reflects social needs. Although each may address only certain aspects of the idea of the ghost, collectively the essays provided a venue to rethink the idea of the ghost in world religions with fresh angles that see ghosts as a cultural phenomenon propelled and built by a collective imagination that dealt with the relationship between the living and the dead, and reflected certain social needs. The comparative perspectives represented by these articles provide rich opportunities for scholars working in different religious traditions to take a step back and see what other societies and cultures have to offer to their understanding of a very human and universal yet locally specific phenomenon.
Religion & Spirituality / New Age
Enlightened Duality: Essays on
Art, Beauty, Life and Reality As It Is by Lee Lozowick & M. Young (Hohm
Press)
Enlightened Duality/span> is a book of essays presenting
the essential teachings of the
Lee Lozowick is a poet, songwriter and author of 14 books of
spiritual teachings, many translated into French, German & Spanish.
His Alchemy of Love and Sex was hailed by Publisher’s Weekly for its
common-sense insights and demystifying approach to tantric love and
beyond. Lozowick is the spiritual son of the late Yogi Ramsuratkumar,
the revered beggar saint of
Lozowick's unique teaching of enlightened duality encompasses all aspects of manifest creation, and yet its essential core is firmly rooted in non-dual dharma. Essays by Lozowick and Young on such varied topics as traditional spiritual practice, creativity, impermanence, knowing oneself, and the practical aspects of relationships of all kinds, encourage readers to cultivate a deeper appreciation and acceptance of reality and to see the Divine within the diverse play of life's circumstances.
This book provides a rich and nuanced picture of a real teacher and how he lives in the real (dualistic) world ... There are many other priceless nuggets in this book. I hope you enjoy turning them up as much as I have. – from the Foreword by Dr. Robert Frager, Sufi sheikh in the Halveti-Jerrahi Order, and founder of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology
A wonderfully invigorating book ... filled with honesty, piercing insight and encouragement, a testament to the sincerity and total commitment of its authors. – from the Preface by Eddie Stern, co-publisher, Tiamariipa Magazine
Bhakti-yogi Lee Lozowick has again sung from the depths of his transmission from his teacher, and the result is an amazing offering to the sacredness of life. Definitely worth the read! – Judith Simmer-Brown, author of Dakini's Warm Breath
Reading the essays of Enlightened Duality is like circumambulating a marvelously elegant and complex piece of sculpture, which invites us to experience the teaching from many different angles. The book provides excellent reading for any serious practitioner of a spiritual path; true to Lozowick's style, it is uncompromising in its provocation to penetrate illusion, while it ultimately uplifts and inspires as it shows readers the possibility of a life informed by greater clarity, compassion and wisdom.
Readers may encounter in Enlightened Duality a 'living truth' that will stir a resonance in their minds and hearts. Such a living truth may be revelatory, healing, and deeply satisfying, but it may also be profoundly unsettling. It may shake the ground beneath our feet. Yet, as the authors assert, such provocation is desirable to one who wants to fully live.
Science / Biology / Outdoors & Nature / Ecology
The Environment: Science,
Issues, and Solutions by Mohan K. Wali, Fatih Evrendilek, & M.
Siobhan Fennessy (CRC Press)
As the world strives to go green and clean, the discipline of environmental science is poised to take center stage. Its components span many disciplines, sub-disciplines, and specialties. Reflecting this, introductory courses are often taught by instructors trained in fields ranging from biology, chemistry, and physics to philosophy and political science. The next generation of environmental scientists, professionals, and decision makers need an understanding of environmental issues that is not only cohesive, but firmly based in science. They need environmental literacy.
The Environment/span> has answers to such questions as:
- What is the structure and function of natural systems?
- Where and how do populations and communities live?
- How have human impacts altered ecosystems?
- How can we lessen impacts and create long-term solutions?
The authors of The Environment are Mohan K. Wali, professor in the School of Environment and Natural Resources and John Glenn School of Public Affairs at Ohio State University; Fatih Evrendilek, associate professor of environmental science and vice dean of the faculty of engineering and architecture at Abant Izzet Baysal University, Bolu, Turkey; and M. Siobhan Fennessy, associate professor of biology and co-director of environmental studies at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio.
These authors have taught environmental science for many years and have a first-hand view of both the technical and the human dimensions of environmental subject matter. It was the experience from 18 years of teaching an introductory course that led first author Wali to take the lead on writing a new text. Fellow ecologists, Evrendilek and Fennessy, terrestrial and aquatic specialists, respectively, joined the effort as coauthors. They emphasize the basics of ecology, use this foundation to build an understanding of major environmental problems, and explore methods that might mitigate what has been degraded or destroyed. In doing so, they include an in-depth selection of references, examples and data, case studies, and websites. With these tools, students can further explore topics of special interest.
Exploiting the fertile ground provided by young and open minds, The Environment employs a back-to-basics, building-blocks presentation. In a logical progression, they provide an understanding of the science, a delineation of the human population and technological growth that has led to environmental issues, and an exploration of solutions to those problems. The book is divided into three major sections. Section A introduces principles of ecology that can be used to understand how ecosystems respond to disturbance. Section B deals with how human population growth, expanded technology, and unprecedented economic development have altered ecosystems and created serious local, regional, and global environmental problems. Section C, the final section, makes a case for seeking long-term solutions through the prevention and mitigation of environmental problems in their inter-connected, interrelated, and thus, interdependent ways.
AAn excellent work for advanced students in chemistry and chemical engineering. – R. Darby in Choice, January 2007, Volume 44, No. 5
The Environment presents ecological/environmental science without oversimplification, supplies detailed, substantive information on environmental issues, and highlights the complexity and integrated nature of environmental issues. The book is intended for a beginning college-level environmental science course. It is a fully integrated text rigorously exploring environmental issues. The authors’ engaging style will pique the interest of students, challenge their critical abilities, and foster environmental literacy based on a fundamental understanding of the systems of the natural world.
Social Sciences / Anthropology / History /
Elite Craft Producers, Artists, and Warriors at Aguateca:
Lithic Analysis by Kazuo Aoyama
(Monographs of the Aguateca Archaeological Project First Phase,
Volume 2: The
Elite Craft Producers, Artists, and Warriors at guateca: Lithic Analysis, the second volume of the Monographs of the Aguateca Archaeological Project First Phase, investigates the previously limited study of Classic Maya elite craft and artistic production by using excavation data from twelve structures in Aguateca and the analysis of over ten thousand lithic artifacts.
This archaeological report centers on findings at Aguateca, a unique site in the Pctexbatun region of the southern Mayan lowlands. A significant production center for utilitarian and luxury goods, this ancient Maya city suffered an unexpected attack in AD 810 and both elite and non-elite residents rapidly abandoned the city, leaving valuables and ceramics in their customary arrangements. These artifacts provide an encapsulated record of domestic and political activities on the last day of the area's occupation.
The in situ artifact assemblages from use and storage structures enable the study of specific activities and allow them to be addressed in depth owing to the precise spatial patterning of the assemblages, which differ significantly from those of gradually abandoned sites.
Elite Craft Producers, Artists, and Warriors at Aguateca: Lithic Analysis uses the excavation data from rapidly abandoned structures and various use areas to investigate artistic and craft production activities by elite men and women and warriors in Classic Maya society. Focusing on detailed use-wear analysis of stone tools by employing high-power microscopy to address production, warfare, and the domestic and ritual lives of the Maya, author Kazuo Aoyama, professor of anthropology at Ibaraki University in Ibaraki, Japan, uses this research to propose that Classic Maya elite men and women artists and crafters played multiple social and economic roles, such as scribes and warriors, as well as having administrative, diplomatic, ritualistic, and domestic duties. This view implies a more flexible and integrated system of Classic Maya elite participation in craft production than is usually proposed. Elite Craft Producers, Artists, and Warriors at Aguateca: Lithic Analysis also moves beyond basic descriptions examining the nature of artistic and craft production by elite men and women in Classic Maya society and providing some insights into the nature and role of warfare in the decline of that civilization.
Aoyama carried out his research in Guatamala over the decade
1998-2008 and before that in
Forthcoming from Monographs of the Aguateca Archaeological Project First Phase
Volume 1: Burned Palaces of Aguateca: Excavations and Ceramics edited by Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan
Volume 3: Life and Politics at the Royal Court of Aguateca: Artifacts, Analytical Data, and Synthesis edited by Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan
A fine piece of lithic scholarship that advances knowledge of the
Classic Maya elite in a number of important domains. – Payton
Sheets,
Elite Craft Producers, Artists, and Warriors at Aguateca:
Lithic Analysis represents the first systematic study of
lithic artifacts from Aguateca in particular and the Petexbatun
region of
Social Sciences / Archaeology / History /
Creating Communities: New
Advances in Central European Neolithic Research edited by Penny
Bickle, Daniela Hofmann (Oxbow Books)
The formation and experience of community in prehistory continues
to be at the forefront of archaeological investigation into the
past.
Creating Communities/span> asks readers to think again
about one of the central communities involved in the adoption of the
Neolithic way of life across
Creating Communities, edited by Daniela Hofmann and
Penny Bickle, both of the
Although the internationally debated LBK is one of the best
researched Neolithic cultures in
Creating Communities originated at a 2006 EAA
session at
The nature and quality of the LBK material invites reflection on how different scales of social life can best be interconnected. Modderman's (1988) dictum of ‘diversity in uniformity’ for the LBK is frequently quoted, but they are still grappling to explain the social mechanisms behind these patterns. How can LBK material culture be so instantly recognizable and comparable over vast geographical areas and over half a millennium, while at the same time showing regional variations in almost every respect? How are these similarities and differences negotiated at various social levels?
One reason for archaeology's persistent problems in explaining this point is the dominant and pervasive tendency to think in neatly packaged, bounded building blocks of social interaction: beginning with the individual and working up via the household, settlement, settlement cell and micro-region to larger regions and eventually the culture. All these elements function a bit like Lego bricks, where several small ones can be connected together to form the next largest entity, but without their own boundaries being questioned in the process. Traditionally there has been a tendency to aim modeling at the top tiers of this hierarchy of bricks: at social structure and even culture-wide norms. It is here that Bickle and Hofmann saw the need to depart from the established canon to open up new trajectories of investigation, but without creating an artificial focus on just the small scale.
Creating Communities is only a first step towards a more multi-scalar approach to LBK identity. As well as addressing issues relevant to a particular category of material or a specific region, the contributions can be read as invitations to further explore the interconnections between individuals, households, settlements and regions. These identities are not static and clearly defined, but are fluid and merge into each other, problematizing established archaeological categories such as body/person, house, site, region and culture. As the papers demonstrate, the editors are already some way to understanding the detail of regional and site contexts in which LBK identities were constructed, reconstructed and lived out. However, while debates around social structure, identity and exchange are well established in the LBK literature, bridging the gap between the various approaches remains problematic.
InIn spite of the achievements of the last few decades, much else remains to be accomplished to drive LBK studies forward. Why, for example, do LBK worldviews and values form such a negligible part of investigations? Is it because researchers implicitly assume them to be static geographically and chronologically? And how certain can researchers be of their chronological models, on which so much interpretation ultimately rests?
Creating Communities brings together a variety of
approaches and voices from across
Social Sciences / Marriage & Family / Biographies & Memoirs
The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir by Katrina Kenison (Springboard Press)
With my children on the brink of adolescence, I longed for
something I could scarcely name, but that our orderly, well-defined
life no longer seemed to provide. Watching my sons growing and
changing so visibly, almost from one day to the next, I sensed
something inside me breaking loose and changing as well.... – from
the book
The Gift of an Ordinary Dayspan> is an intimate memoir
of a family in transition – boys becoming teenagers, careers ending
and new ones opening up, an attempt to find a deeper sense of place,
and a slower pace, in a small
Poised on the threshold between family life as she's always known it
and her older son's departure for college, Katrina Kenison is
surprised to find that the times she treasures most are the
ordinary, unremarkable moments of everyday life, the very moments
that she once took for granted, or rushed right through without
noticing at all.
Kenison in
The Gift of an Ordinary Day describes herself
becoming unclear about what her life's purpose is supposed to be as
her sons growing out of babyhood and into the unknown territory of
adolescence. Their comfortable suburban
Kenison is the author of Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry, coeditor of various books and former series editor of The Best American Short Stories.
In her second affecting memoir about motherhood and nurturing
(after Mitten Strings for God), Kenison, here at middle age with two
sons in their teens, pursues with graceful serenity a time of
enormous upheaval and transformation in her family's life.…
Meanwhile, Kenison's youngest, Jack, began a new high school, while
the older boy, Henry, a musician, applied to colleges, and the
family had to adjust both to the move and to the startling,
delightful pleasures of country life. – Publishers Weekly
With an honesty and intimacy rarely achieved in modern memoir,
Katrina Kenison dissolves yearning into its complex, sensate parts.
This is a book about mid-life want and loss. It is also a most
knowing book about a most gracious love – about the gifts that are
returned to those who find beauty where it falls. – Beth Kephart,
author of House of Dance
An honest, graceful book that every parent will appreciate. In
the thick of challenging changes, emotional troughs, and tender
realizations, the reader will find comfort and guidance. Here is a
fine writer, a dedicated mother, and a spiritual seeker speaking
intimately to parents in search of wisdom. – Thomas Moore, author of
Care of the Soul and Writing in the Sand
If you are lucky you'll read this lovely, wise book before your
children go off to college. If you read it after they've flown the
coop you will likely find much that is familiar in this warm,
poignant story. – Jane Hamilton, author of A Map of the World and
Laura Rider's Masterpiece
Much more than a memoir of motherhood; it is an inspired and
inspiring meditation on midlife. What Katrina Kenison gives mothers
– her gift – is the promise of reinventing ourselves as our kids
grow up and we grow older, and the assurance of an invitingly
abundant landscape on the far side of parenthood. – Lisa Garrigues,
author of Writing Motherhood
A A courageous and generous contribution to deepening American
family life. Kenison reassures us that mothers can claim powerful
new ground right along with their teenagers. – Nancy Mellon, author
of Body Eloquence
From deciding to leave all she knows in a Boston suburb and move to a rural New Hampshire town to grappling with the high-stakes game of college admissions for her older son and holding her breath (and tongue) as her younger son seeks his way through the trials of early adolescence, Kenison in The Gift of an Ordinary Day illuminates many mothers' fears and desires, poignantly describing her own. The relationships, hopes, and dreams she describes will touch women's hearts, and her words will inspire mothers as they try to make peace with the inevitable changes in store for them.
Travel / Outdoors & Nature / Sports / Biographies & Memoirs
Two Coots in a Canoe: An
Unusual Story of Friendship by David E. Morine
(Globe Pequot Press)
Two Coots in a Canoespan> is a journey of whim, humor,
and self-discovery along the
In January 2003, retired CEO Ramsay Peard, 61, called his old
friend Morine, 59, and asked the longtime conservationist if he
wanted to canoe the four-hundred-mile-long
“Where will we stay?” Peard asked.
“We’ll rely on the kindness of strangers.”
And that’s what they did. Mooching their way downriver enabled
these vintage voyagers to get an insider’s feel for the area and a
firsthand look at many of the issues confronting the people who live
along the Connecticut: the demise of farming, the growth of the
health care industry, the loss of manufacturing, the boom in higher
education, gay rights, Native American rights, Wal-Mart versus Main
Street, and the issue closest to home – the river and the
conservation efforts to protect it.
They were also able to delve deep into the lives of complete
strangers. But sadly for Morine, he eventually realized that the one
life he never dug into was Peard’s. After spending a month with him
in a canoe, he had no idea that his friend’s innermost thoughts were
on a dark and disturbing course.
Fans of Dave Morine will be delighted and not at all surprised
that his newest work,
Two Coots in a Canoe, is – nearly to the end – a
book of laughter, an account of the comic misadventures of two old
friends as they float down the sunlit Connecticut River. And then
come the final pages: The two friends’ dark destination will
surprise and shock all readers, even those with the wits of a wood
tick. This remarkable book should be bought and read. Those who do
will remember it for a long time. – Bil Gilbert, author of God Gave
Us This Country and winner of the National Magazine Award
A great story about the mystery of friends and comfort of
strangers. Dave is not just the supreme conversationalist but also
the original conservationist; he virtually defined the art and
practice of private land conservation in the 70's and 80's. No one
engages people the way he does. His journeys are always worth
sharing. John McPhee's birch-bark canoe has nothing over two coot's
canoe. – Spencer B. Beebe, President, Ecotrust
Dave ‘Bugsy’ Morine has once again given us a great book – an
adventure story that I would have published when editor of National
Geographic Magazine. – Bill Garrett
This is the story of two men in one canoe, but on two different
journeys. One sees endless opportunities while the other knows his
fate is sealed before he ever picks up his paddle. Fresh and honest,
light and dark, terminal yet hopeful – these are the undercurrents
of a gifted storyteller who undertakes a modern adventure down a
storied river valley. Enjoy Dave Morine’s tale: he is a wonderful
raconteur. – Howard Corwin, M.D., psychiatrist, conservationist
Dave Morine has done it again, proving that it is often what you
do when you aren’t striving to get ahead that is most important.
When you finish this book, you’ll want to drop everything, grab a
canoe, and explore your own river. – George H. Fenwick, President,
American Bird Conservancy
It has been said Dave Morine never let truth get in the way of a
good story, that this is all true makes it that much better a story
– about a friendship and a river. The river conservation message is
inspiring. – Rebecca R. Wodder, President of American Rivers
I just finished my journey down the Connecticut River with Dave
Morine and Ramsay Peard, and couldn't wait to share this
recommendation with armchair adventurers everywhere.... I found good
reading (and fascinating people) around every bend in the river. The
ending makes all the more poignant their happy, revealing reliance
on the kindness of strangers. – Doug Wheeler, former Executive
Director, Sierra Club
Written in the tradition of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, Two Coots in a Canoe will be treasured by conservationists, canoeists, and old friends still seeking a thrill. Everyone else will be delightfully entertained.
Travel /
The USA Book by Karla Zimmerman, et.al. at Lonely
Planet (General Pictorial Series: Lonely Planet)
This oversized volume combines photography with content,
organized by state with additional sections on popular themes,
regional identities, road trips and US territories. More than 400
photographs illustrate the unique qualities and diversity of the 50
states. The book contains details on each state, including history,
culture and traditions, politics, myths and legends, trademarks and
essential experiences. The Best Road Trips chapter and maps
highlight the
The USA Book draws together the history, culture,
politics, religions, legends, trademarks and essential experiences
of
The
Look more closely, and the American quilt unfurls in all its
surprising variety: the eclectic music scene of
This is a country of road trips and great open skies, where 4
million miles of highways lead past red-rock deserts, below towering
mountain peaks, and across fertile wheat fields that roll toward the
horizon. The sun-bleached Native American hillsides of the
The world's third-largest nation has made substantial
contributions to the arts. Georgia O'Keeffe's wild landscapes,
Robert Rauschenberg's surreal collages, Alexander Calder's elegant
mobiles and Jackson Pollock's drip paintings have entered the
vernacular of avant-garde 20th-century art. And cities like
Cuisine is another way of illuminating the
But the
As a collective voice, the
In
The USA Book, the collective identity, however,
goes only so far in defining Americans. This is, after all, a
country that celebrates – or rather mythologizes – feats of ‘rugged
individualism,’ a notion well supported by the enormous ranks of the
great and dastardly alike who have left their mark on the
The
Despite this unprecedented moment in
Citizens from all walks of life have participated in ‘the great American experiment,’ a concept that rewards bold ideas and hard work, no matter one's place in society. The results of nurturing this entrepreneurial spirit have been far-reaching. From the historic flight by the Wright Brothers to the Apollo moon landing, Americans have achieved ambitious goals. Technological revolutions beginning with Thomas Edison's light-bulb and Henry Ford's automobile manufacturing methods continue today in the pioneering work by Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin, whose innovations in information technology continue to have an overwhelming effect on communication and industry across the globe.
Following in the footsteps of the best-selling The Travel Book,
Lonely Planet's
The USA Book is a one-stop, comprehensive pictorial
covering all corners of the
Contents this Issue:
Managing by Henry Mintzberg (Berrett-Koehler Publishers)
Learning First!: A School Leader's Guide to Closing Achievement Gaps by Carolyn J. Kelley & James J. Shaw (Corwin Press)
Barron's AP Chinese Language and Culture:
with Audio CDs by Yan Shen (Barron’s Educational Series)
Have a Good Laugh: Jewish Jokes for
the Soul by Ron Isaacs (KTAV Publishing House)
The United States Presidents Illustrated
by Robert M. Reed (Schiffer Publishing)
The Zinn Reader: Second Edition by
Howard Zinn (Seven Stories Press)
Deadly Descent – A Lottie Albright
Mystery by Charlotte Hinger (Poisoned Pen Press)
Critical Inquiry: The Process of
Argument by Michael Boylan (Westview Press)
Urban Wind Energy by Sinisa
Stankovic, Neil Campbell & Alan Harries (Earthscan)
Rethinking Ghosts in World Religions
edited by Mu-chou Poo (Numen Book Series: Brill)
The USA Book by Karla Zimmerman, et.al. at Lonely Planet (General Pictorial Series: Lonely Planet)