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We Review the Best of the Latest Books

ISSN 1934-6557

Febuary 2008, Issue #106

Contents:

Audio / History / Americas / African Americans

A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation by David W. Blight, read by the author, with Richard Allen & Dion Graham [Abridged Audiobook, 5 Audio CDs, running time: 6 hours] (Random House Audio)

A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation by David W. Blight (Harcourt)

Day after day the slaves came into camps and everywhere the “Stars and Stripes” waved – they seemed to know freedom had dawned to the slave. – John Washington, 1873, remembering August 1862

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the one hundred or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group in A Slave No More.
Wallace Turnage was a teenage field hand on an Alabama plantation, John Washington an urban slave in Virginia. They never met. But both men saw opportunity in the chaos of the Civil War, both escaped north, and both left remarkable accounts of their flights to freedom. Handed down through family and friends, these narratives tell gripping stories of escape. In A Slave No More Turnage's journal (a sketch of my life or adventures and persecutions which I went through from 1860 to 1865) is about his attempted escapes and their dire consequences: from his first to his successful fifth and last runaway. His account is particularly noteworthy in its revelation of the slave and free-black networks he found and utilized. Washington's Memorys of the Past is very much a coming of age story, offering a unique window on life in a slave society.
Working from a genealogical material, historian David W. Blight, director of Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and professor of American history, has reconstructed Turnage’s and Washington’s childhoods as sons of white slaveholders and their climb to black working-class stability in the North, where they reunited their families.
To relate a bit of Washington’s story from A Slave No More: John M. Washington was born a slave on May 20, 1838, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Washington begins his narrative with the wry comment that he “never had the pleasure of knowing” his mother’s owner, Thomas R. Ware, Sr., who died before John was born. And he supposes “It might have been a doubtful pleasure.” So far as can be determined, Washington also never knew his father, though readers can assume he was white. As an autobiographer reconstructing his own youthful identity, Washington says revealingly: “I see myself a small light haired boy (very often passing easily for a white boy).”
With these words Washington recollects the complicated story of so many American slaves – mixed racial heritage. The offspring of sexual unions between black women and their white male owners or pursuers suffered a legacy of confusion, shame, and abuse, but they also occasionally benefited from economic and social advantages, especially in towns and cities. Washington was one of more than 400,000 out of four million American slaves by 1860 who were officially categorized as ‘mulatto’ or other terminology to distinguish a person of some white parentage. From 1830 to the Civil War, the state of Virginia especially had gone to great effort, although unsuccessfully in practical terms, to legally establish a color line marking who was white and who was not. White friends, and perhaps relatives, aided John’s education and opportunities early in his life. But in Fredericksburg and elsewhere, due to his mother’s status and color, he was considered a chattel slave until the war came.

Exactly who Washington’s father was – and how John got his middle initial and last name – have been impossible to trace. A John M. Washington, a distant cousin of President George Washington, lived in Fredericksburg, went to West Point in the 1810s, became an artillery officer, and died in a shipwreck in 1853. But no evidence exists for his patrimony of John. Ware had four sons by 1838, ages twenty-six, twenty-four, twenty, and eighteen. Any of them could have been Washington’s father, although only the two younger ones, John and William, seem to have been residents of Fredericksburg at the time.
Washington’s story is much clearer on his mother’s side. Women determined, protected, and supported John’s life chances. His maternal grandmother was a slave named Molly who was born in the late 1790s and owned by Thomas Ware. Molly, called ‘my Negro woman,’ is acknowledged for her ‘faithful service’ in Ware’s 1820 will, in which he bequeathed her and her children (valued at $600) to his wife, Catherine (who would eventually be John’s owner). By 1825 Ware’s estate inventory lists Molly and four children; John’s mother, Sarah, was the oldest at age eight. Molly would have another four children by the 1830s. In June of 1829 this strong-willed mother misbehaved (perhaps running away) in such a manner that Catherine Ware arranged with a punishment house to execute a “warrant against Molly and for whipping her by contract $1.34.” Perhaps Molly’s defiance was sparked because her sister, Alice, had just been sold away for $350.
Sarah Tucker, John’s mother, was likely born in January 1817. Who the men fathering all these children were remains a researcher’s mystery. Sarah probably also had a white father; she is described in various documents as being ‘bright mulatto’ and short in height. Ware did not own any men who could have been either Sarah’s or John’s father. When Sarah gave birth to John in 1838, she was a twenty-one-year-old who had somehow learned to read and write, a less unusual accomplishment for urban slaves in small households than for plantation slaves.
Washington yearningly describes his eight years in the countryside in the idyllic opening section of his narrative. His mother must have worked as a house slave because he played ‘mostly with white children.’ He spent summers ‘wading the brooks’ and climbing ridges from which he could see the ‘Blue Ridge Mountains’ and a “moss covered wheel . . . throwing the water off in beautiful showers” at a mill on the Rapidan River. And perhaps most important, by the time he was eight, Sarah had taught him the alphabet.
Equipped with literacy, if not with good spelling or grammar, Washington brilliantly uses these images of nature as backdrop for his descent into the hell of slavery. He employs natural beauty as a metaphor for freedom and a reminder of the terror of bondage, knowing that the glories of nature can both inspire the soul and mock human sadness. He worries at one point that his ‘minute events’ would not ‘interest’ his reader, and then he quickly moves his story forward.
According to A Slave No More, recent study of runaway slaves in the antebellum South found that slaveholders’ advertisements often described a slave as ‘proud, artful, cunning . . . shrewd’ or ‘very smart.’ Historians Loren Schweninger and John Hope Franklin conclude that the typical runaway exhibited “self-confidence, self-assurance, self-possession . . . self-reliance.” It was rare for women to run away, especially those with small children. In the database produced by Schweninger and Franklin, based on extant runaway advertisements in five Southern states, 81 percent of all runaways were male. Of the 195 Virginia runaways from 1838 to 1860, of which Sarah would be one, only seventeen (9 percent) were female.

The audio version of A Slave No More is read by the author together with Richard Allen, a stage actor and four-time Audie-nominated and Earphone-winning narrator with stage and television credits; and Dion Graham, an award-winning and critically acclaimed actor, who has performed on and off-Broadway, in films, and in several hit television series.

Three fascinating works are packaged here: two unpublished manuscripts by former slaves Wallace Turnage (1846-1916) and John Washington (1838–1918), and an illuminating analysis of them by award-winning historian Blight. …Blight provides an accessible historical and literary context for the manuscripts and explores, as fully as possible, the men's lives not covered in their manuscripts (both are self-emancipated). These powerful memoirs reveal poignant, heroic, painful and inspiring lives. – Publishers Weekly
Two remarkable lives, previously lost, emerge with startling clarity, largely through the words of the principal actors themselves... Washington and Turnage... offer a precious commodity. – William Grimes, The New York Times
[The narratives are] fascinating documents that live up to Blight's claims for them. – Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
[The] narratives are powerful and poignant and help to fill in the cracks of history in voices too rarely heard... While nothing can match the power of the men's own words, Blight's commentary does much to round out the portrait of the slave and former-slave experience... Readers will... be powerfully grateful. – Christian Science Monitor
[F]ascinating... gripping stories that speak to our understanding of the slave legacy and the meaning of the Civil War and Reconstruction with obvious implications for the issues of reparations, historical responsibility, and historical memory that continue to roil our society. – Boston Globe
Two recently uncovered slave narratives create the backbone for this enthralling, intimate read. – Chicago Tribune

Working from an unusual abundance of genealogical material, Blight has reconstructed Turnage’s and Washington’s childhoods in slavery and their climb to black working-class stability in the North, where they reunited their families. In A Slave No More, the untold stories of these two ordinary, and yet also extraordinary, men take their place at the heart of the American experience. We are fortunate, indeed blessed, that Blight has recovered and brought to light these stories.

Audio / History / Americas / Biographies & Memoirs / Racial Reconciliation

Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History [AUDIOBOOK] (9 Audio CDs, unabridged, Running Time: approximately 9 hours) by Thomas Norman DeWolf (Brilliance Audio)

Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History by Thomas Norman DeWolf (Beacon Press)

In 2001, at forty-seven, Thomas DeWolf was astounded to discover that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in American history, responsible for transporting at least 10,000 Africans to the Americas. His infamous ancestor, U.S. senator James DeWolf of Bristol, Rhode Island, curried favor with President Jefferson to continue in the trade after it was outlawed. When James DeWolf died in 1837, he was the second-richest man in America.
When Katrina Browne, Thomas DeWolf’s cousin, learned about their family’s history, she resolved to confront it head-on, producing and directing a documentary feature film, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North.
Inheriting the Trade is Tom DeWolf’s memoir of the journey in which ten family members retraced the steps of their ancestors and uncovered the hidden history of New England and the other northern states. Their journey through the notorious Triangle Trade – from New England to West Africa to Cuba – proved life-altering, forcing DeWolf to face the horrors of slavery directly for the first time. It also inspired him to contend with the complicated legacy that continues to affect black and white Americans, Africans, and Cubans today.
Inheriting the Trade reveals that the North’s involvement in slavery was as common as the South’s. Not only were black people enslaved in the North for over two hundred years, but the vast majority of all slave trading in America was done by northerners. Remarkably, half of all North American voyages involved in the slave trade originated in Rhode Island, and all the northern states benefited.
 DeWolf tackles both the internal and external challenges of his journey – writing about feelings of shame, white male privilege, the complicity of churches, America’s historic amnesia regarding slavery – and our nation’s desperate need for healing.

Tom DeWolf’s deeply personal story, of his own journey as well as his family’s, is required reading for anyone interested in reconciliation. Healing from our historic wounds, which continue to separate us, requires us to walk this road together. – Myrlie Evers-Williams, civil rights leader, chairman emeritus of the NAACP (1995-98), and author of The Autobiography of Medgar Evers, Watch Me Fly, and For Us, the Living
Inheriting the Trade is like a slow-motion mash-up, a first-person view from within one of the country’s founding families as it splinters, then puts itself back together again. – Edward Ball, author of Slaves in the Family

Inheriting the Trade is a powerful and disarmingly honest memoir. An urgent call for meaningful and honest dialogue, the book illuminates a path toward a more hopeful future and provides a persuasive argument that the legacy of slavery isn’t merely a southern issue but an enduring American one.

Business & Investing / Economics / History / Americas

Corridors of Migration: The Odyssey of Mexican Laborers, 1600-1933 by Rodolfo F. Acuña (University of Arizona Press)

In the San Joaquin Valley cotton strike of 1933, frenzied cotton farmers murdered three strikers, intentionally starved at least nine infants, wounded dozens, and arrested more. While the story of this incident has been recounted from the perspective of both the farmers and, more recently, the Mexican workers, Corridors of Migration is the first book to trace the origins of the Mexican workers’ activism through their common experience of migrating to the United States.

Rodolfo F. Acuña explores the history of Mexican workers and their families from seventeenth-century Chihuahua to twentieth-century California, following their patterns of migration and describing the establishment of their communities in mining and agricultural regions. He shows the combined influences of racism, trans-border dynamics, and events such as the Mexican Revolution and World War I in shaping the collective experience of these people as they helped to form the economic, political, and social landscapes of the American Southwest in their interactions with wealthy landowners.

Acuña, founding chair of the Chicano studies program at San Fernando Valley State College and professor of Chicano/a studies at California State University, Northridge, follows the steps of one of the murdered strikers, Pedro Subia, reconstructing the times and places in which he lived. By balancing the social and geographic trends in the Chicano population with the story of individual protest participants, Acuña shows how the strikes were in fact driven by human choices rather than the Communist ideologies to which they have been traced since the 1930s. Corridors of Migration thus uncovers the origins of twentieth-century Mexican American labor activism from its earliest roots through its first major manifestation in the San Joaquin Valley cotton strike.

Acuña relates that when he began this project in 1973, he wanted to write the story of the 1933 San Joaquin Valley Cotton Strike. A milestone in Chicana/o history, the strike involved 18,000 cotton pickers and their families, 80 percent of whom were Mexicans. Against all odds, they defied the planter community – which com­prised planters, banks, ginning companies, the American Legion, and the Boy Scouts, among others. The enemy were all those who nurtured racism and the willingness to distort truth, to murder, and to deliberately starve men, women, and children, to maintain total control over their ‘America.’ The only missing pieces of the puzzle were, how had Mexicans gotten to the San Joaquin Valley – and how had they endured?

In 1973, the major work on the strike was Paul S. Taylor and Clark Kerr's study, but it had not answered either of these questions. Acuña conducted extensive interviews and read mountains of documents. He made his pilgrimage to Berkeley and visited Paul S. Taylor in the summer of 1973. He says he was caught off guard when Taylor launched into a lecture on how Mexicans had fought for ‘tierra y libertad’ in Mexico but, here in the United States, were too apathetic to obtain land. According to Taylor, Mexicans were leaderless. He described Pat Chambers – the communist organizer of the 1933 strike – as a physically small man, saying he would not be surprised to hear Chambers described ‘as a Brooklyn Jew.’ The commu­nists, Taylor told him, had taken a leaderless people and brought them down on the law-and-order people. The Mexicans had accepted the communist leadership, which made things all the more difficult because the planters' principal weapon was that the strike leaders were communists. Taylor said that planter after planter would say to him, "Every dime I had in the world was tied up in that crop." Taylor had internalized the collective myths of our society, accepting as absolute truth the illusion that nothing would have happened if the communists had not organized the strike.

Acuña in Corridors of Migration says he believes it is fair to say that if what happened in the 1933 strike had happened to white workers, it would have been a major page in U.S. labor history. Organizer Caroline Decker told him that it was a good thing that some of the workers were white. If they hadn't been, there would have been a massacre.

As a starting point for his research, Acuña randomly selected Pedro Subia, who had been murdered on a picket line near Arvin, California, on October 10, 1933. He wanted, not to write a historical biography, but to learn more about the experiences of Subia's wave of immigrants. What corridors had they forged on their way to the San Joaquin Valley?

One of the principal corridors leading from Mexico to California passed through Chihuahua. For centuries, Mexican people moved through this central corridor, which he choose to call the Camino Real corridor, on their way to the mines of northern Mexico. They often stayed a generation in places like Zaca­tecas before moving north. In more contemporary times, some passed through Chihuahua or lived there for a time. The mines were hugely important in pulling people north. In mining camps such as Parral, newcomers formed barrios, where they lived alongside their compatriots. They named these neigh­borhoods after their former homes, a practice they continued when they moved into the Southwest. Drawn by a bonanza, large numbers of people would populate mining camps, haciendas, pueblos, presidios, and the like. When the bonanza ended, the population would contract, with thousands migrating to other bonanzas or haciendas and farm settlements. Along the way, they named their colonias after their homes – Chihuahuitas, Sonora Towns, and the like.

According to Corridors of Migration, Pedro Subia was born in Camargo, Chihuahua. With thousands of his compatriots, he moved along the Mesilla corridor from El Paso, Texas, to Morenci, Arizona, where he worked for thirty years before migrating to Cal­ifornia. The mines of Arizona pulled tens of thousands of Mexicans to the United States from 1870 to 1920. Acuña captures the experiences that Subia and his compatriots had before forging corridors to eastern Arizona, and their Chihuahuita in Morenci.

Thousands of Mexicans from Zacatecas, Durango, and other Mexican states also traveled these corridors, even as Sonoran and New Mexican workers and their families forged and followed still others. Major events such as the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20 intruded into their consciousness, as news, rumors, and propaganda flowed back and forth between Mexico and the United States. A huge copper empire was formed in Sonora by copper companies such as Phelps Dodge. During the Revolution, as the mines expanded in the United States and contracted in Mexico, many miners – now politicized by the Revolution – were forced across the line to seek work in the mines of Arizona and in the factory farms of western Arizona and eastern California.

The reclamation project along the Gila River to the Salt River Valley led Subia and other Mexican workers to the final corridor. Tens of thousands like Subia traveled west, often following the crops of the greenbelt that linked the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles, working in factory farms created by the mira­cle of modem irrigation. Industrialized commercial agriculture, like mining, required huge armies of workers. Many of the Mexican miners drifted into agriculture naturally. Since colonial times, they had worked the land and sea­sonally gone to the mines to supplement their living. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they migrated to larger U.S. municipalities and emerging cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles. The corridors brought them to the San Joaquin Valley in 1933.

According to Corridors of Migration, from all accounts, Pedro Subia was a decent and hardworking family man. When Subia died in the San Joaquin Valley, he left a son, who also lived and died in the valley, where he made his own Chihuahuita. Like many other Mexican immigrants, Pedro Subia Sr. and his family were looking for somewhere they could enjoy, at least for a time, what so many others did.

To write the book, Acuña says he made pilgrimages to university li­braries, historical societies, church record repositories, state and national ar­chives – in the U.S. and in Mexico. He also conducted extensive oral interviews of Clifton-Morenci miners and residents of Chihuahua, Mexico.

This is one of the most ambitious and significant works in Mexican, Chicano, and labor history as well as the history of Mexico-United States relations to appear in recent years. . . . This is a classic, and with its sweeping grasp, massive documentation, and strong writing, it will stand as the greatest scholarly contribution in Acuna's illustrious career. – Dr. Dionicio Nodín Valdés, author of Al Norte: Agricultural Workers in the Great Lakes Region

From one of the founding scholars of Chicano/a studies comes Corridors of Migration, the culmination of three decades of dedicated research into the origins of the migrations and the labor activism that have helped to shape the economics and politics of the United States into the twenty-first century. The documents presented in the book explode the myth that Mexicans were born apathetic and never attempted to organize.

Business & Investing / Job Hunting & Careers / Reference

Salary Facts Handbook: The Definitive Source of Pay Information on 800 Jobs by the Editors at Jist Publishing (Jist Works)

You know you'd like to earn more money, but do you have the facts or know the marketplace well enough to justify getting a higher salary for yourself? What will you earn if you move to a bigger city or a different industry? How much money will you make in a different career or with more education? – from the book

Salary information is closely guarded by businesses, but in an official government survey, 1.2 million establishments disclosed facts and figures on current wages for 800 jobs at 11 levels of education and training. Based on this survey data, Salary Facts Handbook gives accurate and detailed pay information.
The Editors at JIST have in Salary Facts Handbook tried to make complicated labor market and career information understandable, accessible, and useful. Readers also get advice for negotiating a better salary, discovering whether they are underpaid, leveraging their skills, and asking for a raise. Readers discover a job's starting pay; find out its mean and median pay; and see how wages vary by state, metropolitan area, and industry. They learn how gender, education level, age, union membership, veteran status, industry, and other factors affect pay. The authors also provide information about the minimum wage, holiday pay, overtime pay, hazard pay, severance pay, and much more.

Salary Facts Handbook shows, for 800 jobs, how much earnings can vary and for what rea­sons. For example, here are some facts extracted from the book:

  • If readers want to earn money as a Hairdresser, Hairstylist, or Cosmetologist, try to land a job in a movie studio. Beauticians employed in the Motion Picture and Sound Recording Industries averaged $84,430 per year, compared to an average of $23,350 for those employed in Nursing and Residential Care Facilities.
  • Among the 30 largest metropolitan areas, the lowest-paying area for Dentists is Chicago. Dentists there earn an average of $74,810, less than half of what they earn in some other areas, such as San Francisco, Orlando, Washington, St. Louis, and Cleveland.
  • Veterans working in water transportation jobs such as Sailors and Marine Oilers and Captains, Mates, and Pilots of Water Vessels enjoy a 38.8% salary advantage over nonveterans.
  • Actors average 10 hours of work per week, and half of them work varying hours.
  • The best-paying job that can be learned through on-the-job training is Air Traffic Controllers (median earnings of $117,240).

Summary of major sections of Salary Facts Handbook include:

  • Part I. Tips for the Best Salary. Learn how to boost earnings. Identifies the factors that affect earnings: educa­tion, location, industry, labor unions, veteran status, gen­der, and work hours. Explains how to leverage knowledge and skills for better pay in a present job or in a new occupation. Gives specific tips for negotiating pay, including the overall strategy, useful information to have for the interview, negotiating during the interview, and responding to a job offer.
  • Part II. Pay Rankings of Jobs, Industries, and Locations. Compares jobs by ranking them according to their earn­ings. Lists are organized in several useful ways, such as the highest-paying jobs at each level of education or training and the highest-paying jobs in each industry. Also ranks industries, states, and metropolitan areas by their average pay. From these lists readers may get ideas about jobs or indus­tries to consider or places where readers might relocate.
  • Part III. Salary Facts. Provides detailed salary facts about 800 occupations: national wages at several different levels; best-paying industries; wages in the 50 states and the 30 metropolitan areas with the biggest workforces; and income effects of personal factors such as level of educa­tion, gender, and veteran status. Information is based on authoritative government surveys.
  • Part IV. Frequently Asked Questions About Salary. Answers common questions about pay, such as who does and does not qualify for minimum wage or overtime pay, how much of pay can be based on commissions, and what severance pay and hazard pay are.

The book also has two appendices: the first, Resources for Further Exploration lists resources for researching the facts about pay and jobs and for learning how to conduct a successful job hunt, and the second, Salary Adjustment Percentages for All Met­ropolitan Areas, provides percentages that readers can use to adjust national average income figures upward or downward to match local income levels.

Salary Facts Handbook gives readers ideas about how to improve their earnings by getting further education, mov­ing to a new location, or shifting to a higher-powered industry. If they are still planning their career, they will find lists that compare jobs, industries, and locations by salaries so they can target the most prom­ising choices.

Ultimately, pay depends on an agreement between the individual and their employer. Readers can use the book to learn specific strategies and tips to help negotiate the best possible salary. Readers can thus avoid the traps that let interviewers screen them out of a job and use techniques that can persuade employers to pay more than they may have intended.

This comprehensive reference features an easy-to-use format; vast and varied information; and many useful rankings of jobs by demographic, geographic, and education, and other criteria. Salary Facts Handbook gives readers access to closely guarded salary information. Readers will find authoritative wage figures, not just national averages, but also figures for states, major metropolitan areas, and different industries, and not just one-size-fits-all figures, but also adjustment factors they can use to help fit their salary expectations to their actual situation. The authors used this data to create an accurate resource for job seekers, career changers, and students. Readers get facts plus advice in one essential resource.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership

Mastering the Rules of Competitive Strategy: A Resource Guide for Managers by Norton Paley (Auerbach Publications)

The stakes are high and real. Money is spent. Personnel are committed in a battle for the triumph or downfall of a company. Yet, given the same circumstances, some companies continue to thrive while others wash out. In the end, it is the dynamics of the competitive marketplace, the quality of the organizations business plan, and the ability to implement strategies, that validate and ensure a company’s existence.

Written by Norton Paley, consultant to large companies and nations as well as small and midsize companies, Mastering the Rules of Competitive Strategy blends selected historical lessons with modern business practice to provide a platform on which to understand, develop, and apply competitive business strategies. It identifies commonalities in culture and strategy among businesses that have successfully adapted to changing marketplaces and emerging competitors.

According to Paley, strategy is the art of coordinating the means (money, human resources, and materials) to achieve the ends (profit, customer satisfaction, and company growth) as defined by company policy and objectives. In more pragmatic terms, strategy is defined as actions to achieve objectives at three levels:

  • Corporate strategy. Deploying company resources through a series of actions that would fulfill executives' vision and objectives for the future of the organization.
  • Midlevel strategy. Covers actions in a three- to five-year period and focuses on fulfilling specific objectives.
  • Lower level strategy or tactics. Time frame shorter than those at the two higher levels. Correlates with a company's or business unit's business plan and the yearly budgetary process.

Mastering the Rules of Competitive Strategy defines nine rules of strategy to implement in readers’ own companies to achieve success. The book’s nine chapters correspond to the nine strategies:

Strategy Rule 1. Shift to the Offensive: Turn a Risky Competitive Situation into a Fresh Market Opportunity. When boldness meets caution, boldness wins. Based on historical evidence in the military and other disciplines, this rule points out that standing still – stalled by lack of ideas and immobilized by fear – can fester into severe problems. Readers learn how to use a ten-step guideline to customize strategies and stay on the offensive.

Strategy Rule 2. Maneuver by Indirect Strategy: Apply Strength against Weakness. Indirect strategy is the rule that stands out as one of the consis­tently successful ingredients of a business plan. Readers learn how to apply strength against a competitor's weakness, resolve customer problems with offerings that outperform those of competitors, and achieve a psychological advantage by creating an unbalancing effect in the mind of the rival manager.

Strategy Rule 3. Act with Speed: The Essential Component to Secure a Competi­tive Lead. Exhaustion through the draining of resources damages more companies than almost any other factor. This rule shows readers how to identify the barriers to speed and to maintain ongoing momentum.

Strategy Rule 4. Grow by Concentration: Deploy, Target, Segment. This rule means adopting a strategy that concentrates resources where one can gain superiority in selected areas. They emerge stronger than their competitor in key segments of their choosing. This rule also shows readers how to integrate concentration into business plans and strategies.

Strategy Rule 5. Prioritize Competitive Intelligence: The Underpinnings of Business Strategy. This rule shows readers how to utilize the tools of competitive intelli­gence, identify the behavioral personalities of competitors, and select agents to augment traditional competitive intelligence techniques.

Strategy Rule 6. Align Competitive Strategy with Your Corporate Culture: The Life-line to Your Organization's Future. Readers learn how to identify the characteristics of high-performing business cultures and see their impact on developing competitive strategies. They also learn techniques to reenergize the company's culture as they reinvent their competitive strategies.

Strategy Rule 7. Develop Leadership Skills: The Moral Fiber Underlying Business Strategy. Leadership is about responsibility and accountability, as well as achieving corporate and business unit objectives. This rule shows readers how to per­sonalize their leadership style and power-up their business strategy through effective leadership.

Strategy Rule 8. Create a Morale Advantage: Engage Heart, Mind, and Spirit When All Else Fails. In all mat­ters that pertain to an organization, it is the human heart that reigns supreme at the moment of conflict. Readers learn how to overcome the barriers to success resulting from poor morale and use techniques to activate high morale.

Strategy Rule 9. Strengthen Your Decision-Making Capabilities: Fortify Intuition, Enhance Business Experience, Expand Knowledge. Studying business history in general and probing past campaigns in particular can sharpen decision-making and strategy skills. Since no event is a stand-alone occurrence, readers learn how to link one event to another, and uncover the roots of a problem. Using case examples, readers learn how to analyze market events and interpret competitive encounters despite the fog of uncertainty.

According to Paley, deliberately and systematically following these nine enduring rules of competi­tive strategy can help readers overcome the obstacles that have crushed other managers. Then, integrating them into their business plans and strategies can increase their chances of triumphing over rivals. On the other hand, deliberately avoiding them or even minimizing their use places readers at a distinct competitive disadvantage.

Mastering the Rules of Competitive Strategy has a unique feature at the end of each chapter: the strategy diagnostic tool provides a reliable performance measure to support readers in building, evaluating, and monitoring their business strategies. Also, there is an outline of a strategic business plan in the appendix that can serve as the starting place for developing strategies, as well as a format for presenting ideas to management. Each chapter is supported with real-company examples, quick-tip guidelines, and applications.

Mastering the Rules of Competitive Strategy guides readers to think like strategists and become more proficient as they fight today's competitive battles, helping managers successfully navigate a changing marketplace. It shows them how to prepare themselves, their subordinates, their company, or business unit – to win customers, to win market share, to win a long-term profitable position in a marketplace, and to win a competitive encounter before a rival can do excessive harm. The time-tested rules and numerous real case examples serve as guiding principles as readers get to the roots of competitive strategy.

Business & Investing / Management & Leadership / Human Resources / Training

Better Than Bullet Points: Creating Engaging e-Learning with PowerPoint by Jane Bozarth (Pfeiffer)

Better Than Bullet Points focuses exclusively on the application of PowerPoint to the creation of online training programs. Jane Bozarth, e-learning coordinator for the North Carolina Office of State Personnel's Human Resource Development Group and a columnist for Training Magazine, steps readers through the powerful features of this popular desktop application, covering everything from text to art, animation to interactivity. Better Than Bullet Points thus offers a guide for tapping into the force of PowerPoint and PowerPoint-based authoring tools, such as Articulate or Adobe Presenter, to create e-learning programs.

In writing this book, Bozarth assumes that most users have PowerPoint 2002 (XP includes the 2002 version) or 2003, and that some have upgraded to Vista/2007. Readers with earlier versions will find most of the book relevant to them; the biggest difference being the more limited animations available to those using older versions. PowerPoint 2007 introduced a new interface, and where the difference is noticeable, instructions have been included for both 2007 and 2002XP/2003. Otherwise, changes brought with 2007 are, for the purposes of develop­ing e-learning, minimal.

As Better Than Bullet Points offers a chronological tour through the process of creating e-learning with PowerPoint, Bozarth recommends reading the chapters in order, then returning to needed sections. The book sometimes refer­ences material covered earlier, so familiarity with the content will help.

Chapter 1 provides an overview, with examples, of the possibili­ties of using PowerPoint for developing e-learning. Readers then begin a chronological tour of creating good PowerPoint-based e-learning programs. Chapter 2 discusses the basics of instructional design for e-learning, with particular attention to setting clear goals, reducing cognitive load, and practical applications of the research on multimedia learning. This chapter also walks through the process of transforming former classroom content for online delivery and ends with ideas on choosing an appropriate treatment and examples of creating a basic program layout. Chapter 3 deals with developing a good user interface, creating navigation, and making decisions about learner control. Chapter 4 addresses the issue of choosing graphics and text that are meaning­ful, rather than decorative, and examines the impact the right images can have. Chapter 5 extends this discussion to creating and editing images for use in e-learning programs. Chapter 6 offers a look at effec­tive animations and the focus is on animations that teach rather than entertain. Chapter 7 provides exten­sive examples of creating interactions, from quizzes and games to simulations with branching decision making. Chapter 8 provides exam­ples of some add-ons, such as animated talking characters, and discusses ways of extending programs through blended learning and collaborative experiences. Examples of performance support tools, job aids, and ideas for ‘nice to know’ content are included. Chapter 9 covers the final step of development, adding narration and multimedia. Chapter 10 looks at ways of distributing e-learning programs to learners. The Appendix offers a quick overview of basic PowerPoint features and commands. Finally, there is a References and Resources section.

Rather than purchasing expensive software, dedicated for e-learning, Better Than Bullet Points advocates using a tool that most of us already have, saving time and money without the cost of re-training. The benefits of combining PowerPoint and proven instructional design principles are refreshing: a clearer message and targeted training that can stand on its own. – Diane D. Chapman, teaching assistant professor and director, Training and Development Online Program, Department of Adult & Higher Education, North Carolina State University

Jane Bozarth again shows us how to maximize resources and time while getting results. In her typical straight-shooting style, the author demonstrates that quality e-learning comes from good design, not expensive tools and software. Our own organization has achieved great success with her common-sense approaches – and now yours can, too. – Thom Wright, director, North Carolina Office of State Personnel

PowerPoint ranks very high in our ‘top 100 tools for learning.’ It is a powerful tool yet it is not exploited as much as it could be for learning purposes. This book will show you how to get the most out of it. – Jane Hart, Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

Jane Bozarth's guide Better Than Bullet Points explains the power of graphic choices, treatments, hotspots, and hyperlinks. She suggests ways to replicate games and simulations, to handle multimedia files, and to create a good GUI using the Slide Master. Readers will see how to blend their e-learning with other training systems and make it available to all their learners. – Karen Hyder, online speaker coach and event producer, The eLearning Guild

By providing in-depth guidance and exercises, Better Than Bullet Points enables training practitioners to create effective learning interactions in PowerPoint. Perfect for front-line trainers as well as instructional designers, the book includes step-by-step instructions, and the information is practical and immediately applicable. Provided that readers already own copies of PowerPoint, the book puts free real-world tools into their hands and helps make e-learning accessible to those who have previously been excluded from taking advantage of the opportunities e-learning can provide.

Business & Investing / Small Business & Entrepreneurship

Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing: A Simple Battle Plan for First-Time Marketers by Jay Conrad Levinson & Jeannie Levinson (Entrepreneur Press)

There actually is a way to assure that one will market the right way and attain the profits that are the fruits of guerrilla marketing, according to this book. That way is to start in the right place. Many business owners start out in the wrong direction, doomed to become a statistics in reports of the 50 percent of small businesses that fail the first year and the 95 percent that fail within the first five years. Many of these now forgotten companies had the goods, but they didn't have the marketing savvy.

There are so many businesses like these that Jay Conrad Levinson and Jeannie Levinson wrote Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing to help those ventures onto the right course. As consultants, they take start-up entrepreneurs by the shoulders and aim them in the right direc­tion, then give them a nudge and watch gravity go to work.

According to Jay Conrad Levinson, father of guerrilla marketing and the chairman of Guerrilla Marketing International and Jeannie Levinson, the president of Guerrilla Marketing International and co-founder of the Guerrilla Marketing Association, readers will learn a few minor changes they can make to bring about major results, that is, increase profits and free time. As they go deeper into the options for marketing their business in guerrilla fashion, they will learn about a guerrilla marketing strategy, and then create one that they will be able to use for the next one to ten years. The wisdom that went into that strategy will translate into the guerrilla marketing calendar to guide them and put them in control, and they will see how to get the most from the internet.

According to Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing, the way to get off to a running start is to have the personality of a successful guerrilla marketer, and the book shows how to develop it. Entrepreneurs also need to have special attributes. The way to get those attributes is to be born with them or to gen­erate them. They also need the right attitudes. Guerrilla marketing is not easy, but the Levinsons want readers to know that once they have the personality, the attributes, and the attitudes of a guerrilla, it is hard to fail. It's tough to be anything but successful with the mindset of a guerrilla.

So let’s say that readers are about to launch a guerrilla marketing attack. It is a ten-step process, and the Levinsons tell readers the research they must do. They show readers how to create a benefits list so that they know what makes them good and can communicate that goodness to their target audience.

Another key concept is meme – a simple way to communicate an idea instantly, and the book shows readers how to create one. In fact, there are 200 marketing weapons that readers can use, and the majority of them don't cost a cent, yet they're all weapons of mass profitability. The book helps readers figure out which of the weapons are best for them. Readers are going to have to operate with a plan, and the book shows how to create that plan – it may be only seven sentences long, but it will also be powerful and potent. To achieve financial greatness, the timing has got to be perfect, so the book covers how to create a guerrilla marketing calendar.

Then the Levinsons show how to get allies through what they call fusion marketing partners. Once readers are armed with these guerrilla marketing necessities they launch the guerrilla marketing attack. The hard stuff comes next – maintaining the attack. The Levinsons teach readers what to expect and how to sidestep the tough parts.

Keeping track of efforts is important, and Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing shows readers how. Then comes a time when everything is falling into place and they are making larger bank deposits than expected. According to the authors, that is not the time to kick back; instead, that's the cue to ramp up all the actions and to improve every single aspect of marketing.

Guidance for new marketers, reminders for experienced ones, and useful tips for everyone. … You need to read this book today; adopting this mindset, it will be difficult for you to not be successful. They are the BEST at the game! – Loral Langemeier, The Millionaire Maker, CEO and founder of Live Out Loud

Jay is a genius. Now you can be one too. Just do what he and Jeannie say, don't tell anyone where you got the ideas and you're in. On the other hand, that would be selfish. Time to tell everyone you know what an amazing resource you're getting... – Seth Godin, author of Meatball Sundae

The Guerrilla Marketing series has gained the well deserved trust of millions of followers worldwide who have benefited greatly from its wisdom. Now comes the Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing that will enable readers everywhere to adopt the mindset of a guerrilla marketer in order to achieve better business results, at less cost, faster. This is a wonderful book from equally wonderful people. – Stephen M.R. Covey, author of The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything

If you are starting a business on a tight budget, this book is for you! The Father of Guerrilla Marketing reveals dozens of high impact, low-cost strategies for getting new customers using time, energy and imagination. If you want to start making money from your new business, get this book! – Mitch Meyerson, founder of Guerrilla Marketing Coaching

Sit down, buckle your seat belt and be prepared to succeed. With this book you no longer have excuses to fail but a system to succeed. This Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing is consistently unique and stimulating and provides unquestionable value to all who pick it up, peruse it and use it.  – Al Lautenslager, bestselling co-author of Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days

... If you want the best, most proven, most widely used and easiest-to-implement advice in the world on how to market a startup business, go no further than Jay and Jeannie Levinson's new book. They know what really works, and you need to know what they are so generously willing to share with you. – David Garfinkel, author of Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich

All companies, whether just starting up or already working hard, can benefit from the guidance offered in Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing. The Levensons guide readers through a guerrilla marketing campaign, step by step, every step of the way. Their other Guerrilla Marketing books will be a lot more valuable to readers now that they can start at the start.

Cooking, Food & Wine / Health

Betty Crocker Whole Grains: Easy Everyday Recipes by the Betty Crocker Editors (Betty Crooker Book)

By now we're all well aware of the health benefits of eating whole grains, such as reducing the risk of cancer and heart disease or promoting a healthy weight or possibly even playing a role in managing diabetes. Yet we tend to avoid unfamiliar, but delicious and easy-cooking grains such as quinoa, kasha, bulgur or wheat berries, fearing they might not taste good. Those who embrace whole grains know that spelt, brown and wild rice, buckwheat, rolled barley and whole-grain cornmeal are as delicious as they are healthy. And they are low in total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.

But how do home cooks include the goodness of whole grains in their family's favorite meals? From the experts at Betty Crocker, Betty Crocker Whole Grains delivers the answers. From Oatmeal Pancakes with Maple-Cranberry Syrup and Campfire Popcorn Snack to Spanish Rice Bake and Frozen Strawberry Cheesecake, readers discover how tasty – and easy – cooking with whole grains can be. Featuring 50 color photos, the book demonstrates how easy it is to incorporate whole grains into any diet, such as: Whole Wheat Waffles with Honey-Peanut Butter Drizzle, Mixed-Berry Coffee Cake, Two-Seeded Checkerboard Dinner Rolls, Blue Cornmeal Muffins, Take-Along Oatmeal Bars, Caramel Corn Crunch, Broiled Dijon Burgers, Chicken and Veggies with Bulgur, Canadian Bacon-Whole Wheat Pizza, Lentil Stew with Cornbread Dumplings, Red Pepper Polenta with Gorgonzola, Chocolate Fudge-Raspberry Crisp, Cranberry-Orange Oatmeal Cookies, and a favorite in the Betty Crocker Kitchens, Three Grain Salad.

Features of the book include:

  • More than 140 easy recipes offer ways to enjoy whole grains at every meal.
  • Informative Q&As demystify whole grains and describe the many different types available, from bulgur and cornmeal to millet and quinoa.
  • Chapters on slow-cooker meals and sides, 30-minute meals and on-the-go snacks help readers feed their hungry families in a hurry.
  • Special sections take the guesswork out of cooking whole grains.
  • Recipes feature complete nutrition information, including whole grain servings and carbohydrate choices.
  • A thorough guide to whole grains including where to find and store them; ways to incorporate them every day; cooking charts for each.

This specially designed version of Betty Crocker Whole Grains features an all-new 32-page section that thoroughly explores heart health – amplifying why it's important to understand and incorporate information that will protect women and their families. Here is the most up-to-date advice from cardiologists as well as the latest nutrition data that can help anyone develop a life-long habit of good heart health, including:

  • Risk factors and various heart diseases (angina pectoris, stroke, heart attacks).
  • How to identify the signs of a heart attack or stroke.
  • Risk factors readers can change from quitting smoking to maintaining a healthy weight.
  • Advice on how to get started on the road to good heart health.
  • Top foods for a healthy heart with tips to add more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish and good fats to the diet while reducing saturated and trans fats, and keeping an eye on salt, alcohol, and calories.
  • Why being active and daily exercise is vital to heart health.

For more than 75 years, Betty Crocker has earned a reputation as the name readers most trust for culinary advice through cookbooks, magazines, radio and television. Increasingly Betty Crocker has published cookbooks focused on women's health, cancer, cholesterol, low-carbs, diet, exercise and well-being. Betty Crocker has now partnered with WomenHeart, the national coalition for women with heart disease, to promote awareness of this vital issue.
Each of the 1,000 recipes in this edition of the Betty Crocker Whole Grains contains breakdowns of nutrition information, including calories, fat, sodium, carbs, and other nutrients. ‘Low fat’ recipes are highlighted for easy referencing.

Betty Crocker Whole Grains not only demystifies, but defines whole grains and their benefits with this wonderful introduction to whole grains. It will have great appeal to cooks who are just discovering how interesting grains are, and to whole grain veterans in search of more grain recipes. With this cookbook, the experts at Betty Crocker make it easy for readers to include whole grains in their family’s favorite meals. The alliance between the Betty Crocker and WomenHeart will raise awareness of heart disease and send a powerful message to the many women who rely on Betty Crocker for great culinary and nutrition information they need to make good lifestyle choices.

Cooking, Food & Wine / Health

Techniques of Healthy Cooking, Professional Edition by The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) (Wiley)

When the CIA first approached the idea of nutritional cooking, in 1990, we set out to prepare a manual for our students to use in the two courses we then offered in nutrition and nutritional cooking. That manual grew like Topsy to become the 500-plus page volume we are now proud to present in its third edition. Over the years and through each edition of this book, more information has come to the fore about healthy cooking. And with each passing year, our guests have continued to call for great-tasting food that is good for you in every sense of the word. – from the introduction

More than ever, Americans are seeking ways to avoid weight gain and its associated health problems – but they still want to eat out and enjoy it. To cater to today's increasingly health-conscious consumers, successful chefs, restaurateurs, and other foodservice professionals must rise to the challenge of providing nutritious, well-balanced food that is still great-tasting and indulgent enough to leave diners feeling satisfied.

In its newly updated guide to healthy cooking, The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) provides professional chefs with the tools they need to create menus and recipes that are high in nutritional value and in flavor. Drawing on the latest dietary guidelines, Techniques of Healthy Cooking provides detailed information for chefs to introduce more flavorful, healthier choices to their menus. Readers will find advice on ingredients and serving sizes, guidance on developing recipes and menus, and more than 400 recipes.
Founded in 1946, The Culinary Institute of America is an independent, not-for-profit college offering bachelor's and associate degrees in Culinary Arts and Baking and Pastry Arts. A network of more than 37,000 alumni in foodservice and hospitality has helped the CIA earn its reputation as the world's premier culinary college.

Geared toward the sophisticated chef, Techniques of Healthy Cooking points out that "because chefs are often at the vanguard of culinary trends, [they] have the opportunity to influence changes in how people in the United States eat." The book offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date information available on healthy cooking techniques, ingredients, and menu planning. A broad overview of nutritional basics includes the current dietary guidelines and caloric intake recommendations, straightforward information on how nutrients function in the body, and expert instruction on reading and using food labels and on planning recipes and menus around a range of dietary guidelines. Chapters on Ingredients and Techniques teach the essentials of healthy cooking, from selecting the most wholesome ingredients to using healthy cooking techniques to maximize a dish's nutritional value and its flavor. Techniques of Healthy Cooking covers cooking techniques for everything from vegetables, legumes, and grains to meats, fish, poultry, and more, and includes recommendations for minimizing fat, salt, sugar, alcohol, and other unhealthy elements in a recipe.

Throughout the book, nearly 150 food photographs identify key ingredients and illustrate finished dishes, while step-by-step technique photos demonstrate key cooking methods. Embracing the trend of sharing among cultures, the book borrows healthy traditions from cuisines around the world, such as harnessing the antioxidant benefits of tea or using the strong flavor profiles of Mediterranean, Asian, and Latin American cuisines to replace excess sodium. In a chapter on Developing Healthy Recipes and Menus, chefs will find useful suggestions for reading a recipe for nutrition; modifying existing recipes to reduce calories, sodium, fat, and cholesterol; and developing original healthy recipes from scratch. The book also covers menu development techniques for general menus, vegetarian menus, and menus for special needs such as age, gender, and nutrition-related diseases.

Techniques of Healthy Cooking includes more than 400 enticing recipes divided into chapters like Soup, Salads, and Appetizers; Main Dishes for Lunches and Dinners; Side Dishes; and Breakfast and Beverages. They include:

  • Warm Salad of Hearty Greens, Blood Oranges, and Pomegranate Vinaigrette.
  • Corn Velvet Soup with Crabmeat.
  • Carrot Consommé with Lemongrass, Ginger, Spicy Asian Grilled Shrimp, and Bean Threads.
  • Tenderloin of Beef with Blue Cheese and Herb Crust.
  • Poached Cornish Game Hen with Star Anise.
  • Apple-Cheddar Pizza.
  • Brussels Sprouts with Mustard Glaze.
  • Pecan Carrots.
  • Celeriac and Potato Puree.

And no food bible, even a healthy food bible, would be complete without a chapter on Baked Goods and Desserts, which are just as scrumptious as their bad-for-you counterparts. Recipes like Chocolate-Ricotta Bavarian, Honey-Vanilla Cheesecake, Poached Pears, and Lemon Tart are all made with whole-grain flours, fruit juices to replace traditional sugars, and other healthy ingredients, proving that when it comes to healthy eating, it is possible to have your cake and eat it too.

Created by the experts at The Culinary Institute of America, Techniques of Healthy Cooking is an indispensable companion for the working chef in today’s health-conscious world. Beautifully illustrated with photos, this healthy food guide is perfect for the aspiring chef, the restaurant owner, and even for the serious home cook – anyone looking to make mealtime more nutritious without skimping on taste or style. Inspired by the information and recipes in the book, readers will be able to create dishes that are not only exciting and great-tasting, but healthy at the same time. Chefs will be able to introduce appealing new healthy menu options to consumers, address special health and nutrition requests effectively and easily, communicate nutrition information to customers in any type of establishment, and integrate the guidelines for healthy cooking into their day-to-day restaurant operations.

Criminology / Reference / Encyclopedias / True Accounts

The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation by Michael Newton, with a foreword by John L. French (Checkmark Books)

For good or ill, we live in interesting times.

It seems to be a law of nature that criminals always outpace law enforcement in adopting and adapting new technology. From six-guns to auto­matic weapons, Model-T Fords to Lear jets, adding machines to the Internet, lawbreakers always get there first, while law-abiding servants of the people lag behind.

Just how much modern science and technol­ogy affects the world of crime and crime fighting is explored in The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation. More than 300 entries cover the applications and techniques of crime scene investigation, including ballistics analysis, DNA identification, fingerprinting, forgery detection, forensic medicine, firearms identification, toxicology, tool marks, and trace evidence. This book also features case studies that demonstrate criminal investigation practices in action, as well as historical and biographical entries about key break­throughs and pioneers in the field of forensic science.

Entries in The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation include accident reconstruction, arson investigation, DNA evidence, explosives, forensic anthropology, forensic chemistry, forgery, Identi-Kit, medical examiners, organic compound analysis, spectroscopy, victimology, to name a few.

According to John French, for a long time, the advantage was with crimi­nals. If they could commit crimes and leave the scene undetected, they stood a good chance of escaping jus­tice. Those charged with law enforcement had to rely on luck, witnesses, and any obvious clues that criminals may have left behind. Luck was often with careful criminals, who made sure not to leave behind any incriminating personal effects.

In the foreword to The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation John French, crime scene supervisor with the Baltimore Police Crime Laboratory says that if he were asked to pick the one recent scientific advance that changed law enforcement most radi­cally, he would have to choose the computer. Comput­ers are used in the analysis of crime patterns: reports, crime scene diagrams, and facial composites by witnesses of suspects.

Police departments on the local, state, and fed­eral levels have established massive databases – data­bases that hold digital records of inked prints of those arrested, latent prints recovered from crime scenes, lands and grooves from fired bullets, fir­ing pin impressions from spent cartridge cases, and DNA patterns from body fluids recovered on crime scenes and taken from sex offenders.

The use of these computer databases gives law enforcement a powerful weapon. Entering a fingerprint into an AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System), a fingerprint examiner can sometimes make a match in a case without witnesses or suspects within 24 hours of the crime's being committed. Similar databases exist to match recovered bullets and cartridge cases from one scene to those on another and to the gun that fired them. Still another does the same for the DNA patterns from recovered evidence and known offenders.

These databases also turn back time. Investiga­tions of crimes that occurred five, 10, even 20 years ago are given new life as more and more information is gathered and criminals who walked free for far too long are being identified and arrested for their past misdeeds.

More important, with the ability to make faster and more accurate identifications comes the oppor­tunity to free those falsely accused of or unjustly imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. Just as the beginnings of fingerprint, firearms, and ABO comparisons lead to the exoneration of innocent men, so too is DNA comparison freeing or clearing those wrongly suspected or convicted.

But criminals always outpace law enforcement in adopting new technology. According to Newton in The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation, the reasons for this law-and-order gap are two-fold. First, law enforcement and the related private security industry are by nature both reactive and conservative. Second, the police are forced to work within a framework of established laws, which always lag behind criminal trends, mending fences after the fact. Offenses must be legally defined, parameters and penalties debated, guidelines for investigation clarified, budgets approved. The process may take months or years, and even when it is accelerated – as in the congressional response to terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 – implementation of new legis­lation still takes time.

Criminals, for their part, are bound by none of the restrictions that hamper law enforcement. The most notorious of them are innovators, always thinking of new ways to victimize the public. As the Reno gang ‘invented’ train robbery in 1866, and Jesse James pioneered daylight bank robbery a few years later, so modern felons labor nonstop to take full advantage of new technology, seeking more efficient ways to beat the system and avoid detection in the process.

According to Newton, progress always has a price. No advance in tech­nology comes without corresponding changes in society, both good and bad. It is the challenge of a free society to use modern technology for the great­est benefit, while restraining those who would cor­rupt new inventions and use them for personal gain, to the detriment of their neighbors and in violation of the law. It remains for future historians to judge how well that task has been achieved, or whether cyberspace shall prove to be an ungovernable Wild Frontier.

… Michael Newton's The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation serves us well, discussing how pioneering investigators found the way to make science work for the law and how technology today continues to improve on their work. – John L. French, Crime Scene Supervisor, Baltimore Police Crime Laboratory

The Encyclopedia of Crime Scene Investigation is a clear and comprehensive reference. Newton ably uses the encyclopedia format to discuss the ‘interesting times’ we live in, where criminals stay one leap ahead of technology, corrupting new inventions for financial gain at the expense of those following the law. Just as he did in his previous volumes on kidnappings and serial kill­ers, Newton uses the encyclopedia format to discuss the history and advances of forensic investigation, giving readers a look at the science involved, the techniques used and the people who developed and promoted the science, and made it work.

Education / Policy / Social Sciences

Deaf Education in America: Voices of Children from Inclusion Settings by Janet Cerney (Gallaudet University Press)

Deaf Education in America provides a detailed examination of the complex issues surrounding the integration of deaf students into the general classroom. Author Janet Cerney, Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Deaf School, Denver, begins her comprehensive work by stressing to parents, educators, and policymakers the importance of learning the circumstances in which mainstreaming and inclusion can be successful for deaf students. This process requires stakeholders to identify and evaluate the perceived benefits and risks before making placement and implementation decisions. The influences of the quality of communication and the relationships built by and with the students are of paramount importance in leading to success.
In conjunction with these principles, Deaf Education in America examines the theory and history behind inclusion, including the effects of the No Child Left Behind education act. Cerney incorporates this knowledge with interviews of the deaf students themselves as well as with their interpreters and teachers. To ensure complete candidness, the students were surveyed in their homes, and the interpreters and educators were questioned separately. Through these exchanges, Cerney determines what worked well for the deaf students, what barriers interfered with their access to communication, and what support structures were needed to eliminate those barriers. As a result, Deaf Education in America offers concrete information on steps that can be taken to ensure success in an inclusion setting, results that reverberate through the voices of the deaf students.

As schools are increasingly moving toward integrating deaf and hard of hearing children, it is important for educators, parents, and policymakers to recognize the complexity of this issue. A deeper look at the influences of communication and relationship building, as well as their interaction, may help to identify for whom and under what circumstances integration is successful. Improved decision making by those involved in placement and implementation is only possible when the perceived benefits and risks associated with the integration of deaf and hard of hearing children are identified and carefully weighed.

Since the communicative needs of deaf students are unlike those of other groups of students with disabilities, their plight cannot simply be an extension of the overall movement toward integration of students with disabilities. Instead, their fundamental human right to language must be examined, studied, and planned for in their daily lived experiences in school. In considering the quality of communication and relationship building in the learning environments for deaf students, it is useful to gain an understanding of the nature of the real-life communicative rela­tionships of deaf students in inclusive settings. This information can be gleaned only through the perspectives of deaf students exposed to inclu­sive learning environments and the professionals who give them access to the voices beyond them.

The interviews contained in Deaf Education in America are the culmination of a qualitative research study investigating the quality of relationship building and communication in the integrated learning environments of deaf students. Since the research in educational interpreting has been scant, this study originated as an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the perspectives of students and interpreters on their relationships and other factors that influence success in an interpreted educational environment. A secondary goal was to gain knowledge of the barriers that deaf students face in accessing communication in integrated learning environments, as well as the support structures they need to succeed.

The data gathered for Deaf Education in America comes from interviews with 10 deaf stu­dents, 5 deaf adults, 10 educational interpreters, 4 regular education teach­ers, and 2 deaf education teachers involved in the integrated experience of deaf students. Interviewing seemed particularly important for the popula­tion of deaf students in that it allowed them to communicate through their native language, American Sign Language (ASL), while removing the pos­sible barrier of not understanding written English surveys or forms. This method also allowed a clearer understanding of the perspectives of these individuals while offering an opportunity to explore the themes embedded within their stories.

A substantial decision in planning for interviews seemed to be the choice of whom to interview. The goal was not in conformity, but in the complexities of the viewpoints and their places of divergence and intersection. Initially, it seemed that the greatest opportunity for understanding would come from choosing pairs: education interpreters with the children they service. But this would be asking interpreters to violate their code of ethics by disclosing information about a specific client. Therefore, Deaf Education in America focused on the perspectives of educational interpreters collectively, rather than on a single comparison with a specific child.

Many deaf students experience a lack of power within the school. Unlike other students their age, they can not choose their classes and where they want to sit in the classroom. They are often not afforded the power to choose their friends but instead are limited to whoever learns sign lan­guage. They are severely limited in their control over their own interac­tions because they rely heavily on their interpreters. Deaf students are also often limited in their ability to achieve academic success by factors such as the effectiveness of their interpreter, their ability to interact with the cur­riculum, and the level of support services available. The lack of power that deaf students experience extends far beyond that of other groups of stu­dents with disabilities or from those from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Overall, the speaking deaf students in Deaf Education in America find more satisfaction in the social and academic areas of school. They still experience frustrations that lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation, but they do not experience the same level of social isolation as the signing deaf students. However, even the speaking deaf students become frustrated due to the communication bar­rier. Though it may not be as intense as it is for their signing deaf counterparts, they have moments when they do not understand their teachers and hearing peers, which lead them to feelings of loneliness and of being different. They also express their frustration in being thought of as less capable by peers and teachers. Even the deaf students who have strong speech and hearing skills feel this indicator of oppression.

The speaking deaf students recognize that they are more easily able to access their education through the combined use of an interpreter and their own limited abilities to hear and speak. They know that even these limited abilities greatly increase their capacity to form relationships with hearing peers. At times they relish their role as an intermediary between their deaf and hearing friends. They are proud of their ability to function in two worlds.

While some speaking deaf students are sheltered from the harshest reali­ties of the underlying themes, the signing deaf students feel the full brunt of language deprivation, loneliness, social isolation, and oppression. In some instances, the deaf student's fundamental human rights to language and to education seem to be in danger as they struggle to connect with a hearing world through one channel of access – their interpreter. Therefore, teachers, interpreters, and other school personnel have an obligation to provide deaf students with language-rich environments, opportunities to build relationships with peers, and freedom from oppression.

According to Cerney in Deaf Education in America , majority (64%) of deaf and hard of hearing students are educated in integrated settings (Regional and National Summary Reports, 2005), yet we seem to be functioning in a void of knowledge. A body of research needs to be developed to increase our understanding of the impact of integrated education on the academic achievement of deaf students. Further research is still needed to analyze the technical differences between a direct and an interpreted education. Additionally, there is a critical need to understand the cause-and-effect relationships of longtime language deprivation, lone­liness, and social isolation on the mental health of deaf students.

The information gathered in Deaf Education in America has serious implications for fed­eral and state policy makers, school administrators, teacher preparation programs, interpreter preparation programs, and school personnel. To improve the integrated educational experiences of deaf children, Cerney proposes the following policies at the Federal, State, and district levels:

  1. Develop and monitor a national accountability system focusing on the academic achievement of deaf students.
  2. Address the knowledge gaps of professionals by creating professional standards for interpreters and teachers who interact with deaf students in different contexts.
  3. Develop national educational interpreter certification standards to ensure that all interpreters attain ASL fluency, adhere to a code of ethics, and understand the role of the educational interpreter.
  4. Develop state policy to allow students to use ASL credits to meet for­eign language requirements.
  5. Clearly indicate in both state and local educational policy that schools for deaf students are viable and positive options for deaf students.
  6. Enforce the policy of a reverse continuum of least restrictive environ­ments for deaf students so that least restrictive environment means that environment yielding the greatest access to language and social learning needs (Department of Education, 1992).
  7. Monitor the IEPs of deaf students at the federal level to ensure that the language and communication needs of deaf students are being met.
  8. Include a language planning document in each IEP that requires a discus­sion of how to meet deaf students' language and social learning needs.
  9. Create magnet programs for students who choose integrated educa­tional placements to encourage larger numbers of deaf students within the same school.
  10. Include in each IEP a plan to identify and service deaf students' mental and emotional health needs with qualified professional providers.
  11. Develop policy to provide qualified interpreting substitutes (for example contract with a local interpreting service agency).

The study also makes specific proposals to guide:

  1. Collaboration Between Educational Agencies and Communities
  2. Support Structures for Educational Interpreters
  3. Deaf Education Teacher Preparation Programs
  4. Regular Education Teacher Preparation Programs
  5. Practice in Schools
  6. Professional Development for Teachers, Interpreters, and Other Adults in Schools
  7. Policy for Addressing Mental Health Needs

The voices of deaf children, as well as their interpreters and teachers, paint a picture of deprivation of communication and deprivation of social con­tacts. But our ceaseless worrying about the academic achievement of deaf children has not enacted change. By moving these recommendations into action, support structures can be created to increase the language and social experiences of deaf children. By doing so, we can make a positive impact on the lives of children and their future academic success.

The revelations gleaned from Deaf Education in America are consistent with previous studies and the discourse in the field of deaf education. The value of this thorough study is the generation of greater insight into these areas of concern. By probing the perspectives of participants about social interaction and rela­tionship building in integrated educational settings, it contributes to the knowledge base in the field of deaf education. By giving insight into the roles and functions of the educational interpreter, it provides baseline data in areas that were previously unexplored.

Health, Mind & Body / Alternative Medicine

Ayurvedic Spa: Treatments for Large and Small Spas As Well As Home Care to Help Everyone Become Healthy, Happy, and Feel Inspired by Melanie & Robert Sachs (Lotus Press)

One of the very first conversations I remember having with Bob happened when we were sitting together in the grounds of a very large psychiatric hospital on the south side of London. I was training as an occupational therapist and Bob had arrived for a placement from a counseling college. I wanted to feel him out on a matter that was eating at me. I cannot remember my exact words, but what I was basically ask­ing him was, "Am I crazy or is it this place, this health care system, this view of the body/mind system? And, if it is not me that's crazy, what is the alternative and what can we do about it?" That was nearly thirty years ago and our marriage and journey through our work lives together has been all about answering this question. – Melanie Sachs, from Chapter 1

If readers are spa owners looking for world class treatments, body workers wanting to learn methods that touch their clients, or anyone who enjoys creating nurturing rituals for themselves and family at home, Ayurvedic Spa offers to guide them to greater levels of beauty, peace and wellness.

Ayurvedic Spa, written by Melanie and Robert Sachs, both extensively trained in alternative health care systems, includes:

  • Ayurvedic assessments to customize treatments and help anyone personalize beauty and body care rituals.
  • Detailed descriptions and photos of spa treatments.
  • Stress reducing exercises and meditations from the Tibetan tradition.
  • Guidelines on how to integrate Ayurvedic treatments into their spa and into the life of their clients, friends, or family.

According to Melanie Sachs in Ayurvedic Spa, during the mid 80s and early 90s, Albuquerque was a focus for Ayurveda. Many of Dr. Lad's first students still lived and worked in the area and she studied with and became friends to such members of the Ayurvedic community as Amadea Morningstar, Dr. Da­vid Frawley, Lenny and Ivy Blank. These people attracted and invited other Ayurvedic teachers from India to come to the U.S. Through these connections the Sachs met and studied with Dr. Sunil Joshi, a pancha karma specialist who, with his wife Shalmali, turned their backs on the easy road to riches to rediscover the benefits of the ancient arts of rejuvenation. They also met Dr. Pankaj, a grand master of the art of pulse diagnosis and his wife, Dr. Smita Naram, a brilliant pharmacist.

In the mid 90s, their friend, Rex, curious about Melanie’s interest and success with Ayurveda in her own road to health, asked her if she would teach in a spa in Finland on what she had learned about Ayurveda, particularly as it applied to women and wellness. This was the birth of her book, Ayurvedic Beauty Care. And in 1995, Jane Wurwand, owner of Dermalogica and founder of the International Dermal Institute, another innovator in her field, asked Melanie to teach at her growing number of schools and it was in these classes that she learned how to teach Ayurveda ‘spa-style’. Much of the theory presented in Ayurvedic Spa was developed by formulating a jar­gon-free Ayurvedic language that could convey the essence of Ayurveda's concepts of energy and healing and presenting it to stu­dents and teachers. Once they moved to California, Melanie traveled monthly, mostly in America, but also to Australia, England and Germany. As her teaching progressed, an interest in product and equipment developed, and Bob became the point person – Diamond Way Ayurveda was born.

During this same time, the Buddhist community connected the Sachs with an excellent essential oil company in Germany, Primavera Life, which inspired the formulation of the vata, pitta, and kapha oil blends that are the basis of the Ayurvedic face and body oils.

According to Bob and Melanie, Ayurveda teaches that roughly 95% of what causes disease is related to stress and poor life-style habits. Thus while Ayurveda is as deep as any other medical system in offering advice for serious chronic and acute diseases, so much of what it offers on a day-to-day basis – diet, exercise, relaxation, mas­sage and various forms of detoxification – will improve the quality of living. The Sachs do not see Ayurvedic Spa as Ayurveda ‘light’, lesser significance than the more medical aspects and miracles of Ayurveda. The techniques that they offer in the book are the gateway to an Ayurvedic life, a life built on wisdom, compassion, joy, and vitality.

The book contains five sections:

  1. What You Need to Know Just in Case You Wanted to Know
  2. Welcome to The Spa!
  3. Treatments: Polishing Your Client’s Mandala
  4. Taking It Home with You
  5. Last Minute Essentials

Melanie and Robert Sachs opened the beauty industry's eyes to Ayurvedic principles and methods, allowing spa therapists to become holistic partners in their clients' to­tal well-being. From their hands-on treatments and talks on Eastern philosophies, the Sachs have developed a very loyal following among professional spa therapists and the general public. Industry professionals look to them for answers on how to balance inner and outer beauty with ancient systems that have powerful effects on the mind, body and spirit. A sought-after couple whose enlightening teachings have brought many to explore the world of Ayurveda, the Sachs' articles and presentations continue to be some of our most popular features because of their liveliness, innovation and clarity. The Sachs are definitely superstars in the skin care and spa worlds as with each endeavor, their commitment to their craft and their level of expertise flows from their passion to help others. – Monica Schuloff Smith, Editor in Chief, Les Nourelles Esthetiqnes & Spa, American Edition Florida Board of Cosmetology Member (2003-2007)

The Sachs, well known in the industry, adapt the techniques of Ayurveda to the spa business and explain exactly how to do it in Ayurvedic Spa. Of special interest are the assessments, allowing providers to individualize treatments. The candor of the Sachs in telling their personal journey is heart warming.

Health, Mind & Body / Diets & Weight Loss

The GenoType Diet: Change Your Genetic Destiny to Live the Longest, Fullest and Healthiest Life Possible by Peter J. D'Adamo, with Catherine Whitney (Broadway)

Disenchanted by the overabundance of one-size-fits-all diets, during the 1990s, eminent naturopathic physician, internationally renowned scientist, and bestselling author Peter J. D'Adamo helped millions of people lose weight by eating a proper diet based on their individual blood type. His bestselling book, Eat Right for Your Type has been translated into more than fifty languages and has helped superstars such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lopez, and Elizabeth Hurley maintain their Hollywood-perfect bodies.

In The GenoType Diet, he takes his research to the next level by identifying six unique genetic types. According to D’Amato, the GenoType is a survival strategy created by genes and cells in response to the individual prenatal environment. D'Adamo asserts, "We have the capacity to turn up the volume on good genes and silence bad ones, vastly improving our capacity for health and happiness. We don't need costly lab tests, drugs, surgery, or medical intervention…. All we need is an understanding of the diet and exercise plan that is right for our particular GenoType – the unique way in which our genes and cells interact." By doing statistical analyses of how genes, disorders, and physical traits are known to cluster together, D'Adamo established six GenoTypes and concluded that all 7.5 billion of us fit into one of them. The GenoTypes are:

  1. The Hunter. Tall, thin, and intense, with an overabundance of adrenaline and a fierce, nervous energy that winds down with age, the Hunter was originally the success story of the human species. Vulnerable to systemic burnout when overstressed, the Hunter’s challenge is to conserve energy for the long haul.
  2. The Gatherer. Full-figured, even when not overweight, the Gatherer struggles with body image in a culture where thin is ‘in.’ An unsuccessful crash dieter with a host of metabolic challenges, the Gatherer becomes a glowing example of health when properly nourished.
  3. The Teacher. Strong, sinewy, and stable, with great chemical synchronicity and stamina, the Teacher is built for longevity – given the right diet and lifestyle. This is the genotype of balance, blessed with a capacity for growth and fulfillment.
  4. The Explorer. Muscular and adventurous, the Explorer is a biological problem solver, with an impressive ability to adapt to environmental changes and a better than average capacity for gene repair. The Explorer’s vulnerability to hormonal imbalances and chemical sensitivities can be overcome with a balanced diet and lifestyle.
  5. The Warrior. Long, lean, and healthy in youth, the Warrior is subject to a bodily rebellion in midlife. With the optimal diet and lifestyle, the Warrior can overcome the quick-aging metabolic genes and experience a second, ‘silver,’ age of health.
  6. The Nomad. A GenoType of extremes, with a great sensitivity to environmental conditions – especially changes in altitude and barometric pressure – the Nomad is vulnerable to neuromuscular and immune problems. Yet a well-conditioned Nomad has the enviable gift of controlling caloric intake and aging gracefully.

D’Adamo explains how a host of environmental factors, including diet and lifestyle, dictate how and when genes express themselves. He goes on to demonstrate how, with the right tools, readers can alter their genetic destiny by turning on the good genes and silencing the bad ones.

Without expensive tests or a visit to the doctor, The GenoType Diet reveals previously hidden genetic strengths and weaknesses and provides a precise diet and lifestyle plan for every individual. Once the results are calculated, dieters are able to strength-test which GenoType they potentially are in the privacy of their own homes. Using family history and blood type, as well as simple diagnostic tools like fingerprint analysis, leg length measurements, and dental characteristics, D’Adamo shows readers how to map out their genetic identity and discover which of the six GenoType plans they should follow. Whether readers are Hunters, Gatherers, Teachers, Explorers, Warriors, or Nomads, D’Adamo offers a program that compliments their genetic makeup to maximize health and weight loss, as well as prevent or even reverse disease. To maximize each GenoType's health benefits, D'Adamo advises six diets. Broken down into fourteen food categories, the diets lists which foods each GenoType should add to their diets and which foods they should avoid. These customized programs optimize health and weight loss, and can prevent or even reverse disease.

D’Adamo, author of the bestseller Eat Right 4 Your Type again breaks new ground in The GenoType Diet with the first diet plan based on each person’s unique genetic code. In simple and concise prose, D'Adamo offers readers this twenty-first century plan for wellness and weight loss. Based on cutting-edge genetic research, the book provides a twenty-first-century plan for wellness and weight loss from a renowned healthcare pioneer.

Health, Mind & Body / Diet & Weight Loss / Exercise & Fitness

Women's Health Perfect Body Diet: The Ultimate Weight Loss and Workout Plan to Drop Stubborn Pounds and Get Fit for Life by Cassandra Forsythe, with a foreword by Kristina M. Johnson (Rodale)

When it comes to women's bodies – just as when it comes to the rest of life – one size does not fit all. Having a ‘perfect’ body means something different to every single woman on the planet. For some, it's getting a flat tummy. For others it's simply slimming down the thighs so that pulling on a favorite pair of jeans no longer feels like an Olympic event.

Drawing on recent research that has shed new light on the gender differences in food metabolism and the effect of exercise, the editors of Women's Health, the healthy lifestyle magazine for active women, have devised an eight-week weight-loss plan for women who would like to lose 5-25 pounds. They have crafted a plan with options, though with one simple goal: to help readers get their best body.

Key features of Women's Health Perfect Body Diet, written by Cassandra Forythe, nutritional educator and weight loss coach, include:

  • Meal plans that contain at least 40 grams of fiber per day.
  • An adjustment for the impact of female hormones on weight loss. (Women need a higher protein diet than men to increase lean body tissue and decrease body fat.)
  • Dieting techniques that revolve around psychological needs and personal goals and lifestyle.
  • Two diet plans to choose from – one higher in fats and lower in carbs; the other higher in carbs and lower in fats. (Simple food tests help women choose the type they need.)

With the Women's Health Perfect Body Diet readers discover a secret weapon, a revolutionary fiber supplement called glucomannan that will help control hunger by slowing the digestion and absorption of food, especially carbohydrates. Glucomannan makes them feel so satisfied that they won't even realize they are on a diet. They will be less hungry throughout the day and more satisfied with the foods they eat. They not only feel full longer, they also boost their metabolic rate so that they burn body fat all day.

After following a revealing breakfast challenge, readers choose one of two eating plans: the Greens and Berries Diet or the Grains and Fruits Diet. Each has a slightly different macronutrient balance to give readers the most satisfaction, the greatest fat loss and the fullest health benefits possible. Then comes the customized eating plan – complete with 75 easy-to-prepare recipes.

There is also the customized fitness program consisting of 50 exercises that brings results in just three weeks. Readers find out why they will eat a lot on the diet – and why they should ‘cheat’ at least 1 day every 2 weeks. They slim down in the right places by choosing the best weight-training and cardio workouts for their body type. The total-body moves are designed to burn the maximum amount of calories and rev metabolism so readers will not only shed unwanted pounds but also build strong, lean muscle.

The book is designed to work with women’s special needs. It's like having one’s own personal nutritionist, trainer, and weight-loss coach all rolled into one. The Women's Health Perfect Body Diet offers solid, easy-to-follow tips and secrets for getting – and keeping – the perfect body.

Health, Mind & Body / International Relations

The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It by Os Guinness (HarperOne)

Can America lead the world in fostering global civility?

In our public life, America is struggling to live up to its national ideals. In a world torn apart by religious extremism on the one side and a strident secularism on the other, no question is more urgent than how we live with our deepest differences – especially our religious and ideological differences.

The Case for Civility is a proposal for restoring civility in the U.S. as a model for the wider world. Influential Christian writer and speaker Os Guinness makes a passionate plea to put an end to the polarization of American politics and culture that – rather than creating a public space for real debate – threatens to reverse the principles our founders set into motion that have long preserved liberty, diversity, and unity in this country. America, with its rich history and robust cultural resources, is the best place to begin to search for answers on fostering civility, argues Guinness – even in the wake of near constant "stupidity and destructiveness of the culture warring over religion and public life – on both sides."

Guinness in The Case for Civility takes on the contemporary threat of the excesses of the Religious Right and the secular Left, arguing that we must find a middle ground between privileging one religion over another and attempting to make all public expression of faith illegal. Filled with historical anecdotes that unlock the genius of the American experiment, Guinness also sets out a vision of a ‘civil and cosmopolitan public square’ as a new way forward in the midst of the buildup to the 2008 presidential elections.

If we do not find this middle ground, Guinness contends, Western civilization as we know it will die.

A prescriptive masterpiece. Guinness provides sound reasoning as to why we should respect our differences, discuss them robustly, and in the process treat each other with dignity and honor. This book is a worldwide wake up call for all to become part of the solution. – Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life

This book is a clarion call to Americans to rediscover the principles of civility and thereby to overcome the enervating stalemate of the culture wars. – Alan Mittleman, professor of Jewish philosophy, The Jewish Theological Seminary, New York

In this wise and brilliant book, Guinness takes us beyond the polarization of the culture wars to a fresh consideration of America's founding principles and the civic virtues needed to realize them. The ‘civil public square’ envisioned in these pages is more than a worthy idea – it is the only way forward if we hope to sustain and expand the American experiment in liberty. – Charles Haynes, First Amendment Center

Guinness, a prominent Christian thinker, makes an eloquently argued case for overcoming the culture wars and creating a culture of civility. The Case for Civility is a brilliant analysis of our situation and a possible remedy. – Peter L. Berger, Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, Boston University

The key to world peace lies in a better understanding between different cultures and religions. I am grateful to Guinness for providing us an impassioned and coherent framework for beginning this process. – Akbar S. Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University, Washington, D.C.

Rich with historical anecdotes, The Case for Civility challenges both the left and the right. Always provocative and deeply insightful, Guinness eloquently describes his vision of a new, practical ‘civil and cosmopolitan public square’ that speaks not only to America's immediate concerns but to the long-term interests of the republic and the world.

Health, Mind & Body / Military / Reference

Your Military Family Network: Your Connection to Military Friendly Businesses, Resources, Benefits, Information and Advice by Military Family Network (MFN) (Capital Books, Inc.)

During the Vietnam War, a group of students in Los Angeles started a campaign to show their support for prisoners of war. To this day, I continue to receive their POW bracelets, usually engraved with my name or that of a friend, which citizens wore during our imprisonment as a gesture of solidarity. … In the years after my military career, I have been privileged to serve in elective office. One political duty that weighs heavily on my mind is the care and support of the servicemen and women who have, in the past and now, put themselves in harm's way to protect American lives and freedoms. Community and homegrown support are essential to the strength of our military forces.

The Military Family Network seeks to raise awareness of such military-friendly programs all over the world. Military families often lack adequate support as they move constantly, leaving behind friends and familiar associations and resources. As an information company owned by military spouses and veterans, The Military Family Network is uniquely qualified to facilitate these transitions. – from the foreword by Senator John McCain

Your Military Family Network is a friendly, complete, need-to-know overview of all the resources available to military readers and their families to military and community life. This insiders’ resource guide provides readers with detailed information on how to manage life issues – from shopping the Exchange to handling deployment, from getting physically fit to getting financially fit, from finding schools to taking a family vacation. Your Military Family Network also includes a section providing worksheets to help readers succeed and keep a record of their own vital statistics for handy reference.

The guidebook is a lifeline for veterans, military families and anyone uprooted in the name of duty. It lists resources offered in each state and businesses that offer military discounts and military-friendly employment are also featured. The Military Family Network encourages families to recommend companies that demonstrate a capacity for military- and family-friendly service to the Neighbor of Choice business network. This is a valuable frame of reference for nomadic families that encourages them to build community relationships quickly.

Your Military Family Network then builds upon this database of community knowledge with insights from military members and spouses, as well as from leaders in their specific fields. Such topics range from an expert's definition and suggestions for treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, to helpful chapters provided by the Commissary Agency and the Military Exchange services on how best to use their benefits.

Every chapter includes Advice from the Field, Frequently Asked Questions, A Need-to-Know Checklist, and a way for finding additional resources and Interactive Online References to connect readers with the entire Military Family Network Community.

The Military Family Network (MFN) is a community of experts, professionals, businesses, and volun­teers that serve the nation's military community. An official partner of the Department of Defense's America Supports You Program, MFN has been recognized by DOD for its support of the Guard and Reserve, and is a certifying organization for the President's Volunteer Service Award Program managed by the Points of Light Foundation. Your Military Family Network includes vital information readers need to manage all of life's tough issues:

  • Suggestions for building a personal and community support network.
  • Ideas for saving money & finding bargains – online and off – and shopping the Commissary.
  • Instructions on military moving – how to develop a personal moving plan.
  • Advice on finding the right schools, getting an education, and getting hired.
  • Resources for everything medical from PTSD to the family's general health and well being.
  • Guidance on legal rights – military law in review.
  • Hints on how to communicate with family members – whether at home or faraway.
  • How to get the best roof over one’s head - rent, buy or live in military housing.
  • Everything readers need to get ready for deployment.
  • Support for parenting the service member.
  • Information on how children serve, too.
  • Guidelines on how to get and stay physically and financially fit.
  • Fun family vacations and thrifty travel on Space Available.
  • State-by-state resources to support military service members, veterans, families and readers.

Your Military Family Network is a valuable resource guide for veterans, military families, and anyone uprooted in the name of duty. In this friendly, complete, ‘need-to-know’ guide, military experts direct readers to all the available resources for them and their families. The book can save hours, days, and weeks of hunting down facts by providing timely information to help them make informed decisions.

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

The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky (The Penguin Press)

The star of The How of Happiness is science, and the happiness-increasing strategies that I and other social psychologists have developed are its key supporting players. My story is that of a research scientist, not a clinician, life coach, or self-help guru. To my knowledge, this is the first how-to-become-happier book authored by someone who has actually conducted research revealing how people can achieve a greater sense of happiness in their lives. Friends and colleagues have urged me to write this book for many years, but only now do I believe that the scientific advances in the field are solid and rigorous enough to interpret and translate into specific recommendations. As a result, The How of Happiness is different from many self-help books inasmuch as it represents a distillation of what researchers of the science of happiness, including myself, have uncovered in their empirical investigations. – Sonja Lyubomirsky

The premise of this book is that readers can change their personal capacity for happiness. Research psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky's pioneering concept of the 40% solution shows them how. Using her own research with thousands of men and women, University of California professor of psychology Lyubomirsky has developed a plan to increase happiness in day-to-day life – in the short term and over the long term.

The How of Happiness is a different kind of happiness book, one that offers a guide to understanding what happiness is, and isn't, and what can be done to bring everyone closer to the happy life they envision for themselves. Using more than a dozen happiness-increasing strategies, The How of Happiness offers a new way to understand the individual’s innate potential for happiness as well as the ability to sustain it in life.
Beginning with a diagnostic quiz that helps readers first to quantify and then to understand what she describes as their ‘happiness set point,’ Lyubomirsky reveals that this set point determines just 50 percent of happiness while a mere 10 percent can be attributed to differences in life circumstances or situations. This leaves an underdeveloped 40 percent of the individual’s capacity for happiness within their power to change.
Lyubomirsky's ‘happiness strategies’ introduce readers to the concept of intentional activities, mindful actions that they can use to achieve a happier life. These include exercises in practicing optimism when imagining the future, instruction in how best to savor life's pleasures in the here and now, and a thoroughgoing explanation of the importance of staying active to being happy. Helping readers find the right fit between the goals they set and the activities she suggests, Lyubomirsky also helps readers understand the many obstacles to happiness as well as how to harness individual strengths to overcome them. Always emphasizing how much of happiness is within the individual’s control, Lyubomirsky addresses the ‘scientific how’ of her happiness research, demystifying the myths that unnecessarily complicate its pursuit. Unlike those of many self-help books, all her recommendations are supported by scientific research.

Sonja Lyubomirsky differs from most self-help authors on at least three counts. First, she is a scholar who has herself done pioneering research on the topic. Sec­ond, she writes a delightfully elegant prose. Third, she provides practical sug­gestions for improving one's life that are easy to follow. All together, this makes The How of Happiness a wonderful addition to everyone's library. – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Claremont Graduate University Professor of Psychology and Management, and author of Flow

Everyone has an opinion about happiness and, unfortunately, many of them write books. Finally we have a self-help book from a reputable scientist whose advice is based on the best experimental data. Charlatans, pundits, and New Age gurus should be worried and the rest of us should be grateful. The How of Happiness is smart, fun, and interesting – and unlike almost every other book on the same shelf, it also happens to be true. – Daniel Gilbert, Harvard University Professor of Psychology and author of Stumbling on Happiness

The How of Happiness is the authoritative guide to what makes us happy and how to achieve happiness, written by a world authority on happiness research, Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky. Read this book, follow its suggestions, and you'll be happier. – Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Yale University Professor of Psychology and author of Women Who Think Too Much

The How of Happiness uses cutting-edge psychological research to provide a series of sound, practical recommendations to make life more satisfying. Becoming happier may take some work, but reading Sonja Lyubomirsky's book is an effortless pleasure. – Barry Schwartz, Swarthmore College Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action, and author of The Paradox of Choice

The right place to look for science-based advice on how to become happier. – Martin Seligman, University of Pennsylvania Professor of Psychology, and author of Learned Optimism

The How of Happiness is both a powerful contribution to the field of positive psychology and a gift to all those who have questioned their own well-being and sought to take their happiness into their own hands. Drawing on her own groundbreaking research with thousands of men and women, Lyubomirsky delivers an unprecedented, easy-to-follow plan to increase happiness in readers’ day-to-day lives. Bringing hard science to bear, and using more than a dozen happiness-increasing strategies, The How of Happiness, offers a potentially life-changing way to understand our innate potential for joy, and to sustain it in our lives.

History / Americas

Crooked River Country: Wranglers, Rogues, and Barons by David Braly (Washington State University Press)

Crooked River Country is a sweeping account of Central Oregon's thrilling history from 1825 to 1953. Bordered by spectacular natural barriers, the region's rugged topography and climate produced hardy individuals – both heroes and scoundrels. Focusing primarily on the period between 1800 and 1950, Crooked River Country chronicles the thoroughly-researched saga of Central Oregon's Wild West, where hardy inhabitants endured brutal weather, gunfights, lynchings, range wars, capitalist exploitation, small pox, and the Great Depression.

In the early 1800s, only Native Ameri­cans, fur trappers, military expeditions, and missionaries inhabited the expanse between the Cascades and the Blue Mountains. The

Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 spurred a homestead boom that sparked deadly Paiute raids and range wars. Native Americans were forced onto reservations. As land became increasingly precious, ‘Vigilante’ ranchers terrorized settlers and gained a foot-hold in both local and state politics. ‘Moon-shiners’ fought back. Dishonest politicians and capitalists exploited road-building laws to acquire vast timber acreage.

By the turn-of-the-century, cattlemen instigated a range war against sheep grazing, while regional political leaders and entrepreneurs dishonestly exploited timber and land, until halted by government prosecutors. In the 1910s, new railway lines encouraged town growth and new businesses, schools, and libraries, while big Eastern lumber companies started cutting the vast pine forests. Then the Great Depression, coupled with drought, devastated commerce and rural localities. Revival came with New Deal programs, returning rainfall, and booming World War II spending.

Featured legends – from Wild West wranglers to industrial barons – include Billy Chinook, Chief Paulina, Bud Thompson, Elisha Barnes, James Blakely, Bill Brown, Newt Williamson, James J. Hill, Johnnie Hudspeth, and Les Schwab, whose tenacity eventually led to the region's astonishing transformation. Crooked River Country is the saga of Crook, Deschutes, Jefferson, and Wheeler counties, along with portions of Wasco and other neighboring districts, where a desolate wilderness became an industrial power.

In the early 1800s, Chief Paulina impeded white immigration to the region for almost a decade, killed untold numbers of people, and was likely the fiercest human enemy the early settlers ever encountered. One of the first to remain permanently was 15-year-old James Blakely, who ‘grew up in the saddle,’ seldom drank liquor, never used tobacco, and always left the table hungry. Although he sometimes ate beef or venison in the early years when nothing else was available, the remarkable cowboy became a staunch vegetarian. Bud Thompson came west in a wagon train, worked the gold rush, bought several ranches at Hay Creek, and became a ruthless ‘Vigilante’ herdsman feared by homesteaders across the region. By the 1880s, Prineville had become the murder capitol of Oregon.

Livestock thieves also abounded, but decent men persevered. Bill Brown, a prominent sheep and horse rancher renowned for his honesty, hired a highly-skilled horse thief right out of prison, believing his new buckaroo boss wouldn't steal from the man who paid his wages. Brown's legendary checks, written on anything from a piece of hide to the back of a can label, were honored at the banks in Prineville and Burns. Although Larkin Vanderpool was unable to afford a formal medical education, he studied hard, and the Oregon State Medical Board granted him a license. Skilled at concocting remedies, he created his popular cough syrup from juniper berries and sage.

In other cases, virtue didn't prevail. During Prohibition, Sheriff Stephen Yancey took all of the local bootleggers into custody. One enterprising prisoner whittled a jail key from a broom handle. After the courthouse closed each night, the captives unlocked the jail, left to conduct their illicit activities, and returned before county employees arrived in the morning.

As often happens, Prineville resident David Braly's research yielded some surprising results. While rummaging for information regarding the life of early Crooked River Country cowboy James Blakely, he debunked a long-standing tale. Back in the 1880s, law-abiding citizens were terrorized by violent, subversive ‘Vigilantes.’ Several held local political positions. The popular story held that the insurgents had destroyed all Crook County documentation containing evidence of their criminal endeavors. However, County Clerk Della Harrison directed award-winning author Braly, a former journalist, to some old paperwork located on top of cabinets inside the record vault. He climbed up, took down some boxes, and was elated to discover case files from two brutal murders carried out by the Vigilantes. Of course, he incorporated the new information into Crooked River Country.

Today, although desolate corners and past mysteries still haunt Crook, Deschutes, Jefferson, and Wheeler counties, Crooked River Country presents a captivating and thoroughly-researched saga of Central Oregon's astonishing transformation. The colorful characters and narratives in Braly's sweeping saga seem to be captured straight from the pages of Wild West fiction, but the history, penned by the former news correspondent, is genuine.

History / Americas / Civil Rights

Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore (W.W. Norton)

Two characters in this book, Lovett Fort-Whiteman and Pauli Mur­ray, never allowed themselves to be silenced. From their examples and those of other characters, I have learned something of the dialectics of patience and impatience, of anger and fear, of working hard and daring much. In July 1867 Murray's grandfather Robert Fitzgerald wrote in his diary: "The past is the key of the present and the mirror of the future." If we look into the mirror of the future and see people there like the ones in Defying Dixie, then everything will be all right. – from the Introduction

Defying Dixie is a history of the Southern movement for social justice that gave birth to civil rights.
The civil rights movement that looms over the 1950s and 1960s was the tip of an iceberg, the visible legal and political outgrowth of a far-reaching, raucous, deeply American movement for social justice that flourished from the 1920s through the 1940s. The aim of this broader movement was to take Dixie down – its racial segregation, its class hierarchy, and its political oligarchy. This contentious mix of down-home radicals, labor activists, newspaper editors, black workers, and intellectuals employed every strategy imaginable from a misconceived attempt to organize black workers with a stage production of Pushkin – in Russian – to the courageous fight of striking workers – black and white – against police and corporate violence in the textile mills of Gastonia in 1929.
In Defying Dixie Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, a native of North Carolina, shows how the movement unfolded against national and global developments, gaining focus and finally arriving at a narrow but effective legal strategy for securing desegregation and political rights.
Little-known heroes abound, including Lovett Fort-Whiteman, the black Texan who saw a racial utopia in the Soviet Union, and Paul Crouch, "a radical as fiery and homegrown as the white lightning of his North Carolina mountains, as well as Langston Hughes, C. Vann Woodward, Frank Porter Graham, and Pauli Murray, the black North Carolinian whose efforts to desegregate the University at Chapel Hill marked a strategic turning point for the movement. Gilmore, Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, deftly shows the interplay of local events and national and globa1 developments such as Soviet international policy, the rise of Nazism, and the ideological mobilization for World War II. At the end, readers see history effaced by the withering blasts of Cold War anti-leftist ideology, leaving the one-dimensional images of the civil rights movement and the South that still govern our understanding.

Defying Dixie is divided into three sections – "Incursions," "Resistance," and "Rebellion" – and each section encompasses three chapters. "Incur­sions" evokes the border crossings that took place from 1919 to 1930. White Southerners sought to export Jim Crow to the nation and the world, and expatriate Southerners, including Communists, led patrols into the heart of Dixie to overcome racial oppression. Part 2, "Resistance," demonstrates that the Great Depression, anti-Fascism, and the Popular Front created a new Left in the South that brought together liberals and Communists. Part 3, "Rebellion," documents a time when Southerners mounted a full-fledged, yet largely forgotten civil rights movement against Jim Crow just before and during World War II. The book follows the undoing of civil rights leaders as the Cold War equated racial justice with Soviet Communism.

Defying Dixie's structure demonstrates the internationalism of the inter-war social justice movements, as chapters cross borders to weave together international and domestic racial politics. The world changed the South as Southerners traveled to meet it. Defying Dixie's itinerary is an exten­sive one. It starts in the South, moves to Haiti, takes an international tour with the Ku Klux Klan, and returns to Broadway. It moves back south to Tuskegee, then west and north to St. Louis and Chicago, and sojourns in Moscow, before returning to Gastonia, North Carolina. It visits Chat­tanooga, Birmingham, and Charlotte, while it scatters the seeds of Scottsboro around the world. Then its protagonists travel to the USSR, stopping off in Moscow, Odessa, and Central Asia, before the journey ends for one black Southerner in Kolyma, Siberia. When civil liberties come under siege in Atlanta, black Southerners visit the Third Reich and bring home its example. As a southern Popular Front grows, moderate interracial cooperation as a political strategy crumbles in Chapel Hill and Cape Town. World War II plunges the nation into a global conflict, and black Southerners in New York and Washington declare war on racial inequal­ity. Southern African Americans join them in countless confrontations with Jim Crow.

Defying Dixie is a history in which ideas are embodied in a collective biography of activist black and white Southerners. The central core of pro­tagonists includes well-known figures, such as NAACP Secretary James Weldon Johnson, and those more obscure, such as civil rights activist Pauli Murray and the first American-born black Communist, Lovett Fort-Whiteman. In life, as in Defying Dixie, characters forged ties with one another, and the interconnectedness of their stories ensures that they surface again and again.

Many who defied Dixie are missing altogether, however, and important events that changed the course of white supremacy are not included. Defying Dixie's organization also slights the local people who lived in the South and who started the civil rights movement in the 1950s. Those who do emerge may not have been able to take credit for that civil rights movement, but they knew in their hearts that they had helped pave the way for it, even if it left behind some of their goals. Some of them lived to watch the movement turn back in the late 1960s and early 1970s toward many of the goals for which they had fought in the 1930s and 1940s.

Defying Dixie tells of the most marginal of Southerners, fierce radicals who at the height of Jim Crow dared to demand a world free of racial oppression and economic exploitation. Scorned and scarred for their beliefs, these courageous men and women risked everything to build a civil rights movement that shook the South to its core – and transformed the nation. Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore's evocative, sensitive account endows their extraordinary story with the majesty it deserves. – Kevin Boyle, Ohio State University, award-winning author of Art of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age

In re-creating the lives and dreams of courageous Southerners, black and white. who posed alternative vision for their tortured region based on social justice and racial equality, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore has forever changed the way historians will write and teach about the roots of the modern civil rights movement. Elegantly written, chock-full of historical nuggets, Defying Dixie is a work of stunning originality. – David M. Oshinsky, Jack S. Blanton Chair, University of Texas. and prize-winning author of Polio: An American Story

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore's fascinating account gives us the civil rights struggle from the left – its more vigorous side before the 1950s – with the individuals and all their quirks left in. Lovett Fort-Whiteman and Pauli Murray head the cast of intriguing activists whose personal character and historic achievements Gilmore presents in her signature lively prose. – Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University, author of Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meaning, 1619 to the Present

Glenda Gilmore's Defying Dixie is a triumph of narrative synthesis, a powerful meld of storytelling and interpretation that puts the radical and too-often marginalized forerunners of the post-World War II civil rights generation front and center where they belong. – David Levering Lewis, New York University, prize-winning author of W.E.B. Du Bois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race and W.E.B. Du Bois, 1919-1963: The Fight for Equality and the American Century

The map of the history of the civil rights movement will never look the same. Professor Gilmore has given us a new highway. The terrain is now radical country. Communists, once trolls under the bridge, are now sentinels of the new route. And Pauli Murray leads the way. A wonderful book. – William S. McFeely, prize-winning author of Grant: A Biography and Frederick Douglass

Defying Dixie is a groundbreaking history of the southern movement for social justice that gave birth to civil rights. In this dramatic narrative, Gilmore deftly shows the movement unfolding. Little-known heroes abound, recasting our understanding of the most important social movement in twentieth-century America. Gilmore's great achievement is to restore the movement, and our history, to full dimension.

History / Military / Aviation

Rupert Red Two: A Fighter Pilot's Life from Thunderbolts to Thunderchiefs by Jack Broughton, with a foreword by Richard P. Hallion (Zenith Press)

George and I were left with sixteen MiGs all to ourselves. We wound up tangling with them for the unheard of duration of twenty-two minutes, which was a real test of endurance. They just kept coming after us in pairs. Finally, as we beat one pair, I immediately twisted to check six, but there were no MiGs to be seen. Bad news. I rolled to inverted, and there was the lead guy, under and behind me, closing fast. When he pulled the trigger the sky lit up with a shotgun blast of tracers. I kept pulling and rolling as his speed flung him past me. I was upside down, looking right down into his cockpit, a few feet away, and he looked frustrated. He was all hunched over, still staring at his gunsight, trying to hit something, but he had no shot on me. I continued my roll, then kicked hard right rudder. As I skidded into trail, I clamped down on the trigger and let go with a six-gun .50-caliber blast right up his tailpipe. I don't know if I hit him, but he rolled into a split S and headed back to Antung with fifteen sloppy MiG drivers behind him. – from the book

In 1945 Second Lieutenant Jack Broughton graduated from West Point with the silver pilot wings of a newly commissioned member of the Army Air Corps and army second lieutenant bars. He was assigned to Europe, and flew P-47s and P-51s until his return to the United States in 1948. Nearly thirty years later in 1968, he retired as a full colonel in the United States Air Force – an entity that didn’t even exist when he first learned to fly – with forty-three separate awards and decorations, including four Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Silver Stars and one Air Force Cross, which, along with the army's Distinguished Service Cross and the navy's Navy Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor.

Along the way Colonel Broughton saw duty in virtually every fighter aircraft the Air Corps and then Air Force had to offer. His proudest accomplishment was being combat ready in every air force fighter from the P-47 to the F-106. Broughton’s story is a biography of the U.S. Air Force as it was experienced by one of its leaders.
In his best-selling memoirs Thud Ridge and Going Downtown, Colonel Broughton wrote about his experiences piloting the F-105 Thunderchief, fondly known as the ‘Thud,’ in combat over North Vietnam during his tour as vice commander of the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing. Here, in Rupert Red Two, Colonel Broughton tells the rest of the story that includes 114 combat missions in Korea and selection as commander of the world-renowned Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team.

As told in Rupert Red Two, 1945 Broughton served in postwar Germany in the 366th and 86th Fighter Groups as part of the American occupation, which soon put him on the frontline of the Cold War. The Soviet Union already had early jet-powered MiG-15s, and the Americans hoped that their flying skills and maneuverability would help their prop-driven P-47 Thunderbolts hold their own if necessary.

Duty at Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas followed, and Broughton moved to the F-80 Shooting Star, the first operational U.S. jet fighter. When war broke out in Korea, he was sent to the Pusan Perimeter and 49th Fighter Group, where he flew both ground support and air-to-air combat missions against MiG-15s.

Following his Korean War service he returned to the States and in 1953 was appointed to command the Thunderbirds, officially known as the United States Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron. After that successful command, and attendance at the Air Command and Staff College, Broughton started flying the then-revolutionary Century series of aircraft including the F-106 Delta Dart as part of North America's Cold War air defense as well as a Vietnam War combat tour in F-105 Thunderchiefs based in Thailand during which he logged 102 combat missions. For his valor while flying in combat over North Vietnam, Broughton earned the Air Force Cross.

Over the years Colonel Broughton experienced the birth and coming of age of the U.S. Air Force and its blooding in combat in Korea and Vietnam. In his remarkable story, told in Rupert Red Two, readers come to know America's air force through the experiences of one of its finest combat leaders.

Home & Garden / Crafts & Hobbies

Creative Beading, Volume 2 by Bead & Button Magazine (Bead & Button Books Series: Kalmbach Books)

Ready to expand your beading repertoire?

Creative Beading presents a year’s worth of fresh, inspirational beading projects.

An eye-catching wire bangle ... a supple necklace made with peyote stitch ... beaded retro hoop earrings. Creative Beading, Volume 2 features these among more than 85 beautiful, unusual projects, the best from a full year of Bead & Button magazine.

The book features projects that will spark creativity and sharpen readers’ beading skills. This collection showcases a range of techniques including stringing, wirework, stitching, loom-weaving, crochet, embroidery, macramé, and more.

Full-color photos and illustrations and editor-tested, step-by-step directions guide beaders through every project, and the illustrated basics section teaches all the skills needed to get started. The book includes:

  • A wide assortment of jewelry projects, including necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.
  • A detailed, comprehensive Basics section.
  • Designs ranging from simple and elegant to complex and inventive.
  • An array of wirework techniques, from easy loops to elaborate coils and shapes.
  • Stitching projects using peyote stitch, herringbone, brick stitch, and more.
  • Tips from experts to make beading fun and easy.

Creative Beading, Volume 2 begins with an illustrated ‘Tools’ section to make it easy to choose the right tools, beads, findings, and materials. A six-page ‘Basics’ section explains the simple knots, wirework techniques, and stitches readers will use to create beautiful jewelry, including the popular peyote, herringbone, right-angle weave, and square stitches. The remaining pages are filled with bead stringing, wirework, and bead stitching projects.

Bead & Button magazine packs exciting new techniques, helpful beading tips, and stunning projects by contemporary beaders into every issue. Readers get the best of the nation’s best beading magazine in Creative Beading, Volume 2. From sleek style to intricate elegance, the book has inspiring projects for all tastes and skill levels, clearly presented.

Home & Garden / Crafts & Hobbies

Piecing the Piece O'Cake Way by Becky Goldsmith & Linda Jenkins (C&T Publishing)

Many books written today assume that you know certain things. "Of course you know how important a ¼ inch seam allowance is." or "Everybody knows which way to press the seam allowances." The fact is, though, that many quilters don't know these (and many other) quilting basics. We wrote Piecing the Piece O'Cake Way with the hope that it will become a much-used resource book for quilters of all skill levels. We have done our best to share fundamental quilting skills with you. Once you have mastered these skills, you can use them in every quilt you make. – from the book

The book, written by Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins, who design fabrics for P&B Textiles and have appeared on HGTV’s Simply Quilts, created Piece O’ Cake Designs more than ten years ago. Piecing the Piece O'Cake Way teaches readers how to bring ‘piece o' cake’ style to their piecing.

Piecing the Piece O'Cake Way shows how to make 27 colorful quilts from 15 designs. Readers can start simple with strips, squares, and triangle-squares, simple favorites like Chinese coins or log cabin, then move on to more complex patterns and flex their skills on more challenging diamonds and curves. A complete reference guide to quilting basics includes how to sew scant quarter-inch seams and how to sign and label quilts. Readers learn to use fabric, color, and contrast to create several completely different looks from one quilt pattern.

According to the authors, it is best to start at the beginning of Piecing the Piece O'Cake Way and work through it. The skills Goldsmith and Jenkins present are built upon one another, chapter by chapter. They encourage readers to reconsider if they’re thinking of making a bed-sized quilt as their first project. Beginners are more likely to finish a smaller quilt, and they want readers to have that satisfaction sooner rather than later.

They suggest that new quilters master the new techniques presented in each chapter on the smaller quilts in the book. The final chapter, Make Any Quilt Any Size, helps readers enlarge both the projects in the book and other quilt projects.

Goldsmith and Jenkins also suggest keeping a quilt journal. Quilters should make notes about the quilt: its name, the sizes of the blocks, special techniques, and so on. They can add snippets of the fabric they use and keep a photograph of the finished quilt. If they give the quilt as a gift, they should write down the date, name, and address of the recipient. Later, after they have made many quilts, they will be glad they took the time to record the details.

Piecing teachers can use Piecing the Piece O'Cake Way to teach each of the quilts as a stand-alone class. Chinese Coin blocks are an excellent choice for beginners. The authors recommend focusing on accuracy in both cutting and sewing. Students can finish this quilt quickly, and that is important for beginners. The joy that comes from that first finished quilt propels beginners to make that second quilt. For more advanced students, blocks with curves (Drunkard's Path) or diamonds (Diamond Stars) are recommended choices.

Their quilts are very appealing! They make you smile, laugh and feel good. – American Quilt Retailer

Piecing the Piece O'Cake Way is today's guide to quilting basics, and there is plenty here for advanced quilters too. These are 15 fun-to-make quilts in bright colors, with step-by-step instructions from the popular Piece O'Cake design duo. Quilts in general are appreciated gifts for weddings, babies, birthdays, and anniversaries, and with clear photos and all the basics covered, this book is a great way to start. Piecing the Piece O'Cake Way also works as a teaching tool for quilting instructors.

Home & Garden / Garden Design / Arts & Photography

Yard Art and Handmade Places: Extraordinary Expressions of Home by Jill Nokes, with a foreword by Betty Sue Flowers, with Pat Jasper, with photography by Krista Whitson (University of Texas Press)

You might expect a book about yard art to be mainly descriptive in the way catalogues and travel guides are – but the journey we take in Yard Art and Handmade Places leads us into deep centers of the human heart, where to create a garden is to bestow a specific blessing. – Betty Sue Flowers, from the foreword

Relatively few people in America build their own homes, but many yearn to make the places they live more truly their own. Yard Art and Handmade Places profiles twenty homemakers who have used their yards and gardens to express their sense of individuality, to maintain connections to family and heritage, or even to create sacred spaces for personal and community refreshment and healing. Jill Nokes, an authority on native plants and ecological restoration, traveled across the state of Texas, seeking out residents who had transformed their yards and gardens into oases of art and exuberant personal expression. In this book, she presents their stories, told in their own words, about why they created these handmade places and what their yard art has come to mean to them and to their communities.

Rather than viewing yard art as a curiosity or oddity, Nokes, landscape designer in Austin, treats it as an integral part of home-making, revealing how these places become invested with deep personal or social meaning. Yard Art and Handmade Places celebrates the fact that, despite the proliferation of look-alike suburbs, places still exist where people with ordinary means and skills are shaping space with their own hands to create a personal expression that can be enjoyed by all.

Only a master listener could have elicited these stories, none of them obvious from looking at the gardens themselves. There is Sam, whose yard of birdhouses, featured on TV, reunited him with a long-lost love. There is Vince, who built a ‘Cathedral of Junk’ – a series of arched domes made of scrap metal trusses into which are woven car bumpers, kitchen utensils, bicycle parts, CDS, hubcaps, and other ‘metallic flotsam and jetsam from our consumer culture.’ Like many of the other ‘gardeners’ Nokes profiles, Vince has become a kind of curator of his own creation, finding that he has to post a schedule in the local weekly paper to control visitation. Nokes tells his story with dignity and respect, from his dumpster diving days to his musings about the reac­tions of his visitors. "A lot of Depression-era people come by, and they relate to the recycling point of view, and also I've had people cry, because they're overwhelmed by something in it."

Like Vince and his Cathedral of Junk, almost all of the yard artists are people of very modest means who have created extraordinary expressions of themselves and their private visions of an idealized landscape. Some of these visions give their creators an intense sense of meaning in their lives and perhaps even saved the life of Cleveland, ‘the Flower Man,’ whose vision in the hospi­tal led him away from a descent into alcoholism: "I had this pretty vision: it was going around like a whirlwind, picking up stuff, taking it up high and making it look pretty, and this vision was showing so many people just looking out at space, you know, just wanting to know, What is that?"

So many of the stories reflect a spiritual dimension of experience that the cumulative effect is to convince readers that the most primal act of individual creation must be to make a garden. One of the gardeners, Jesus, celebrates the twenty-foot-high rock waterfall he built in his front yard with a corrido that suggests a closeness between the original Gardener and the human one: "Las piedras que he puesto, solo Jehova Dios las hizo, hace mucho tiempo antes el paraiso" (The rocks that I have put here, only Jehova God made them, long ago before he made paradise).

Readers also meet Cleveland Turner in Houston's Third Ward, whose colorful collection of found items celebrates his sobriety and recalls his mother's Missis­sippi garden; Tim and Keith Ann Gearn in Hereford, who transformed an old caliche pit into a magical playground, complete with a carousel and Ferris wheel; and Marian and Richard Reyes in Austin, who have turned the property around their home and mechanic's garage into a roadside shrine and devotional garden – to mention only a few of the resident artists profiled in the book.

The effect of the stories in Yard Art and Handmade Places is to make readers wonder and admire, and they will appreciate Nokes as well as her gardeners, for she has written a book that is as much an exploration of the human spirit as it is a uniquely engaging garden tour. The book is delightfully photographed by Krista Whitson, an architect in Austin.

Law / Family Law / Self-Help

File for Divorce in Florida without Children by Edward Haman (Sphinx Publishing)

Going through a divorce is probably one of the most common and most trau­matic encounters people have with the legal system. When children are not involved, it may be an easier situation to handle, but definitely not painless. At a time when readers are least likely to have extra funds, paying a divorce lawyer can be expensive – in a contested divorce case, it is not uncommon for the parties to run up legal bills of over $10,000. Horror stories abound of lawyers charging substantial fees with little progress to show for it. File for Divorce in Florida without Children is designed to enable readers to obtain a divorce without hiring a lawyer. Even if they do hire a lawyer, this book will help them work with the lawyer more effectively, which can also reduce the legal fee.

File for Divorce in Florida without Children helps readers by simplifying the process and thoroughly explaining everything readers need to know to successfully handle their own divorce in the state of Florida. Author Edward A. Haman, with a law degree from the University of Toledo, has practiced law in Florida, Michigan and Hawaii, and has served as a Michigan Circuit Court domestic relations hearing officer. With ready-to-go forms and step-by-step instructions, he shows readers how to:

  • File an uncontested or contested divorce.
  • Protect one’s assets and oneself.
  • Calculate alimony and negotiate an alimony agreement.
  • Resolve property disputes and prepare new estate planning documents.

As Haman says, this is not a law school course, but a practical guide to get readers through the system as easily as possible. The emphasis is on practical information in plain English; legal jargon has been kept to a minimum.

The first two chapters of File for Divorce in Florida without Children give readers an overview of the law and the legal system. Chapter 3 helps readers decide if they want an attorney, and if so, how to find and work with a lawyer. Chapter 4 helps them evaluate their situ­ation and gives them an idea of what to expect if they decide to go through with a divorce. The remaining chapters show what forms they need, how to fill out the forms, and what procedures to follow. Readers will also find a glossary and two appendices in the back of the book. Appendix A contains selected portions of the Florida law and court rules dealing with property division and alimony. Appendix B contains the forms, many of which are Florida Supreme Court approved.

Their legal survival guides are dynamite and very readable. – Small Business Opportunities

Explaining the way the law works. – Daily Herald

Easy to understand guides – an excellent source for readers. – Library Journal

Takes you step-by-step through the process of divorce. – Money World

File for Divorce in Florida without Children is a plain English guide to getting the divorce done, which can help readers maximize their share of the property, end the relationship with dignity and save on legal fees. Complete with step-by-step instructions and the forms readers need, this book makes filing for divorce less expensive and less of a hassle, thoroughly explaining everything, and helping readers decide whether they can do it without a lawyer.

Literature & Fiction / Essays

My Unwritten Books by George Steiner (New Directions)

What is it like to be an epic poet with philosophic aspirations when Dante is, as it were, in the neighborhood? To be a contemporary playwright when Shakespeare is out to lunch? ‘How can I be if another is?’ asks Goethe. Outside my door at the Institute for Advance Study in Princeton I heard J. Robert Oppenheimer fling at a junior physicist the demand: ‘You are so young and already you have done so little.’ After which, the logical option is suicide. – George Steiner

Behind every good book lies the book unwritten...

By one of the world's foremost literary critics, George Steiner's My Unwritten Books meditates upon seven books he had long had in mind to write, but never did.
Why not written? Because intimacies and indiscretions were too threatening. Because the topic brought too much pain. Because its emotional or intellectual challenge proved beyond his capacities.
The subjects are envy, lust, pets, living in exile, Zionism, teaching, and personal definition. The actual themes range widely and defy conventional taboos: the torment of the gifted when they live among the very great; the experience of sex in different languages; the claims of Zionism; a more intense love for animals than for human beings; the costly privilege of exile; a theology of emptiness.

A unifying perception underlies the diversity of My Unwritten Books. The best we have or can produce is only the tip of the iceberg. Behind every good book, as in a lit shadow, lies the book which remained unwritten, the one that would have failed better.

George Steiner was born in Paris on April 23, 1929. He was educated at the Universities of Paris, Chicago, Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge. He was a member of the editorial staff at The Economist in London during the 1950s before beginning an academic career as a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University in 1956. He was appointed Gauss Lecturer at Princeton in 1959. Steiner has been a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, since 1961 and was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Geneva between 1974 and 1994. He has held visiting professorships at Yale, New York University, the University of Geneva and Oxford University. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary fellow of Balliol College Oxford, and has been awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur by the French Government and the King Albert Medal by the Royal Belgian Academy, the Truman Capote Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature in 1998 and in the same year was elected Fellow of the British Academy. He was the Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford and the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. He is currently Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College at Cambridge University.

Steiner is perhaps the last of them: the grand masters of erudition who brought illumination to, and brought to the service of illumination, the histories of words, languages, and literatures, the confluences of their streams and rivers, living and dead, which led to the sea of our vast babble, the low and high of it, the poetry and cadences of it, the hidden bloodlines of it, the all of it. – BookForum

The polymath's polymath. The erudition is almost as extraordinary as the prose: dense, knowing, allusive. In Steiner's work the suggestion of total cultural mastery from the pre-Socratics to the postmodern, is inescapable. – The New York Times Book Review

No one now writing on literature can match Steiner as polymath and polyglot, and few can equal the verve and eloquence of his writing. – Robert Alter, The Washington Post

Superb ... a phenomenon. – Edward Said, The Nation

An intelligent, deeply felt humanism characterizes Steiner's work: a tradition of intelligence and style lives in this prolific man. – The Los Angeles Times

His language and his ideas display even-handedness, seriousness without heaviness, learning without pedantry, and sober charm. – Naomi Bliven, The New Yorker

Brilliantly illuminating. – Alain De Botton

A unique, powerful, and necessary voice. – The San Francisco Chronicle

A new book by George Steiner is always an event. – The New York Times

Audacious and original author and literary critic Steiner discusses, in seven brave, unflinching, and personal essays, books that he "had hoped to write." The essays in My Unwritten Books reveal funny and ironic themes which defy conventional taboos. Massively erudite, bracing honest, Steiner reaches beyond rationality alone to show us ‘unicorns in the garden of reason,’ whether considering Chinese scholarship or envy, political self-identification or passion.

Literature & Fiction / Romance / Suspense

Sizzle and Burn: An Arcane Society Novel by Jayne Ann Krentz (Putnam)

With more than 25 million books sold, Jayne Ann Krentz is a marvel in women's fiction – just when she's carved a niche for herself in one area, she breaks out into another genre. Several years ago, after success in contemporary, Victorian and futuristic romance, Krentz tried something new – romance with a paranormal twist.

Krentz‘s Arcane Society novels – written under both the Krentz and Amanda Quick names – have thrilled readers with both paranormal plots and passionate love stories. In Sizzle and Burn, a member of the Society must recruit a reluctant woman to use her psychic gift against a powerful enemy.
Raine Tallentyre has a gift for interpreting the psychic energy left behind after human contact, which makes her a great asset for crime solving, but wreaks havoc on her personal life. When Raine made the mistake of revealing her paranormal abilities, her most recent romantic relationship came to a hasty end.

Her Aunt Vella, a gifted but troubled soul, told her years ago to keep her talents a secret. And now that poor Aunt Vella – her last blood relative – has died, Raine has resigned herself to a lonely life. But when she journeys to Shelbyville, Washington, to clear out Aunt Vella's house, – trying to ignore the locals' comments about the ‘witch’ and the ‘crazy lady’ – Raine's highly developed sensitivity leads her to a horrifying discovery: a young woman bound and terrified in a basement storage locker. It seems this victim was the latest target in a series of murders. The victim survives, but the culprit is still on the loose. Without warning, a new man enters Raine's life – investigator Zack Jones. Zack, a ruggedly handsome and incredibly smooth private investigator, convinces Raine to help him track a missing researcher who he believes has a connection to Raine's family. It's a race against time as the pair pools their talents to crack the case. Surprisingly, Zack isn't repelled by her powers: in fact, he has them himself. While Raine hears voices, Zack sees visions and within hours of their meeting, Raine experiences an intense, thrilling intimacy – mental, emotional, and physical – she never dared to expect.
There's one complication, however: Zack Jones is working for the Arcane Society. This secret organization, dedicated to the study of paranormal phenomena, shattered Raine's family with an act of betrayal long ago, and she's not likely to trust them again. But as the killer makes her his target, and a cabal of psychic criminals known as Nightshade operates in the shadows surrounding them, Raine and Zack must rely not only on their abilities but on each other . . .
From the author who also hits bestseller lists under the name Jayne Castle as well as Amanda Quick, Sizzle and Burn is a delightful caper filled with suspense and wit – and the steamy Victorian passion her readers love. Krentz delivers a sizzling plot that will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the final page.

Professional & Technical / Botany / Reference

Manual of Grasses for North America edited by Mary E. Barkworth, Laurel K. Anderton, Kathleen M. Capels, Sandy Long, & Michael B. Piep (Utah State University Press)

Grasses are the world’s most important plants.

According to the editors of Manual of Grasses for North America, grasses are the dominant species over large parts of the earth’s land surface, a fact that is reflected in the many different words that exist for grasslands, words such as prairie, veldt, palouse, and pampas to mention a few. As a group, grasses are of major ecological importance, as soil binders and providers of shelter and food for wild animals, both large and small. Some grasses, such as wheat, rice, corn, barley, rye, tef, and sugar cane are major sources of calories for humans and their livestock; others, primarily bamboos, are used for construction, tools, paper, and fabric. More recently, the seed catalogs that tantalize gardeners each winter have borne witness to an increasing appreciation of the aesthetic value of grasses.
The Manual of Grasses for North America is designed as a successor to the classic volume by Hitchcock and Chase, Hitchcock's Grasses of the United States. It reflects current taxonomic thought and includes keys, illustrations, and distribution maps for the nearly 900 native and 400 introduced species that have been found in North America north of Mexico. In addition, it presents keys and illustrations for several species that are known only in cultivation or are of major agricultural significance, either as progenitors of bread wheat and corn or as a major threat to North American agriculture because of their ability to hybridize with crop species.

The original goal of the Grass Manual Project (GMP) was to develop a single-volume work modeled on the Hitchcock volume. When the GMP became part of the Flora of North America Project, the contributors were asked to develop more detailed descriptions than originally envisioned. The resulting two volumes, Flora of North America volumes 24 and 25 (Barkworth et al. 2003, 2007), have been well received, but there was still a need for a more compact and less expensive presentation of the information.

The design of Manual of Grasses for North America was dictated by the need to save space while keeping all the illustrations. Even after reducing each illustration to a quarter of its original size and using abbreviations in the descriptions, ruthless cutting was required. The editors eliminated all the citations, reduced the comments to habitat information that would aid in identification, and modified the layout. This still led to a volume of over 1,000 pages, so they eliminated the subfamily and species descriptions.

The order of the treatments, illustrations, and distribution maps reflects current thinking on phylogenetic relationships. This arrangement makes it easier to obtain an overall picture of the morphology and distribution of a tribe or group of related genera than would an alphabetical arrangement.

A bipartite number is used to indicate the location of each genus, the part before the ‘decimal’ indicating its tribal membership; the part after the decimal, its placement within the tribe. These numbers form part of the header on each page. In the treatments, the name of each species is followed by two page numbers: an italicized number for the illustration page, and an underlined number for the distribution map page. At the end of the text material there is a brief ‘Literature Cited’ section. It contains only references that were used for the first time in preparing the volume. The ‘Literature Cited’ section is followed first by the illustrations, then by the distribution maps. Tripartite numbers are associated with each illustration and map. The first two parts of these numbers correspond to the tribal and generic numbers that are used as page headers on the treatment pages. The third part of each number indicates the position of the species within the text material for its genus. The index lists the page numbers for the written treatments, illustrations, and distribution maps. It also shows how this volume treats names likely to be encountered in other publications.

There are some differences between the taxonomic treatment presented in Manual of Grasses for North America and that in the two Flora of North America volumes on which it is based. Some illustrations have been added or enhanced and many maps modified to reflect new distributional information. Many of the maps have been modified. Most of the changes are minor and reflect additional records. The sources of information for significant changes have been checked.

Manual of Grasses for North America is a major reference work for grasses that will retain its value for many years. This volume seeks to meet that need for a more compact and less expensive presentation of the information in Flora of North America volumes 24 and 25. Aimed primarily at professional botanists, it provides that information in a reduced format with four illustrations per page for easy visual comparison and identification, suitable for fieldwork, to the extent that any 625 page volume is easily carried. Dark bands on the margins makes the illustration and distribution map sections quickly locatable.

Professional & Technical / Medicine / Nursing / Basic Sciences

Fluids and Electrolytes Demystified: A Self-Teaching Guide by Joyce Y. Johnson, with contributions by Edward Lyons and Bennita W. Vaughans (McGraw Hill Professional)

Need a solid foundation in fluids and electrolytes but finding this complex subject difficult to permeate? Here's the solution!

Written by Joyce Y. Johnson, Dean and Professor of Nursing at Albany State University, Fluids and Electrolytes Demystified is a detailed overview of the critical concepts involved in fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base balance and imbalance, collectively one of the hardest topics to master in undergraduate nursing. Some of the difficulty in understanding this content may lie in the attempt to remember each individual detail or symptom associated with an imbalance combined with the difficulty of mastering the physiology involved in each process. The list of symptoms of imbalance can be extensive; there is often duplication and overlap between electrolyte and acid-base imbalances.

In Fluids and Electrolytes Demystified, the normal functions are discussed to provide baseline data. The concepts of imbalance are presented individually, but the links between concepts are addressed. Readers are led toward two facts: that many of the fluid, electrolyte and acid-base imbalance symptoms are interrelated and that the imbalances themselves are interlinked. Readers learn about the various health conditions related to imbalances and get details on diagnostic testing, regulators and treatment options.

Fluids and Electrolytes Demystified provides an overview of the concepts; it focuses on the information that students need most to understand the conditions that result in fluid and electrolyte imbalances. The book emphasizes the most critical information in fluids and electrolytes by discussing the underlying mechanisms involved in maintaining fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base balance and by discussing the factors that fail and result in an imbalance. To promote understanding, there is coverage of the developmental changes and major conditions that result in fluid, electrolyte or acid-base imbalances. The nursing assessments, interventions and evaluations are reviewed to provide a whole picture of the patient's needs and nursing care situation.

Fluids and Electrolytes Demystified is organized as follows:

Chapters 1 and 2 are overview chapters that discuss the physiology involved in fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base balance. Chapter 3 discusses the diagnostic tests and basic nursing assessments related to fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base balance.

Chapter 4 focuses on fluid volume imbalances (i.e., hypervolemia and hypovolemia) and related symptoms and treatments. Chapters 5 through 9 present the major electrolytes and concepts related to excessive or insufficient blood levels of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and phosphate. Chapter 10 focuses on acid-base imbalances and discusses the procedures needed to determine the underlying source of the imbalance and the appropriate treatments and patient care needed to address the imbalance. Chapters 11 and 12 contain presentations of developmental conditions and disease conditions that involve imbalances in fluids, electrolytes, and acid-base, with the aim of enabling readers to apply the concepts learned in earlier chapters of the book.

In this text:

  • Each detailed chapter begins with a list of Learning Objectives, each of which is discussed further in the text.
  • Key terms are identified for the content area.
  • A brief overview of the topic is provided.
  • Content is divided into a brief review of normal function followed by detailed discussion of the imbalances that occur.
  • Lists and bullet points are used to present key facts.
  • Figures are provided to further illustrate concepts discussed in the text.
  • Tables are provided to highlight and summarize important details.
  • The ‘Speed Bumps’ feature serves as a checkpoint that enables readers to gauge their understanding after a portion of the information is presented.
  • A conclusion summarizes the content of the chapter.
  • At the end of the chapter, a final check-up consists of NCLEX-style questions that test readers’ retention of the information from the chapter.

Simple enough for beginners, but challenging enough for advanced students, Fluids and Electrolytes Demystified is a shortcut to mastering this essential nursing topic. The book makes the concepts associated with fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base balance and imbalance clear and understandable. The key to demystifying the concepts is to see the connections and to make sense of the underlying processes involved, which leads to an understanding of the imbalances that occur when normal processes fail. The book illuminates the aspects of fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base balance that seem elusive and complex by breaking down the elements involved. The repetition of content from the overview chapters to the chapters dealing with imbalances enables readers to make connections between the basic processes and the imbalances resulting from alterations in those processes. Loaded with quick, clear, and focused tips, this book helps students minimize study time and maximize results.

Professional & Technical / Medicine / Neuropsychiatry

Traumatic Brain Injury: Methods for Clinical & Forensic Neuropsychiatric Assessment, Second Edition by Robert P. Granacher, Jr. (CRC Press)

Since the first edition of Traumatic Brain Injury, the number of traumatic head injuries that occur in the United States on a yearly basis has risen to almost 3 million. These, in turn, produce considerable morbidity and death.

Since the original publication of Traumatic Brain Injury, new clinical findings concerning traumatic brain injury have improved our ability to evaluate and treat individuals with TBI. Unfortunately, the dramatic rise in the occurrence of brain injuries over the same time period demands improved proficiency in evaluation and treatment from a greater number of practitioners. In an effort to help diagnosticians and physicians perform better forensic and medical examinations of the victims of traumatic brain injury, Traumatic Brain Injury, second edition, provides new research, practical guidelines, and the latest advances and applications in structural and functional imaging assessment techniques. The book was written by Robert P. Granacher, Jr., president and executive director of the Lexington Forensic Institute in Lexington, Kentucky, clinical professor of psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, and full-time practicing neuropsychiatrist and forensic psychiatrist.

A comprehensive introduction to evaluating and treating patients with traumatic brain injuries, this second edition features:

  • Updated case studies and new images from functional MRI, PET scans, and MR Spectroscopy.
  • More emphasis on mild traumatic brain injury, including sports injuries in children and athletes.
  • The latest neuroanatomical and neuroimaging bases of cognitive domains of the brain.
  • New research on the epidemiology and pathophysiology of brain injury.
  • Studies of acquired psychopathology following injury.
  • New insights into the physical effects and psychiatric ramifications of blast over-pressure as seen in combat veterans and civilians in Kosovo, Lebanon, and Iraq.

Providing practical guidelines for using state-of-the-art, brain-based assessment techniques, Traumatic Brain Injury establishes a neuropsychiatric schema for the evaluation of traumatic brain injury and provides tools for designing a treatment plan. Although geared toward forensic evaluation with chapters on malingering, determination of impairment, and the presentation of evidence at trial, the methods in this book can be used to evaluate and treat any neuropsychiatric disorder with the addition of appropriate laboratory studies and pathology-specific treatment.

The first eight chapters of this text focus upon evaluations for treatment. Chapters 9 through 11 provide a focus for physicians performing forensic TBI examinations. As the medical examination format is no different when examining a patient for treatment than it is when examining a patient for forensic purposes, the first eight chapters can be read by the treatment clinicians, and if they have no interest in forensic issues, Chapters 9 through 11 can be avoided. On the other hand, the physician wishing to perform a competent forensic neuropsychiatric examination will find it necessary to utilize all 11 chapters.

The logic of clinical TBI examination formulated in the first edition remains in the second edition. That is, the examination techniques follow standard medical concepts but with a significant neuropsychiatric focus; in other words, the evaluation techniques are not psychologically based; they are brain based. Moreover, there are exciting new clinical findings regarding TBI since the first edition was written. These have been added to improve the quality of the text and enhance the learning experience for readers. These include the recent reports of blast overpressure brain injury as seen in combat veterans and civilians injured in conflicts in Kosovo, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other world areas. An enlarged review of sports injuries in children, high school students, and college and professional athletes has been added. Inflicted brain injury in children receives more attention. A larger emphasis has been placed on mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), particularly from a forensic standpoint, owing to the contribution of litigation to increased symptom expression. Neuroimaging techniques have been considerably expanded so that the neuropsychiatric examiner can provide a better clinical correlation between imaging and the findings from direct medical examination. The literature on outcomes in adults and children following TBI has been expanded to make it of more use for the forensic examiner.

Traumatic Brain Injury is not a comprehensive review of all knowledge of TBI. Moreover, it is not to be used as an encyclopedia. Its purpose is to provide a physician or a psychologist with a practical method for an effective evaluation of TBI using state-of-the-art techniques. The techniques described in the text come from known standards within the world medical and psychological literature as well as from the author's large database of TBI examinations. The procedures and recommendations come from almost 4000 cases wherein the author has personally examined persons with TBI, or those claiming to have a TBI.

With expanded discussions of brain-injury malingering and family dynamics, this revised and updated, best-selling text gives an overview of state-of-the-art techniques and discusses new pharmacological treatments, acquired psychopathy, and test instruments for assessing behavior.

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

Integrative Treatment for Adult ADHD: A Practical, Easy-To-Use Guide for Clinicians by Ari Tuckman, with a foreword by Kevin R. Murphy (New Harbinger Publications)

Clinician in private practice need a comprehensive, research-derived treatment model for use with adult clients suffering from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Integrative Treatment for Adult ADHD, written by Ari Tuckman, clinical psychologist in private practice in West Chester, PA, specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD, offers clinicians that model. The treatment model integrates education, medication, coaching, and cognitive behavioral therapy to go beyond what traditional therapeutic techniques can offer. Written for the busy professional in private practice, it provides everything a therapist or ADHD coach needs to know to help these clients quickly and effectively.
Integrative Treatment for Adult ADHD contains practical strategies readers can use with their next clients. The first section of the book lays a solid foundation for understanding ADHD's clinical implications, including differential diagnosis; physiological bases, and the consequences of living with ADHD. In the second section of the book, readers will find the integrative treatment model, complete with a variety of reproducible handouts for their own use and to give to clients.

The four-part, comprehensive treatment model includes:

  • Family education as a clinical intervention.
  • Effective medication options.
  • Coaching for better time management, organization and more.
  • CBT for depression, anxiety and self-esteem issues.

According to Kevin Murphy in the foreword, from a developmental perspective, the field of adult ADHD is still in its infancy. Even though the first report of adults having problems with what is now called ADHD was published over a century ago, recognition of ADHD as a legitimate adult disorder did not really take place until Paul Wender's pioneering work in the 1970s. We still do not have much controlled empirical research to use as a guide to understanding both the impact and functional impairments the disorder has on a wide range of adult behavior and how to best assess and treat this complex disorder.

This state of affairs, however, has begun to change. We are beginning to understand that ADHD is associated with global impairment in functioning. Results from two recent major studies have demonstrated that both clinic-referred adults with ADHD and children with ADHD who are followed into their adult lives show impairment over a wide swath of human activity as adults. These impairments extend well beyond mere inattention and impulsiveness and demonstrate that ADHD is not a benign disorder. The deficits that ADHD produces in executive functioning, planning, forethought, self-control, and working memory can have a serious impact on performance in major life activities. More specifically, when adults with ADHD were compared to both a community control group and a clinical control group, they were found to have more diverse and serious impairments in educational outcomes, occupational functioning, social relationships, sexual activities, dating and marital functioning, criminal activities and drug abuse, financial management, driving a motor vehicle, health and lifestyle habits, and in parent/offspring psychological morbidity. These studies suggest that the ability to attend, exert self-control, and sustain attention, effort, and motivation is fundamental to healthy adjustment. Moreover, as children with ADHD get older, the stakes (and the associated impairments) get higher.

Integrative Treatment for Adult ADHD provides a fully integrative treatment model for adult ADHD. Tuckman takes the best of what previous authors, researchers, and clinicians have created and distills it down to what readers need to know to work with this challenging but rewarding population. Much of this material is empirically based, and the rest comes from clinical practice – it has yet to be proven in scientific trials, but seems to work reliably with the clients that he and his colleagues see.

Part I, Understanding ADHD in Adults, begins with Diagnosing ADHD in Adults in chapter 1. This involves knowing both what is and what isn't ADHD by separating out the co-morbid conditions that can muddy the diagnostic waters. Chapter 2, The Physiological Bases of ADHD, provides just enough of the basics of neurology and etiologies to be useful in clinical practice. Chapter 3, The Impact of ADHD on an Adult's Life, covers the many ways that a lifetime of undiagnosed and untreated ADHD can affect someone's pursuit of happiness and success in life.

Part II, The Integrative Treatment Model, lays out the four facets of treatment that are necessary for the best outcomes with this population. This begins with chapter 4, Education as a Therapeutic Technique, to lay a foundation for the interventions that follow, by reducing stigma and building hope. Chapter 5, Medications and Other Biological Treatments, reviews the commonly used medications, as well as proposed nontraditional treatments. Chapter 6, Coaching: More Than Obvious Advice, offers practical strategies that readers can use to help clients better manage their daily obligations. Finally, chapter 7, Adapting Psychotherapy for the ADHD Adult, tailors traditional therapeutic techniques to address both the effects of previously untreated ADHD and to better enable the client to take an active approach to current treatment. An appendix of Resources for Clinicians and Clients appears at the end of Integrative Treatment for Adult ADHD.

… it is a real pleasure to read Tuckman's superbly rendered book on ADND in adults, for it is so well-reasoned, science-based, information-rich, to the point, and finally useful! Apart from wishing I had written it, I sincerely wish that you will read it. – L.A. Barkley, clinical professor of psychiatry at Medical University of South Carolina Charleston and research professor of psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University at Syracuse

Tuckman has filled a huge gap in our understanding of adults who suffer from ADHD . . . This book is a valuable contribution to the literature and will be a treasured resource. – Harvey C. Parker, cofounder of Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) and author of The ADHD Workbook for Parents

Tuckman's book goes a long way towards facilitating a better functioning and integrated multimodal treatment program for adults with ADHD. – Philip Parker, psychiatrist in private practice in Southfield, MI, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Ml, and Professional Advisory Board member of the Attention Deficit Disorder Association

A much-needed resource to aid an underserved segment of the population, Integrative Treatment for Adult ADHD offers mental health professionals a practical, integrated treatment model that makes it easier to diagnose and effectively treat adults with ADHD. It skillfully addresses many of the common struggles that adults with ADHD encounter across multiple life domains. It is a valuable resource for any clinician who wants to learn more about how to identify, manage, and treat this commonly misunderstood disorder. Tuckman's clinical experience, wisdom, and understanding of adult ADHD shines through on every page. Integrative Treatment for Adult ADHD is an important step in the direction of training clinicians who understand the disorder and who can assess it and accurately differentiate it from other diagnoses. Science will no doubt add to our understanding of this disorder as time goes on. In the meantime, the book will serve a useful purpose by increasing the awareness of adult ADHD among clinicians, primary care physicians, and other mental health professionals.

Religion & Spirituality / Christianity / Biblical History

The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew by G. D. Kilpatrick (Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, Inc.)
The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew is an exact reprint of the 1950 Oxford University Press edition, with a new foreword by J. K. Elliott.

As a former student of George Kilpatrick whose approach to textual criticism I have espoused in my own academic work, and as one who has tried to promote his writings and teaching on the text (as well as having edited his Festschrift in 1976), I now have great pleasure in 2006 to commend this digitized production of Kilpatrick's influential book, and to recommend his groundbreaking study of the origins of the Gospel of Matthew to new readers. – J. K. Elliott, from the Foreword

A pioneering study on Matthew's Gospel, The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew has stood the test of time and for the past sixty years has been regularly referred to and discussed in many a learned monograph on Matthew as well as in the standard commentaries on that Gospel. G.D. Kilpatrick's investigation had rejuvenated New Testament source criticism in general and Matthaean studies in particular.

George Dunbar Kilpatrick (1910-1989) was Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford from 1949 until his retirement in 1977. His academic legacy lies on two fronts, textual criticism of the Greek New Testament, and source criticism. He was a renowned and innovative text-critic. For fifty years he produced many articles in the discipline, which are often cited by later scholars. Kilpatrick was also the editor of the second edition of the British and Foreign Bible Society's Greek New Testament (1958).

The contents of The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew includes:

  • The Documentary Sources
  • The Peculiar Narratives
  • The Liturgical Character of the Gospel
  • The Gospel and Judaism
  • The Community of the Gospel
  • The Evangelist
  • Two indexes: References to the Gospels and Subject Index
  • Biography by A.M. Devine, Wolfson College, Oxford, England

The thesis of the book is that much of the contents of Matthew's Gospel had been read and expounded in an ecclesiastical context prior to its appearance as a book intended to supersede its sources, principally the Gospel of Mark, the sayings document Q and the special Matthaean source, M. This liturgical origin of Matthew's work and its purpose to serve as a revised Gospel are the main concerns of The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew. Kilpatrick demonstrates that this Gospel shows signs of having been utilized and molded to serve a distinctive ecclesiastical purpose. The church in which the Gospel of Matthew developed and was eventually published had possessed Mark, had used it, adapted it and expanded it. The success of the Gospel according to St. Matthew as a liturgical text for use in worship is well demonstrated by its later history. It was also the Gospel most regularly cited by church Fathers.

According to J. K. Elliott in the foreword, that the conclusions of The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew now sound commonplace is due to the widespread influence of Kilpatrick's pioneering study on successive generations of scholars. His conclusions and methodology anticipated by a decade or more the writings of the redaction critics who looked for theological motives behind the evangelists' editing of sources. At the start of the twentieth century, Wrede had drawn attention to the distinctive features of Mark's theology, but it was left to Kilpatrick to put forward a plausible motive for Matthew's expansion and use of his sources. This evangelist reflected the liturgical and ecclesiastical context which used Mark and other sources. Matthew, according to Kilpatrick, reveals in detail and in its entirety how and why it was written in the way it was. This Gospel may have been an officially inspired production, authorized by church authorities (in the late first century in a relatively prosperous Syrian port, according to Kilpatrick) and arising from a Greek speaking church with a high number of Jewish Christians. But the writer of the Gospel as we have it was a composer in his own right, betraying his own distinctive stylistic and linguistic fingerprints.

According to Elliott, Kilpatrick's conclusions about the dating and provenance for the Gospel have not met with such acceptance; subsequent scholars, supportive of the main theses, nonetheless have tended to nuance matters of date and geographical origin. But, overall, The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew had a warm welcome from reviewers whose gener­ous plaudits contributed to its initial reception and the need for reprintings. This ensured that the book was essential reading for all scholars working on Matthew's Gospel. And this seminal work is still so recognized, hence the initiative for its now being easily available again to ongoing generations of scholars.

According to Kilpatrick in the preface, the study of the New Testament in the period between the two world wars took on new life and developed new methods and interests. The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew is in part an attempt to see how far these developments illuminate the origins of the Gospel. In part it is a contribution to the study of the relations between Judaism and early Christianity in an important but neglected period.

Kilpatrick's book is a close and detailed study of a very difficult problem. In the course of it he has brought together a large mass of observations, which will have a usefulness beyond the very full use that he himself has made of them; and many who do not accept his conclusions will be glad to use his data in their own discussions. – T. A. Manson, Journal of Theological Studies
. . . he [Kilpatrick] has investigated independently and freshly every aspect of the introductory problems, and has made solid contributions towards the understanding of the gospel and its origins. – Sherman Johnson, Journal of Biblical Literature

Kilpatrick had made a major contribution to our understanding of the times and work of the early church and it is a boon that The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew has been reissued so that students and scholars have it readily accessible. It may contribute to reconciliation between Jewish and Christian scholars. All those who are interested in the rise of Christianity out of Judaism desire the return of peace and security to Jewish scholarship from which so much has been learned in the past.

Religion & Spirituality / Judaism / Parenting & Families

Reflections: A Jewish Grandparent's Guide to Memories by Leora and Ron Isaacs (KTAV Publishing House)

KTAV Publishers and the United Synagogue’s HAZAK have teamed up to produce a gift book that will allow grandparents to record the details of their lives and preserve them for future generations. Grandchildren, on receiving the completed book, will come to love and appreciate their Jewish heritage as they learn what makes their family unique. Both generations will thus ensure that a precious legacy is not lost forever. – Ron and Leora Isaacs 

Designed by the Isaacs, this gift book is a memento album. It allows grandparents to record the details of their lives and preserve them for future generations.

Sections of Reflections include Tracing Our Roots, All about Your Grandparents, All about Your Parents, All about You, How We Celebrate, Records and Traditions: A Family Directory and Final Thoughts. The book is designed to become an heirloom; it contains a blank family tree, space for photos and documents and includes a pocket for a disk of photographs or an oral history.

Author Rabbi Ron Isaacs is spiritual leader of Temple Sholom in Bridgewater, New Jersey. He has a doctorate from Columbia University’s Teacher’s College. Author of numerous books, he has led numerous teacher workshops for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. Co-author Leora W. Isaacs is JESNA Vice President for Programs and Organizational Learning, and Director of its Learnings and Consultation Center. The Isaacs founded the nationally acclaimed Jewish Family Matters Program at Temple Sholom. They have facilitated numerous grandparents’ workshops for synagogues and Jewish Community Centers; for fifteen years they directed the Jewish Family and Adult camping experiences at Camp Ramah in the Poconos.

According to Reflections, readers and their grandchildren share a special relationship based on unconditional love and nurtured by common heritage and experiences. Because of this, each holds precious what the other values, and the book reflects that reciprocal relationship. By making entries, readers can record and transmit their family history, culture, values, thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to grandchildren and also have opportunities to collect mementos and to respond to the important events in their grandchild's life.

Reflections may become a vehicle for intergenerational communication. If they work on it together, while they are making entries in the book, the grandchild may respond with illustrations, comments, comparisons, and contrasts, making the compilation of this heirloom an interactive project. Readers may also complete the book on their own and present it to their grandchildren.

The book roots grandchildren into their family heritage and expresses how they are the flowering of the family tree. For the grandparents, it offers the opportunity to look back and forward, to bridge past and future generations. The questions and statements in the book provide a framework for grandparents to tell grandchildren the story of the family.

The book makes a perfect gift for any family occasion and a great family project.

Religion & Spirituality / New Age / Body, Mind & Spirit / Alternative Therapy

The Metaphysical Book of Gems and Crystals by Florence Mégemont, translated from the French by Judith Oringer (Healing Arts Press)
Stones have been used for therapeutic purposes since the beginning of time. Sorcerers and magicians, the ‘magical’ men of the earliest com­munities, communed with the mineral world and used stones to heal a variety of illnesses. It was believed that stones came from heaven and remained alive after their ‘fall.’

In ancient China, the Manchurians considered stones to be the tree's sister. To them, stones represented static energy as opposed to the cycle of vegetal growth. Stones, the unchanging principle of integral life, were thus able to restore all human faculties.

While few today believe in these myths, many are fascinated by gems and crystals, and The Metaphysical Book of Gems and Crystals outlines the effects of gems as an alternative therapy for physical, psychological, and spiritual healing. The book examines the ‘life’ energy of stones, their basic vibratory patterns, how this energy is used to treat various disorders and how to use gems in color therapy and to harmonize the charkas.
In The Metaphysical Book of Gems and Crystals, over 70 precious and semiprecious stones are inventoried as to their principal deposits, therapeutic applications, and zodiac correspondences, along with instructions for maintaining and recharging their powers. Readers discover which physical and emotional disorders can be relieved by using which minerals and – with the application of chakra therapy – which gemstones are indispensable to their spiritual health. While not proposing that lithotherapy is a substitute for traditional allopathic treatment, lithotherapist Florence Mégemont shows that it can be a powerful complement to it. Additionally, stones can act preventively, energizing both health and spiritual resources to a state of balance and attunement. According to Mégemont, gemstones can contribute to and accelerate healing through the practice of lithotherapy, which uses gems and minerals to restore enzymatic functions, and they can energize spiritual development. Alternative medicines such as homeopathy have given prominence to the therapeutic character of certain minerals, but the use of gemstones in expanding awareness or establishing a holistic, energetic connection with the stone itself have scarcely been brought forward.

Mégemont has been practicing lithotherapy since 1995, and she gives lectures and workshops throughout Europe.

Florence Mégemont’s explorations of the spiritual and therapeutic applications of over seventy different minerals and gemstones are vivid and lively, and they convey a strong sense of the stones as ‘beings’ rather than objects. This book gives strong emphasis to the therapeutic capacities of stones, and this is appropriate because the stones’ agenda is to facilitate human evolution into wholeness and spiritual realization. – Robert Simmons, author of The Book of Stones and Moldavite: Starborn Stone of Transformation

In this reclaiming of ancient wisdom, Mégemont explores the beneficial dimensions of the mineral world. The Metaphysical Book of Gems and Crystals outlines the effects of gems as an alternative therapy for physical, psychological, and spiritual healing.

Social Sciences / Folklore & Mythology / Religion & Spirituality

The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays 1959-1987, 2nd edition by Joseph Campbell, edited by Anthony Van Couvering (Collected Works of Joseph Campbell Series: New World Library)

… the vision and the visionary, though apparently separate, are one; and all the heavens, all the hells, all the gods and demons, all the figures of the mythic worlds, are within us as portions of ourselves – portions, that is to say, that are of our deepest, primary nature, and thus of our share in nature. They are out there as well as in here, yet, in this field of consciousness, without separation. Our personal dreams are our personal guides, therefore, to the ranges of myth and of the gods. Dreams are our personal myths; myths, the general dream. – Joseph Campbell, from the book

In The Mythic Dimension, Campbell examines in 12 eclectic essays the myth and its fascinating context in the human imagination – in the arts, literature, and culture, as well as in everyday life. The latest title in New World Library’s Collected Works of Joseph Campbell 11-volume series, this cloth edition features pieces that exhibit Campbell’s trademark thoughtfulness and intelligence. These essays explore the topic for which Campbell was best known: the many connections between myth and history, psychology, and the daily world.

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) wrote, among other works, the classics The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Inner Reaches of Outer Space, and The Masks of God. A prolific writer, lecturer, and scholar of art, history, religion, and culture, he taught at Sarah Lawrence College. Perhaps most responsible for bringing mythology to a mass audience, Campbell's works rank among the classics in mythology and literature: Hero with a Thousand Faces, the four-volume The Masks of God, The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, and many others. Among his many awards, Campbell received the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Contribution to Creative Literature and the 1985 Medal of Honor for Literature from the National Arts Club. A past president of the American Society for the Study of Religion, Campbell was professor emeritus at Sarah Lawrence College in New York until his death in 1987.

The Mythic Dimension, (fol­lowing Flight of the Wild Gander, the most recent volume in the series) brings together uncollected writings from 1959 to 1987. Written at the height of Campbell's career and covering diverse terrain ranging from psychology to the occult, from Thomas Mann to the Grateful Dead, from Goddess spirituality to Freud and Jung, these playful and erudite writings reveal the threads of myth woven deeply into the fabric of our culture and our lives.

The 12 essays gathered together in The Mythic Dimension explore myth in all its dimensions: its history; its influence on art, literature, and culture; and its role in everyday life. Written independently of each other, they can be read separately and in any order. The essays fall naturally into two categories. In Mythology and History, Campbell writes about mythology from a historical perspective: its development, its uses in the past, and the mythological themes dating from early times, that inform our lives today.

Mythology and the Arts collects the essays in which Campbell addresses his lifelong interest in how mythology is used in art to address the universal concerns of human consciousness.

The first essay of the book is Comparative Mythology as an Introduction to the Cross-Cultural Studies, Campbell's informal look at his teaching method for the hugely popular course on mythology he gave for thirty-five years at Sarah Lawrence College. Readers who wish they had been present for those invigorating lectures can consult, as the next-best thing, the appendix that lists the books Campbell regularly assigned to his class.

No one in our century – not Freud, not Thomas Mann, not Lévi-Strauss – has so brought the mythical sense of the world and its eternal figures back into our everyday consciousness. – James Hillman
Campbell has become the rarest of intellectuals in American life: a serious thinker who has been embraced by the popular culture. – Newsweek
In our generation the mythographer who has had the fullest command of the huge scholarly literature, the analytic ability, the lucid prose, and the needed staying power has been Joseph Campbell. – Commentary

The Mythic Dimension presents provocative, eclectic, far-ranging and brilliant essays exploring myth in all its dimen­sions, written by the foremost interpreter and teacher of myth. The volume joins other titles in The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series, which New World Library together with the Joseph Campbell Foundation introduced in 2001.

Social Sciences / Political Science / Law / Civil Liberties

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment by Anthony Lewis (Basic Books)

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press....

From one of the country's most esteemed experts on the First Amendment and the Pulitzer-prize-winning author of the classic Gideon's Trumpet, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate is an essay on the importance of freedom of expression.

More than any other people on earth, Americans are free to say and write that they think. They can criticize the White House or air the secrets of the bedroom with little fear of punishment. This extraordinary freedom is based on just fourteen words in the Constitution: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment.

But the freedom we now take for granted did not take hold when the First Amendment was added to the Consti­tution in 1791. It was more than a century later, in 1931, when the Supreme Court first enforced the Amendment to protect speakers and the press. Since then judges have inter­preted the sweeping language of the First Amendment to build a great structure of American liberty.

Although Americans have gleefully and sometimes outrageously exercised their right to free speech since before the nation's founding, the Supreme Court did not begin to recognize this right until 1919. In Freedom for the Thought That We Hate, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lewis tells the story of legal and political conflict, hard choices, and determined, sometimes eccentric Americans who led the legal system to realize one of America's great founding ideas. Lewis, since 1983 James Madison Visiting Professor at Columbia University, tells readers how these rights were created, revealing a story of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas.  

In this, his first book in seventeen years, Lewis reminds readers that even our most basic freedoms as Americans have been secured through long struggle – by judges, lawyers, activists and ordinary citizens – and should never be taken for granted.

In a narrative that traces the First Amendment from its early origins and engages such contemporary issues as hate speech and journalists' claim of a right to conceal confidential sources, Lewis covers the great legal battles along the way. He does not duck controversy; he reminds readers that it is judges, in their interpretations of the First Amendment, who have made this the most boisterous and outspoken society in history.

Readers of Freedom for the Thought That We Hate will also see how often the First Amendment might have been weakened or sidetracked by what appeared to be logical arguments but decisions that could have had painful repercussions weakening the checks and balances that have allowed this country to think and speak freely.

A superb history of the First Amendment and the body of law that has followed it. Timely and important, a work that astonishes and delights as it informs. – Kirkus (starred review)

The First Amendment's injunction that ‘Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press’ seems cut and dried, but its application has had a vexing history, according to this lucid legal history... – Publishers Weekly

... [Lewis] offers a thoughtful essay on the evolution of the American concept of free speech from the First Amendment through modern challenges to free speech. – Booklist

Anthony Lewis has written a lively, informative, and engaging introduction to the First Amendment, its law and its lore. In a small compass he packs in a remarkable amount not only of exposition and analysis of legal doctrine, but also its historical and human context. – Charles Fried, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and former Solicitor General of the United States

If you are interested in the First Amendment and the Supreme Court, there is nobody who is more interesting to read than Anthony Lewis. – Nina Totenbergy, Legal Affairs Correspondent, NPR

In this gem of a book, Anthony Lewis reminds us of past panics in which First Amendment rights took a beating. With quiet passion, he points the way to balance in a media-drenched age of peril and fear-mongering. His is a voice of sweet reason. – Joseph Lelyveld, former Executive Editor, New York Times

Anthony Lewis's Freedom for the Thought That We Hate is a must-read for Americans who want to understand their most cherished liberty. – Geoffrey Stone, author of Top Secret and Perilous Times

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate is a dramatic exploration of the struggle to make the First Amendment what it now is: a mighty bulwark of Americans' right to say or write what they will. The book eloquently highlights the relatively brief history of this cornerstone of our democracy and how it has been strengthened and not diminished as one of America's founding ideas. The book also makes a compelling case for the adaptability of the constitution.

Social Sciences / Sociology

Rural Communities: Legacy and Change, 3rd edition by Cornelia Butler Flora & Jan L. Flora (Westview Press)
Communities in rural America are a complex mixture of peoples and cultures struggling for survival by implementing innovative approaches to their problems. These people range from miners who have been laid off in West Virginia to Laotian immigrants relocating in Kansas to work at a beef processing plant to entrepreneurs drawing up plans for a world-class ski resort in California's Sierra Nevada.

This core text presents a framework for students to understand the internal and external forces shaping rural communities today. Rural Communities, written by Cornelia Butler Flora, professor and head of the Department of Sociology, and Jan L. Flora, professor of agricultural economics and sociology, both at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, focuses on various capitals in rural areas – natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial, and built. Issues covered include racial and cultural diversity; globalization and rural communities; the central role of communities in organizing a sustainable future; and building community in the context of ubiquitous change.

This integrative approach provides students with a framework for understanding rural society based on the concepts and explanations of social science.

The third edition of Rural Communities is thoroughly updated to include recent conceptual and topical developments. Revisions include a new chapter on governance, as well as new material on increasing tensions over international immigration, the differential impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on rural communities, and the rural consequences of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the South. The authors also examine the international trade regime, economic restructuring, and the choices for communities and regions in the face of these changes.

When the authors first conceived the Rural Communities proj­ect, they say they wanted to provide a textbook that would allow those using it to better understand rural communities and empower them to act to make them better places to live, work, and play. They were convinced that basic sociological concepts could build that understanding.

The first edition of the book was written to accompany a video series (see Appendix) by the same name for PBS. They used that edition for many years in conjunction with the video series and found that as the field of community studies advanced, they needed to update it. This led to a substantial reorganization in the second edition, where they brought in the community capitals. They found this version helpful, but again, the field progressed and the situation facing rural commu­nities continued to change.

In the third edition, Flora and Flora have applied their experiences using Rural Communities with classes and with communities, reorganizing to show the relationships be­tween material and social elements of community in the community capi­tals framework. They redirected their emphasis to an assets-based approach to community, focusing on what was already present in each community to address local issues of class, race, gender, and other types of exclusion. This edition focuses more on community agency in response to structure than their previous editions.

They also have updated tables, figures, cases, and data in the text when reliable new data were available, and they increased their emphasis on immigration and climate change. Chapter 11, Governance, now provides an alternative to looking solely at governments in addressing change in rural communities.

Other major changes include the introduction of the concepts of mar­ket, state, and civil society in Chapter 1, which they then use throughout Rural Communities. Chapter 2, Natural Capital, focuses more on how communities can confront global warming and invasive species, and Chapter 3, Cul­tural Capital and Legacy, continues its focus on stratification, domination, and resistance. Chapter 4, Human Capital, increases the focus on rural poverty and its implications. Chapter 5, Social Capital and Community, emphasizes the implications of different combinations of community bridging and bonding social capital, while Chapter 6, Political Capital, adds the smart-growth movement with relation to the growth machine and antigrowth forces in the discussion of the processes and structures of community power. Chapter 7, Financial Capital, introduces new financial instruments utilized in favor of excluded groups in rural areas. In Chapter 8, Built Capital, Flora and Flora introduce ways that rural communities have mobilized political capital to provide their own telecommunications services. They also focus on the way waste from built capital contributes to both global warming and environmental degradation. Chapter 9, The Global Econ­omy, now includes immigration as an important part of globalization not anticipated by international trade agreements. Chapter 10, Consumption in Rural America, brings in global warming and its implications for cul­tural change in terms of how we think of ourselves as consumers. Chapter 11 has been reformulated from governments to Governance, showing the importance of coalitions of market, state, and civil society actors at various levels to provide services and generate economic viability. Chapter 12, Generating Community Change, adds appreciative inquiry and assets-based analysis as an approach to community change, showing the impor­tance for rural areas of shifting from a deficit to a strategy for systemic change that builds from rural community capitals.

Does much to further our understanding of the role communities play in a rapidly changing global system.... fine scholarly work.... an excellent text. – Rural Sociology
Ambitious in both scope and content.... will have the most effect among applied sociologists and those with strong local economic development policy interests. There is plenty of material in the book that sociologists can use to help community development groups understand their local situations more completely. – Contemporary Sociology
Truly an exciting publication. Here is the first book in several decades that treats rural communities in a coherent, thorough, and theoretically informed manner. It is superbly readable and relevant for undergraduate courses on community analysis. – Gene F. Summers, University of Wisconsin

This book paints an illuminating picture of the complexity that is rural America today. A highly readable examination of the issues, this book sets a new standard for a publication that is both narratively approachable and theoretically rigorous. – Karl N. Stauber, President of the Danville Regional Foundation, and former Under Secretary, USDA

This is an exciting, practical, well-researched, and usable framework for making a difference in rural communities. Highly recommended to anyone interested in understanding how rural communities function and in being part of positive community development in rural America. – Dick Senese, Associate Dean of Community Development & Vitality, University of Minnesota Extension Service

Rural Communities provides a practical framework for students to understand the forces shaping communities today. The book, while being well researched, also engages readers – both in the classroom and outside it – in the dynamic process of community change, and the diverse legacies and global forces that influence that change.

Social Sciences / Women’s Studies / Biographies & Memoirs / African American Studies

Black Male Outsider: Teaching As a Pro-feminist Man: A Memoir by Gary L. Lemons (State University of New York Press)

Writing about the necessity of men embracing feminism is one thing. Writing a memoir about growing up as a ‘black boy outsider’ who becomes a feminist professor as a black man is another. A black man teach­ing black feminist thinking in an all-white classroom to confront white supremacy is no joke. I have done it long enough to understand the racial, gender, and sexual pitfalls associated with it – for students as well as myself. But writing a memoir about my experience teaching black feminist antiracism was personally a much more daunting task. … it meant confronting racist, sexist, and heterosexist demons within me and the shame, secrecy, and self-silencing fears they produced in me for most of my life. Writing about them dredged up deep inner feelings (rarely shared publicly) about who I am, what I teach, and my approach to it. It meant summoning up painful memories of boyhood outsiderness that had long ago been locked away. – from the Introduction

Black Male Outsider traces the development of the author's consciousness as a black male pro-feminist professor. Gary L. Lemons explores the meaning of black male feminism by examining his experiences at the New York City college where he taught for more than a decade, from 1991-2004 – a small, private, liberal arts college where the majority of the students were white and female. Through a series of classroom case studies, he presents the transformative power of memoir writing as a strategic tool for enabling students to understand the critical relationship between the personal and the political. From the inclusion of his own personal narratives about his childhood experience of domestic violence, to stories about being a student and teacher in majority white classrooms for most of his life, Lemons, currently Professor of English at the University of South Florida, takes readers on a journey about what it means to be black, male, and pro-feminist.  

Black Male Outsider a book about Lemons’ personal journey toward self-recovery outside the boundaries of male supremacist and white supremacist thinking. At the same time, it is an autobiography of pedagogical transformation, an attempt to break silence of his childhood past as a ‘black boy out­sider.’ Lemons says he is no longer ashamed for being a traitor to patriarchy. Silent about years of internalized patriarchal wounds of being a black male outside the script of hetero-masculinist notions of manhood, two years ago he determined to begin writing about his life as a black male professor of black feminist thought. Free from the laws of patriarchy and white supremacy, in the college classroom he confronts sexism and racism, as well as heterosexist and homophobic ideas of gender related to them.

At the heart of the memoir's narrative is the story of his jour­ney from patriarchal object of male marginalization to pro-feminist subject of his own telling. Metaphorically, it represents a movement from silence to voice, from the margin to the center of his reason for being a pro-feminist man. Organized into three parts, Lemons in Black Male Outsider speaks candidly about his personal decision two decades ago to embrace black feminist thought as a strategy for male self-transformation. It represents his struggle toward self-healing against patriarchy and white supremacy. Part 1 formulates a theory of antiracist pedagogy based on black feminist thinking. Part 2 functions as a narrative backdrop for his journey of self-recovery: from ‘black boy outsider on the margin of masculinity to pro-feminist professor.’ Part 3 examines his pedagogical practice in the form of a series of classroom case studies.

Lemons says he was drawn to the work of bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker, among other black feminists, and over time he conceptualized a pro-woman (ist) memoir-writing pedagogy that contests the boundaries of gender, race, and sexuality, while at the same time combating sexism, heterosexism, and homophobia. Together, parts 1, 2, and 3 chart the evolution of black feminist thinking in the theory and practice of his teaching. The memoir makes a case for education as the practice of social justice and the effi­cacy of black feminist thinking in memoir-writing pedagogy.

Teaching black feminist thinking at the college became a way for Lemons to unlearn whiteness. As he discusses in Black Male Outsider, most white students who took his classes over the years possessed little academic or personal experience of talking about race, much less engaging the topic of whiteness and its relation to white supremacy. In contrast, most students of color (of African descent, Latino/a, indige­nous, or Asian) enrolling in classes he taught came with at least some degree of critical sophistication in discourses on race. Among them, the experience of being racially ‘othered’ in majority-white spaces was a common point of connection. At the same time, the experience of gender, class, and sexual differences among them complicated racial politics within the ‘student of color’ label. Like white students, they too possessed their own problematic relationship to talking about race with one another. However, unlike white students at the college, they were always being made aware that race talk was happening in a white-dominated context. There were students (white and of color) who made an indeli­ble imprint on his pedagogy. They gave him the courage to write Black Male Outsider.

White students came to his courses on black feminism with high anxiety and fear that he would force them to disclose ‘racial’ secrets – particularly regarding their ‘personal’ relationship to experiences of whiteness, white privilege, and white supremacy. Female and male students of color also came with their own anxieties and fears, but their uneasiness was about taking a course on black feminist thought focused on memoir writing. How students of color felt in a majority white classroom was always on his mind. Despite the fact that whiteness was always mediating interactions, their presence in the classroom provided him the comfort of feeling in solidarity with them. Lemons says there were times when he felt his dark skin powerfully and viscerally connected to the skin colors of students of African descent. In these moments, when color entered the classroom (on rare occasions in the form of two, sometimes three students of color, at the most), his will to voice – to ‘talk back’ to whiteness – was strong, urgent, forceful. Those same moments also revealed the often painful, frustrating, and exasperating experience of students of color studying black feminist antiracism in an overwhelmingly white education setting.

Lemons in Black Male Outsider maintains that pedagogy of black antiracism focused only on a cri­tique of white supremacy is dangerous for white students and students of color. As one of the most committed black male pro-feminists of the past, W. E. B. Du Bois understood the interconnection between sexism and racism. In 1920, writing in Dark-water: Voices from within the Veil, he proclaimed: "The uplift of women is, next to the problem of the color line and the peace movement, our greatest modern cause. When, now, two of these movements – woman and color – combine in one, the combination has deep meaning". Contemporary black men advancing the cause of feminist antiracism in the classroom constitutes a radical gesture in the historical tradition of black male pro-feminist thinking.

Feminist politics is a choice. When men make that choice, our world is positively transformed. Prophetically, Gary Lemons speaks to the value of males assuming accountability for feminist cultural revolution – this is a book all men should read along with the rest of us. – bell hooks

Gary Lemons blurs the distinction between theory and practice and illuminates, as few have, how black feminist theorizing is important conceptually and pragmatically and how it is useful in one's everyday life. This is a groundbreaking and passionate book. – Beverly Guy-Sheftall, coauthor of Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African American Communities

Lemons memorably uses his own experience to engage timely issues, such as domestic violence, the education of African Americans, and the role of religious fundamentalism in black identity formation. I found the personal narratives riveting, and the author's courageous voice of love and protest unflinchingly exposes what others would rather keep hidden. – Joseph Downing Thompson, Washington University in St. Louis

[A] real challenge exists for black male feminists in consciously policing their own patriarchal privilege even as they challenge the conventions of patriarchy, particularly when doing so in the name of black women ... the real value of feminism to black men comes from its ability to literally transform our worldview, particularly in response to our acceptance of very rigid versions of black masculinity. – Mark Anthony Neal

Lemons in Black Male Outsider practices what he preaches as he takes readers on a fascinating and provocative journey into what it means to be black, male, and pro-feminist. Of particular interest is the inclusion of insightful personal narratives about his childhood experience of domestic violence. The passionate and courageous memoir writing may inspire readers to continue walking the walk, doing their own personal inner work.

Women’s Studies / Law / Social Sciences

Reaction and Resistance: Feminism, Law, and Social Change edited by Dorothy E. Chunn, Susan B. Boyd, & Hester Lessard (Law and Society Series: UBC Press)

The image of ‘backlash’ is pervasive in contemporary debates about the impact of second-wave feminism on law and policy. But does it really explain the resistance to feminist initiatives for social change in contemporary culture?

Legal strategies were central to the women's movement and other social movements that began ‘organizing for change’ in western democracies during the 1960s. Since then, Canad­ian feminists have achieved a considerable reputation worldwide for hav­ing set in motion processes that ultimately effected ‘progressive’ social change in their country. They challenged the paternalism of welfare state law, policy, and language and made the personal political in the realms of physical and sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic labor.

While their assessments of the impact of reforms vary, many contemporary feminists share a fear that legal and policy reforms that have been achieved through significant struggle are in danger. Women are ‘running hard to stand still’ or even losing ground that has been hard won. Moreover, the reforms have not benefited all women equally – their impact has var­ied depending on a woman's race, class, (dis)ability, or age. It seems clear, therefore, that feminists who want to maintain and build on past achieve­ments in the face of concerted opposition must confront challenges to, and critiques of, the women's movement as well as broader political and economic forces such as neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism.

In Reaction and Resistance, contributors from various disciplines analyze reaction and resistance to feminism in several areas of law and policy – child custody, child poverty, sexual harassment, and sexual assault – and in a number of institutional sites, such as courts, legislatures, families, the mainstream media, and the academy. The contributors represent a range of disciplinary and substantive interests but share a commitment to the analysis of law and society from feminist perspectives. All conceptualize law as a gendering practice, which varies depending on key factors such as race, class, sex­ual orientation, and disability. Their respective chapters attempt to build on and expand the exist­ing work with the aim of synthesizing knowledge about the dynamics and impact of feminist (and other) social movements, especially in Canada.

Editors of the volume include Dorothy E. Chunn, Professor of Sociology at Simon Fraser University; Susan B. Boyd, Professor of Law and Chair in Feminist Legal Studies at the University of British Columbia; and Hester Lessard, Professor of Law at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law.

The chapters in Reaction and Resistance are organized into three clusters, based on various sites of discursive struggle. The first part examines media representations of feminism, anti-racism, and their counter-movements. In "`Take It Easy Girls': Feminism, Equality, and Social Change in the Media," Dorothy Chunn presents a thematic content analysis of how mainstream, English-language newspapers have depicted feminist perspectives on equality/equity in the ‘public’ realm over a thirty-two-year period. She concludes that resistance to feminism has been omnipresent, albeit the precise content and degree of resistance has shifted with the impact of neo-liberal restructuring.

Robert Menzies tackles another form of media – the brave new world of men's rights Web pages – in "Virtual Backlash: Representations of Men's ‘Rights’ and Feminist ‘Wrongs’ in Cyberspace." He documents remarkably virulent examples of anti-feminist content, suggesting that far from being irrelevant, these cyber-discourses can play a role in shaping the contemporary status of feminism. The threat to the nation is frequently linked to threats to the father-headed patriarchal family as well as to threats to the racialized (white) character of the nation. This chapter serves as the most comprehensive review of anti-feminist discourses and literature in Reaction and Resistance.

In "Imperial Longings, Feminist Responses: Print Media and the Imag­ining of Nationhood after 9/11," Sunera Thobani challenges Faludi's concept of backlash in the context of the representation in mainstream print media of Muslim men and women post-9/11, during the period when the ‘war on terrorism’ began. Thobani suggests that the post-9/11 reporting played a role in reconstituting Canadian nationhood as ‘Western’ in its essence and, therefore, as imperiled by the nation's others: immigrants and refugees. Read alongside the men's rights notion that feminism imperils the nation, this theme points to the xenophobic anxieties of those who resist change to imperialist and patriarchal norms. Importantly, Thobani illuminates the construction of Muslim women as hapless victims and unwitting accomplices of hyper-patriarchal Muslim men. The portrayal of Muslim women as being in need of rescue by the West deflects attention from the ongoing misogyny and sexism facing women in Canada and thus reinforces the sense that Western feminism is irrelevant.

The second part of Reaction and Resistance enters the terrain of sexuality, in which feminist claims often generate (heterosexual) anxiety and resistance. Its two chapters examine trends in the criminal law of sexual assault and the development and operation of sexual harassment policies in universities. Lise Gotell builds on the extensive Canadian feminist literature on sexual assault in "The Discursive Disappearance of Sexualized Violence: Fem­inist Law Reform, Judicial Resistance, and Neo-Liberal Sexual Citizenship." Gotell places this area of the law squarely in the context of the rise of neoliberalism, which contributes to the erasure of the gendered context of sexual violence. This framework also allows her to formulate the concept of the ‘neo-liberal sexual citizen,’ who is held responsible for her own safety in a privatized discourse of sexualized vio­lence. The concept of the neo-liberal sexual citizen, while still highly controversial, permits an understanding of some of the successes in recent case law on the admissibility of personal records and consent as well as the specific form of backlash to feminist understandings of sexualized violence that now occurs when women take complaints of sexual assault into the criminal justice system.

In "Backlash in the Academy: The Evolution of Campus Sexual Harass­ment Regimes," Hester Lessard explores backlash against feminism in the university context, using the example of the struggle for, and response to, sexual harassment protections at the University of British Columbia, as well as two high-profile sexual harassment claims in British Columbia in the 1990s. By placing the story of sexual harassment policies within the broader context of liberalization and, later, of the neo-liberalization of Canadian universities and higher education policy, she complicates the backlash narrative and provides a stronger base for analysis and strategy during a period when human rights regimes were being privatized.

The final part of Reaction and Resistance examines law and policy related to family, which constitutes a prime site of backlash discourse. In "Feminism, Fathers' Rights, and Family Catastrophes: Parliamentary Discourses on Post-Separation Parenting, 1966-2003," Susan Boyd and Claire Young document the extent to which fathers' rights and feminist discourses have permeated parliamentary debates on family law in Canada since the first Divorce Act was initiated. Their findings challenge the dominant narrative emerging from fathers' rights advocates that feminists have controlled the law reform agenda. In fact, gendered analyses were virtually silenced in government documents on family law reform by the turn of the twenty-first century. This chapter also paints a more complex picture of backlash, suggesting that fathers' rights discourse might better find its ammunition in state policies rather than in the ostensibly successful feminist initia­tives. It also illustrates the superficial nature of law reforms touted as ‘fem­inist’ and the resistance to incorporating an approach to post-separation parenting law that takes proper account of women's ongoing social responsibility for children.

Wanda Wiegers explores another terrain in which the specificity of women's lives has become invisible in "Child-Centred Advocacy and the Invisibility of Women in Poverty Discourse and Social Policy." Her criti­cal analysis of the shift towards a focus on children in the war against poverty again directs attention to the larger context of the rise of neo­liberalism in Canada, accompanied by state initiatives on restructuring economic responsibilities by emphasizing personal rather than collective responsibility. Although the backlash dynamic is perhaps less obvious in this study, Wiegers shows that the new policies such as child support guidelines, the National Child Benefit, and the Early Childhood Develop­ment Initiative benefit least those who are most disadvantaged – women and children who are reliant on social assistance. This study points to the urgency of reconsidering feminist efforts to invoke child-centered strategies in order to advance women's interests.

Finally, in "Challenging Heteronormativity? Reaction and Resistance to the Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Partnerships," Claire Young and Susan Boyd analyze the virtual disappearance of feminist insights on family and marriage in public hearings on same-sex relationship recognition in Can­ada in the early twenty-first century. The changes in this field of law over a short period of time have generated a clear neo-conservative backlash, but this chapter is more concerned with the ways in which the oppositional framework of the debate has sidelined feminist analysis. This study suggests the need for more cross-fertilization between social movements, at least to the extent that the gay and lesbian lobby in Canada has marginalized feminist critique in order to put forward the most persuasive argument.

One insight of their studies is that discursive sites such as the media and the House of Commons tend to privilege particular voices within social movements such as feminism, typically marginalizing the analysis of women of color, for instance, and privileging the voices of those who fit better within liberal or neo-liberal frameworks. Robert Menzies points out that feminists must take the men's rights movement seriously because the struggle that it represents, and its resistance to feminism, is fundamentally related to our (in)ability to preserve and advance human rights. Partly for this reason, all social movements need to take anti-feminism seriously because at its root anti-feminism represents "a far deeper conflict over who gets access to the power structures of contemporary society”. Thus resistance to feminism is relevant to all progressive movements for social change.

This is an excellent collection that gets to the heart of a number of very important policy debates in Canada from a feminist legal standpoint. The two major strands that weave through all of the essays – backlash and the effects of neoliberalism – are very important both theoretically and from an activist perspective. Greater understanding of how these larger social processes work will provide significant strength to scholarly and activist communities. – Professor Audrey Kobayashi, Queen's Research Chair, Department of Geography, Oueen's University

Reaction and Resistance adds to the extant critical and feminist theorizing about the workings of social movements and counter-movements. Their research provides empirically grounded knowledge that feminists and other social activists can draw on in developing new legal and political strategies for promoting the equality of all women during an era marked by the decline of the welfare state and the ascendancy of a neoliberal state in Canada. The contributors, taken together, bring an interdisciplinary, historically informed approach to the analysis of feminism, law, and social change. Collectively the studies paint a more complicated picture of feminism, law, and social change than the popular image of backlash suggests. The chapters provide exemplars of the complete range of issues that feminists have addressed. They build on and expand the existing work and synthesize knowledge about the dynamics and impacts of feminist social movements.

Reaction and Resistance is part of The Law and Society Series, under the general editorship of W. Wesley Pue, which explores law as a socially embedded phenomenon. It is premised on the understanding that the conventional division of law from society creates false dichotomies in thinking, scholarship, educational practice, and social life.

 

Contents this issue