John Waters Books

THIS BOOK MADE ME LAUGH OUT LOUD. IF YOU'VE EVER WORKED IN A HOTEL, RESTAURANT, CHARTER BOAT, YOU NAME IT...YOU'VE BEEN THERE...TOTALLY FITS MY FAVORITE METAPHOR "WE'RE JUST GLIDING ALONG LIKE A SWAN.. SERENE ABOVE WATER AND PADDLING LIKE HECK DOWN BELOW" A VERY FUNNY BOOK!

One of the most delightful accounts of life on a cruise ship. The historic last long journey of a ship under the American flag reveals all of the personalities that come together and learn to relate in a confined space. The real adventures of the passengers and crew will keep you laughing through every chapter. A book that I re-read before every cruise. As any traveller can tell you, don't believe anyone when they say "Nothing Can Go Wrong".

Nothing Can Go Wrong is the story of the last long cruise of one of the last American passenger ships, the Mariposa. Told in alternating sections by John D. MacDonald (the mystery writer) and Captain John Kilpack, the book shows a fascinating side of cruise ship travel and work that is amusing and even informative.

The book was written in 1977, and hence is a bit out-of-date. This affects MacDonald's sections much more than Kilpack's, though. Kilpack's sections, which are written in a voice so clear you can almost hear the captain speaking, are mostly stories about incidents on this and other trips, and they retain their humor. MacDonald's section, being partly a travelogue, is much more susceptible to the ravages of time - most of the places he discusses have changed a lot since he was there. Still, the book commemorates a wonderful ship and a truly funny cruise - one on which the company said "nothing can go wrong." It does, in the form of broken anchors, sinking floats, incompetent harbor pilots, and bureaucracy everywhere.

If you can find it, it's well worth reading - both for cruise-ship travelers and those of us who would never set foot on one of the floating monsters. For a more modern comparison, read Nothing Can Go Wrong alongside David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Recommended for lovers of travel memoirs and travel humor everywhere.

Benjamin Filene's account of the origins of the category of "American roots music" is inexorably aimed at peeling away discursive layers within that very term itself to reveal the historical continuities and disjunctures at the heart of it. As Filene puts it: "What makes the formation of America's folk canon so fascinating, though, is that just as isolated cultures became harder to define and locate in industrialized America. the notions of musical purity and primitivism took on enhanced value, even in avowedly commercial music. Twentieth-century Americans have been consistently searching for the latest incarnation of 'old-time' and 'authentic' music." And Filene shows deftly how these categories are heavily inflected with racial and class issues.

But Filene's work begins much earlier, with the early 19th century effort in the US and later in the UK to collect and collate British folk song texts and sometimes the tunes that went this them. He demonstrates that this effort was thoroughly infused with romanticism--an attempt to record and preserve a "better" culture before capitalism, greed, irreligion and science came along. This grew from the German philosophical fascination with the 'Kultur des Volkes,' and into an impulse to forge a British national culture based on the English peasantry---even sometimes as found in the American Appalachian population (!)---and of course, an undertone, made explicit here and there--of racial purity.

This is especially significant in that popular interest in anything like folk song appears to have begun for African-American forms before Anglo ones--but was apparently stopped by the mythic valorization of whites as true folk. It seems that Anglo songs edged out other types as the basis of this new mythic canon that was forming, even as the Fisk singers and blackface minstrelsy became more popular in the 1870's. In fact, Filene argues convincingly that the way in which Black folk songs (spirituals) were collated preserved an idea of Black passivity and the exotic gaze in whites. Of course blackface minstrel performances reinforced this. The only other challenge was Lomax's collection of cowboy ballads, which he unsuccessfully tried to peg to the spirit of English rural culture. In the 1920's attempts at using a more racially and geographically inclusive cultural building with rural songs, white, black, and latino, were undertaken by poet Carl Sandburg.

Most of the book deals with the legacy of the cult of authenticity created and shaped by the Lomaxes from their field recordings and artist promotion. Their zeal for collecting and promoting their ideas of "true folk singers" cannot be underestimated, and in doing so, they shifted the canon away from whiteness, or so it seemed. Filene's account of The Lomaxes and Lead Belly perhaps best demonstrates the role of exoticism in producing authentic "American"ness at that particular time. The tours undertaken by the Lomaxes emphasize Lead Belly's virtuosity and expansive knowledge, but simultaneously construct him as a primitive, exotic "Heart of Darkness" figure that lay at the core of authentic American folk-song, and by extension lay at the periphery of contemporary, decadent, urban white Modernist America. When they started to get not only recording techonology, but official government and Library of Congress support, that added an entire new dimension of national culture building, as well as "documentary"-style authoritativeness to their work--as they literally began constructing a usable musical past for the United States.

In fact, Filene's analysis fits perfectly with Jacques Attali's theories on music, insofar as Lead Belly's music could be said to be a constructed and promoted by Lomax as a sublimated form of `animal nature' (ancestor) and racialized `primitive violence' (demon), exhibited in spectacle for the consumption of middle-brow and high-brow white audiences. Filene connects this racialized legacy of "authenticity" with the commonly found ideology that "roots" musicians even today are expected to be overly emotive, premodern, and non-commercial. In other words, they must perform "Otherness" for their predominantly white, bourgeois audiences in order to be authentic. To be fair, this impulse waxed strong in 1930's American. James Agee and Walker Evans. Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath," a number of popular magazines--, all played into this impulse. To be popular though, you couldn't be too successful, or you might compromise your authenticity. Sound familiar? The paradox of Roots music and Leftist politics, in the 1930's, both together in the Popular Front.

Moreover, it is perhaps speculative, but nonetheless provocative, to note that Lead Belly's popularity took place in the wane of the Harlem Renaissance (and into the 1940's), and quite possibly signaled for white consumption a sign of (or the `return' of) a more racialized `authentic n*ggerness' inscribed in black bodies, in contrast to the earlier "New Negro" and the later post-WWII racial agitators. For future artists, like Muddy Waters, the legacy of transformation took more commercial, but similar sets of turns. As Waters grew in popularity, his music shifted from Mississippi delta through country inflection--from acoustic to electric, in an attempt to adopt to urban styles...and then pressure to go back again to his more "primitive" beginnings for sales purposes. From the influence of Lomax to the commercial propagation of Leonard Chess and Willie Dixon, Filene follows Waters through his career to see the larger effect of "roots" discourse upon him and perceptions of him. We get an especially big eyeful when Filene takes extra time out to analyze Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man", just one of many popular songs invoking pagan, magical, feral and occult tropes to signify both danger and desire for the listening subject. Waters influence on the Rolling Stones and The Beatles is noted, and we begin to see how folk constructions of authenticity gain a larger influence in Rock and Roll, even as black artists in that genre fail to catch fire with white youth as strongly as later white rock musicians did--or as even strongly as white folk artists like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger.

Later parts of the work demonstrate the emergence of folk institutionalism in Washington, from the Federal Writers Project, the Resettlement Administration, and the Library of Congress all contributing to this effort within the framework of New Deal politics, and the growing idea that folklore always has a functional element to play in a given society. Rather then "vestigial," folklore becomes "germinal." The search for musical folklore takes these institutions to the city for perhaps the first time in "roots" discourse. And also to war, as government agencies came under increasing pressure to turn all aspects of policy towards the effort in WWII. At the same time, a push to professionalize folklore in academia gained ground as well--graduate programs in folklore were established, thus created a contentious political history for every field of culture impacted by contemporary folklore studies, no less than in American Studies. Richard M. Dorson, an early Americanist, was also an early "Folklore" specialist, and worked tirelessly to construct methodologies for subsequent use. Lomax, too, became an academic--an early methodologist in 1960's ethnomusicology. And with the establishment of Folklore in the Academy of Letters, the annual Folk Festival is born, largely again, through the aegis of the Smithsonian---yet another example of government sponsorship and cultivation of Kulturvolk as national basis, continuing to the present day. The modern day so-called "folk revival" is born as well through the efforts of Pete Seeger, who carried on the functionalist tradition of the Lomaxes in his efforts. Folk cultures have literally become American cultures--in the sense that they may even suck all the air out of that category, leaving little for other than these constructed myths.


I appreciate the way that Filene goes about his project, using a combination of comparative visual analysis of photographs, and album covers, as well as musical and lyrical analysis. His willingness to take into account close readings of song collections (like 'American Ballads', 'Our Singing Country', and 'American Songbag'), and productions of early government/corporate partnerships in radio programming (such as "We Hold These Truths") speak to the power of his interdisciplinary method. And in uncovering more than just two periods of attention to folk music (the 1930s and the 1960s) he demonstrates a longer, more resilient undercurrent of American modernity and its self-renewal.

Most books about popular music fall into one of two categories. You have your pretentious rock n' roll critic who writes in impenetrable and cryptic prose (Hello Anthony DeCurtis and Robert Christgau) or you have purely academic writings that miss the heart of what is often music felt at a gut level. Then along comes Benjamin Filene. Filene offers up a brilliant discussion of the ways in which folk music became a part of our American consciousness. Profiling the careers of such artists as Leadbelly, Muddy Waters, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, "Romancing the Folk" presents an extremely lively, readable and well thought out discussion of the way folk music was presented to the American public and ultimately accepted as a valid art form in its own right. In doing so, Filene breaks from the stale world of traditional popular music writing and gives you a fine read while you listen to "Blood on the Tracks," "Goodnight Irene," "Hoochie Coochie Man" or "Talking Union."

This is a historically thorough yet immensely enjoyable work. Filene's take on "roots music" is refreshing--honest and free of gushing hyperbole; just cynical enough without ever becoming acerbic.

The stories Filene chooses to tell are illuminating and often funny--Leonard Chess faking his way through Blues hitmaking; Leadbelly being marketed as a country bumpkin in overalls when he preferred to wear suits.

There are so many more stories to be told, though--musicians to discuss, angles of the folk boom to expand, that I wish Filene would write more--perhaps another volume.

Jaiya John did an amazing job on this book. His writing style was easy to read and allowed my mind to visualize everything he was talking about. As someone who works in the child welfare field, this book inspired me and helped to renew my hopes for the future of our children. Jaiya has a wonderful way of getting you to think and at the same time touch your soul to motivate you to make this a better world to live in. This is definitely a must read book!

Reflection Pond is truly wonderful on so many different levels! Its message is so giving and loving! The analogies and poetry used to explain and describe youth, separation, behaviors, families, heritage, emotions, healing, identity, "well fare", spirit, beauty, and their relationship are illuminative. One of my favorites is the poem on page 68...very powerful and uncensored.

Futhermore, I think Reflection Pond is a wondrous, comprehensive, reflection of youth and a tool for families, parents, prospective parents, child advocates and mentors to use to raise our children holistically so that they can reach their full potential and reflect their gifts throughout the world. Reflection Pond also resonated with me on a personal level. Using the right formula to reprogram our minds for change to reach that peaceful state is key to living a wholistic and balanced life and it applies universally...to children and adults.

I just finished this book yesterday and there is so much in it that it will take some time and re-reading to let it all sink in. The writing style matches the content which makes it a very "dense" book to read. Each sentence or paragraph made me want to stop and think about it more deeply before continuing. I agree with Jaiya John's implied suggestions for improving the current child welfare system, but wish he would have stated things more plainly. As an adoptive mother, there were sections I found challenging to read, but that I know are critical for me to deal with in order to best serve my children. I highly recommend this book for anyone working with children and teens who have been disconnected from their first families.

This is the best book to have an initial view about solar energy and its aplicattion.

This is the textbook of fundamentals of solar energy engineering.

The second edition of "Solar Engineering..." is a much expanded and updated version of the original, which was already a decent textbook. It covers almost everything there is to know about engineering of solar energy systems, and the presentation is clear and well organized. The division into "basics" and "applications" sections is a very sensible way to get oriented before plunging into the depth of a specific technology, especially since solar thermal applications tend to cover a wide variety of technologies. The gradual and systematic approach makes this book a very good textbook for beginners. The wide scope makes it also a pretty good reference source for practitioners who are looking for a specific bit of information.

The new chapter on photovoltaic cells is a nice touch. While this is not a "thermal process," it is still important for any practitioner of solar thermal to know what's happening in the other corner of the field. A presentation of PV at the level that can be understood by non-physicists is a very welcome addition.

My only complaint is that recent significant developments are not well represented (I guess much of this developed after the book was written, so this complaint is not really aimed at the authors). Topics such as non-imaging concentrators, high-temperature thermal receivers for Brayton cycle, and solar chemistry are either briefly mentioned or absent altogether. The more traditional applications such DHW are of course presented in detail, but their significance to the energy market remains negligible. I would prefer to see more on applications that have the potential to make a major impact. Hopefully this will be included in the next edition...

I sing in our church choir. It pains me to watch the faces of members of the congregation when the pastor introduces a new hymn. If the tune is unfamiliar or the poetry obscure, the folks look baffled. They remind me of a Mexican-American kid I tutored in English: He could read in a halting fashion, but could not tell me the meaning of what he had just read!

This will not happen to pastors who introduce to their congregations the hymn texts and tunes offered in John A. Dalles' "Swift Currents and Still Waters: 65 Hymn Texts." Dalles' texts are straight-forward; he uses familiar phrases and comfortable metaphors. The tunes he suggests should be as familiar to church-goers as the backs of their hands.

Pastors and congregations should be grateful for such accessible hymns!

John C. Purdy, Santa Fe, NM

Pastors, music directors, and others who plan and lead worship would do well to look into "Swift Currents and Still Waters." This collection of 65 hymns can offer the churches they serve many possibilities for praising God through hymns that are refreshingly new yet highly accessible.

There are hymns here for every season and festival of the church year. The text of each hymn is printed on one page with the melody line and the interlined text on the opposite page. Many of the tunes are well known, giving those who would use these hymns the benefit of new words set to a familiar tune.

Among the hymns in this book that I have used are "Come, O Spirit" (# 10) set to the tune St. Kevin, a fine hymn for Pentecost, and "God,Bless Your Church With Strength!" (#13) set to Diademata. Both received favorable responses when sung by my congregation.

The generous number of indexes (7) in the book will prove helpful to anyone looking for a hymn for any occasion.

This collection would make an excellent supplemental hymnal for any congregation interested in singing a new song to the Lord.

This collection of 65 hymn texts by John Dalles was introduced at The Hymn Society national meeting in Boston in 2000. There are a number of hymns in this collection that have received wide use and acceptance. They appear in eight different denominational hymnals in the US, Canada and Australia, representing the UCC, Presbyterian Church (USA), the Moravian Church and others. These hymns are fresh, new and readily sing-able.

One of the most helpful is selection #5, the hymn text "Bless the Ones Who Nurture Children." Originally written for the retirement of Dalles' friend Janice Anderson, who had spent a lifetime as a teacher and Christian Education Director, the hymn is perfect for the celebration of the beginning of the church school year or the dedication of church school staff. It would make good centerpiece of worship highlighting education in the church.

For those who are seeking a hymn text to mark other special occasions in the life of their own congregation, they might wish to consider "God Bless Your Church with Strength" for church anniversaries, "Come, O Spirit" for Pentecost and "Come to Tend God's Garden" for stewardship emphasis. There are also hymns for various celebrations of the church year, including: "Rejoice Behold the One True Light" for Advent or a Hanging of the Greens Service; "God Gather Us from Many Strands" for World Communion; "O God of Life, We Praise You" for Trinity Sunday and "Upon the Mountain Set Apart" for Transfiguration.

Most of these hymns are set to very familiar tunes; it would be easy for congregations to sing them. Several of these hymns have also been set as anthems for choirs. For Thanksgiving, "O God Behold Your Family Here" and for special music-related events "Make Music for Your Lord to Hear" by composer Bob Moore (featured on GIA's CD "Like a Whisper in the Heart") and for Easter, John Ferguson of St. Olaf College's "Easter Proclamation" on GIA's CD "Hidden in Humbleness".

The author is an ordained Presbyterian minister who has been writing hymns since 1983. He has served First Presbyterian Church of South Bend, Indiana; Fox Chapel Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh (where most of these hymns were first sung) and for the past eight years has been the senior minister and head of staff of 1100-member Wekiva Presbyterian Church in suburban Orlando, Florida. A frequent contributor to worship journals, Dalles is a Life Member of The Hymn Society. These 65 texts represent about one-tenth of his work in the field of hymnody.

While the level of difficulty compared to other class textbooks is higher, it provides a real world examples of problems environmental engineers find in their field. This book will suit better as a reference book for undergraduate and a textbook for graduate students, it goes beyond the classic theoretical solutions. One of the authors is a professor in a very good university in California. You may find this fact very important because many of the theories, formulas and conclusions that are being used in the industry are contained in this book, and have been derived from doctoral work by Ph.D. candidates at that University. You may want to keep this book as a reference after you have finished your graduate school. Every environmental engineer or scientists must have a copy of this book. Believe me! We used this book at the LMU Graduate Program.

I used this book as an alternate text for a graduate level course in chemical hydrogeology. This was by far the best textbook I used. The class text and most others that I used were qualitative texts. This book presents a quantitative approach to equilibrium chemistry. This definately helped clear up several topics and is full of plenty of examples. At the end of the chapters there are suggestions for additional reading and many practice problems. The authors present cchemical kinetics, equilibrium, acid-base reactions, coordination chemistry, precipitation and dissolution, and redox reactions. This book is definately helpful as it goes through many problems step-by-step and is very instructive.

This book includes the properties of water, introduction to and application of thermodynamics and kinetics, acid-base chemistry, complexation chemistry, precipitation and dissolution, and redox chemistry in water.

The book is not recommended for an undergraduate level, it is hard to follow for a beginner. It is fairly old, published 1980, so it doesn't have current topics in environmental water chemistry, but it does cover the basics which are important to know.

The problems at the end of each chapter are fairly difficult.

The book was brand new and got here in three days. Cheaper than the bookstore and the wait was very short.

The book is very easy reading and understandable, but it does not have answers to the work problems which is most important. It has a good balance of theory and applications.

As teacher of an Environmental Engineering course (at Ariel Academic College, Israel) and as consulting engineer, I find the book useful, but... Some areas are weak: Population and demand prognosis, Resource planning, Economic evaluation and optimization, Advanced water treatment (membrane and ion exchange technologies, for example), Desalination of brackish and sea water. Each chapter has a well explained exercise, a very useful feature, but most are non metric. All in all, I know of no better textbook, and it is worth its money.

Some of the essays were way over my head but in general I liked the focus of the book.

This book is an inspirational work taking a look at people who classify themselves as Christian or Jewish, but who commit themselves also to the teachings of the Buddha. When three traditions like this meet, it's like, as Jack Miles points out in the foreword, 3 drained travelers gathering at a resting spot discussing their journey. All three traditions are ancient, but spiritual practice is new and exciting for anyone who engages themselves in it's wonderful arms. All three paths take practice and dedication, not one of them we simply understand "right off the bat." This book truly is fascinating in it's representation of all three dominant world religions and how one can successfully utilize the very best of the teachings offered by them all. If you enjoyed "The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the teachings of Jesus" by H.H. the Dalai Lama, your sure to enjoy this book, likewise. So what are you waiting for? Buy it!

I got a hold of Cold Dark Water and dived right into it. Being a retired cop and a private investigator myself I was really looking for the little details that only a pro can pull off. Mr. Healy lets us in how real investigators work. I was intrigued as John Healy took me to the seacoast of New Hampshire and Maine. I could smell the salt air and taste the seafood as the suspense unfolds. John Healy does an excellent job of keeping any readers interest piqued as you try to anticipate what Jack Dawson is going to do next. This is Magnum PI with a brain. After you finish this book, you are not left hanging as Mr. Healy is preparing us for more!

I received Cold Dark Water by John M. Healy on Monday afternoon and finished reading it on Wednesday morning.
I am not a big book reader but being from New Hampshire and formerly in law enforcement I found this author
to have a great knowledge of how law enforcement work and writes a good mystery nove.

Loren Magee
New Hampshire

Bought this book as an additional source of info prior to doing my PADI Ice Diving Course. I've found instructors teach what they know which isn't always what is safest so I wanted to make sure when I made decisions they were informed ones. This book helped me ask some questions regarding my own safety I would never have thought about had I not read it. Anyone considering taking an Ice Diving course should buy this book and read it prior to taking the course. Remember singnals are different depending who your instructor is but as long as everyone is using the same ones it's OK. This book is definately worth the money.

I am taking the YMCA ice diving course now and although the YMCA has it's own text, I decided to read this book for some additional insight. I'm glad I did. This book is packed with color photos of ice diving activities and was very easy to read. This text made a great addition to my course's text. A MUST read.