Distributors Books

I teach a 7th grade English/Geography block class. A Boat to Nowhere was adopted by the English department before I arrived. In some ways it was a good choice. Wartski does a wonderful job with setting. She really paints a picture of the jungle of Vietnam and the isolated and tiny utopian village that Mai, the young protagonist, lives in with her grandfather and brother.

When Kien, the "monster" Mai and her brother Loc hear in the woods arrives, their peaceful way of life is over. Kien, an orphan from the war, brings news that the government will soon find this remote paradise and set up new rules. He is right, and when the govenment officials do arrive, it is Kien, surprisingly, who is able to help Mai, Loc and their grandfather, if he is willing.

Most of my students enjoyed reading this novel, so I would certainly recommend it. While studying Southeast Asia, we also read The Clay Marble (set in Cambodia) by Minfong Ho. Both were good novels; however, the characters in The Clay Marble seemed more fully developed.

I am 9 years old and I really loved this Vietnamese story. It paints a lot of pictures in my mind. It has a lot of exciting parts but no like Harry Potter where there's only one suspensful part...this book has it throughout the whole story. I felt like I was in the jungle and out at sea. I think this book is actually better for kids 9 and up. I also thought it was easy to read.

Overall, my students did not feel that this book really met their needs as readers. They struggled with relating to characters that were developed minimally. For example, Mai seems to jump back and forth between loving and hating Kien due to small actions on Kien's part. She forgives him quickly and returns to despising him pages later. There seems to be no feasible reason for this switching besides the contrived plot. Speaking of the plot, my students found it extremely predictable and a little sappy at the end. Overall, not a bad book for lower level readers, but do not expect to be thrilled by this story.

Meera Nanda critiques the Hindutwa and related developments with razor sharp philosophical acumen. But I can't understand how the content of this book justifies the title.
In order to break the spell of Hindu Dharma, one could take the following approach: Select the statements from sources of Hindu Tradition (written or oral) and demonstrate how they are influencing the thought of Indian public in a subtle way. And deploy Rational Inquiry to make this demonstration.
But, I don't see how this book demonstrates the connection between Hindu Dharma or Hindu metaphysics ( as can be found in Hindu texts like Upanishads, Bhagavadgita, Mahabharat, etc..) and the spell they cast on the thinking of Indians today.
Instead the book is about Hindutwa, Hindu revivalism, etc.. If Hindutwa is so powerful as to cast a spell on Indian public, then how come it has had such a limited success in the last six decades ? Even the limited success BJP had in 1990's is more to political factors , like electorate wanting to try an alternative to Congress, JanataDal Governments, than its Hindutwa philosophy.
The book would have done more justice to the title if it took an approach like Daniel Dennett took in his recent book "Breaking the spell: A naturalistic study of religion"

Meera Nanda really irritates me with a short-sighted defensiveness of humanistic naturalism. The argument posed here (which is nebulous to say the least) relies heavily on the belief that strict naturalism is fundamental to science-as-a-method and is inherently a complete system. That's silly.

Science at its best is only able to study natural phenomena, which we can interpret as things that are ultimately within human comprehension. However, the limits of human comprehension need not be the same as the limits of human perception. Even evolution implies that possibility by making it highly unlikely that there is not some post-human sensitivity that could expand post-human comprehension. Light-sensitivity contributed a fundamentally new sensitivity to simpler organisms, but it wasn't until a system developed to process that sensitivity that it could be considered comprehensible by an organism. There is a distinction between sensitivity (perceptibility) and comprehension.

Gap between human comprehension (natural phenomena) and human perception (observable phenomena)is definitely NOT something incompatible with science, per se. Science is limited in that it may only address the comprehensible, but it does not, in itself, imply any limit to the observable.

Essentially, Nanda has it backwards. She says that the methods of science require that natural phenomena encompass all phenomena. However, it is simply the existance of natural phenomena - our ability to comprehend anything (hello Kant!) - that implies the study of itself by the scientific method. She is right that the limits of science are natural phenomena, but is wrong to say that the limits of observable phenomena are the the same as the limits of science.

In our current times their is rarely a very few outspoken intellectual voices amongst the english-using sections of India who have had the courage and commitment to critique both Hinduism and Hindutva ideaology.

The rise of Hindutva owes itself to the 80's India, contrary to the ideals of "Secularism" sponsored the practice of holding various mutations of Hinduism in the public sphere. Against the traditional custom of "Respect of all Religions and cultural practices" the state has openly indulged in and encourage celebrations and Prioritisatiion of Hindu rituals in public institutions...

With the ever increasing disintergration of the the state "Secular" ideals, Meera Nanda book is a brave plea for "secularism" and a timely warning against the ever belligerent influence of Hindutva ideaology and its pervasive grip on the Indian state.

This is an interesting read and I recomend it to anyone who is interested in the Indian political history and current affairs.

the only thing that i don't like about his books are there isn't anymore

This story continues from Crime Partners when Billy and Jackie get knocked off. You'll see killings and bloodshed, but I was surprised to see the detail in which Goines describes how a family gets killed by a cat called the Creeper. You know he's successful in painting a picture and making you feel like you're right there watching it happen, and in this case, it got pretty bad. The story is short, but it leaves you wanting more and it worked, because I'm on my way to find Kenyatta's Escape right now.

why I liked Part 2 better than Part 1, but had I read this book first, I would've never read Kenyatta's Escape. This book basically talked about how Kenyatta got started, the dedication to his "missus", his crew, etc. I'm starting to get bored reading these books. Before I said I would read all of his book but this is the sixth one I've read and I've only liked two. It's like the same character on a different day: they all have prostitutes, young girls with pert breasts, pimps, and drugs. Blah blah blah. But what's really starting to bug me is that they all look like the same character, they're either fat and smell bad or tall, brown-skinned, with a bald head. And the author keeps reminding me every other page. I get it. I get it.

If Robert Clark didn't live in James Beard's pocket for 80-odd years he has certainly figured out how to sound like he did. Mr. Clark manages to be both fair, critical and exhaustive, showing Beard with all his many warts, yet without diminishing the man's talents, charm and greatness of spirit. A well researched, well-written, fascinating and useful book and an essential book for anyone interested in food and food history.

Robert Clark has taken one of the most colorful culinary figures in history and turned him into the most boring 327 I've ever suffered through. His verbosity was annoying, and there were so many tangential wanderings that I could barely remember whom the book was about.

This is an ok biography but not as good as Epicurian Delight or Beards own autobiography "Delights and Predudices". His homosexulity is some what white washed and the tone is a little bitter.

I'm a Beck fan indeed, but I don't like this book. Actually, I've only read one other Robert Beck (Iceberg Slim) book before, and that'd be Pimp. Pimp is much, much better by a long shot. This book definantly falls short of anything Pimp has to offer. It's not worth the buy, my friends. If you're interested in some great reading, may I suggest you basically choose anything by Donald Goines?

In "Trick Baby", Robert Beck (street-named Iceberg Slim) told the story of Johnny O'Brien (street-named White Folks) and his early days running the short con -- a confidence game designed to cheat the mark (victim) out of small amounts of money. Johnny O'Brien's story continues in "Long White Con". Johnny now calls himself Folks. He has graduated to the long con. Long cons are elaborate confidence games that include casts of rehearsed players plus elaborate sets. In long cons wealthy marks are cheated out of large amounts of money. Folks is older now; he is an experienced actor and has more self-confidence.

"Long White Con" contains some insight into long con games, but periodically Mr. Beck uses sexually-explicit material in place of content. The dialogue is not excellent and only Folks' character is well-developed.

I do not recommend this book.

This book is a slow read. After reading white folks several years back, i was quite excited to run across this book. i expected this book to pick up where the last left off, it hardly does so, and it barely tells a story worth telling.
Too many loose ends in this book. However due to my soft spot for the author it has earned 4 count em 4 stars. I recommend reading dope fiend or mama black widow, truly entertaining and distrubing at the same time, if thats at all possible.

Craig Pollard is undoubtly the best spy that ever lived. This book is a wonderful documentation of this very true story. The best part of the book is about the Russian archrival spy Leslee.

Information in this book was never accurate. The U.S. Goverment and Isreal has since released information refuting the claims of Jonathan Pollard. Reading this book is a waste of time.

As a collection of factual information concerning the arrest and imprisonment of Jonathan and Anne Pollard, it is the only truthful account of the Pollard Affair. Not a single word of this book which was copied without attribution by authors such as Wolf Blitzer and Alan Dershowitz and falsely elaborated on has ever been challenged as inaccurate. Yet it reads like a novel, allowing the reader to make his or her own judgements about the facts of the case. It was intended as a white paper, rather than a book, to give media an unimpeachable and totally accurate account, so that their reporting would be balanced against the combined secret services disinformation offices, who were busy feeding media representatives totally manufactured and false stories about the Pollards. It was published as a book, rather than being distributed to media as a white paper because it was more economical to do so. Thus in reading this as a white paper for which it was intended, the reader can gain an insight on how the media is manipulated by powerful professionals working for the government, powerful companies, and others able to pay for and manufacture news.

The 1920s was a great decade for Soviet literature: the works published during this era are thematically- and ideologically-diverse. Yes, there are better-written novels that came out during this period. Nevertheless, Gladkov's Cement is under-rated. I find it fun to read and re-read (which is critical, since I end up teaching it a lot) and it's definitively one of the best vehicles for getting at the tensions that plagued the Bolsheviks in the early years. Pairing this with Abram Room's film, Bed and Sofa, is a great way to address questions of gender in the early Soviet Union.

It is my sincere hope that people interested in Russian literature are no longer forced to read this awful book. When I was in school, during the Cold War period, I could see some usefulness. Socialist Realism was the approved creative style in Russia and one could not come away from reading 20th century literature and think that everything was as well-writen as Bulgakov's Master and Margarita and Zamyatin's We. Yes, in order to understand the Soviet mind one had to read awful books like "Virgin Soil Upturned (proving that any hack can win a Nobel Prize) by Sholokhov, How Steel Was Tempered and yes, Cement.

When we were reading this book, and I have read it twice, there was an attempt to show in the example of the book's communist party heroine, that working women cannot have it all. Well quite frankly, the reason this heroine is unable to find love and happiness is because she is supporting the creation of a joyless utopia where no one will ever be allowed to be really happy.

The book rehashes ethical relativism. It tries to bring in some trendy takes on power, feminism, and Foucauld, but it just commits the relativistic fallacy over and over. Author seems unaware of logical contradictions.

In Moral Understandings, Margaret Urban Walker not only powerfully argues the case for a feminist ethics of responsibility, but in so doing extends the implications beyond feminism. Viewing moral responsibility from various socially and culturally situated contexts seems common sense enough to all, accept those who imagine themselves to be in some transcendent position, epistemologically speaking.

What I get from reading Walker is not the idea that we should be reading off ethics from these various positions in the sense of doing the usual (traditional) ethics from many vantage points. That would be relativism. Rather, it seems to me that Walker is arguing that we should be responding from these positions. For Walker, moral responsibility is more an expressive and collaborative exercise than the traditional theoretical activity which focuses only on decision-making. It is this practice of responsibility that maintains the other-directedness of ethics embedded in social and cultural context.

For me, the most surprising aspect of Walker's book has been that so many of my applied ethics research students have found it useful in grounding their work in fields as diverse as disability, vulnerable identities, nursing ethics, GM foods, biotechnology, welfare ethics, and community development.

This is not the easiest Community Nursing text to get through. Some of the chapters are excessively long and repetitive. Granted there are a couple chapters that are somewhat interesting and to-the-point, but there are few and far between. The writing is fairly small and I often have trouble concentrating on the material.

The book has fairly outdated statistics. The Disaster Nursing chapter talks about the worst US and Global disasters, and there's obviously no mention of the Tsunami and Katrina. The book is simply outdated and extremely boring.

Good luck if this is your required read.

Coming from a Nursing student this book was very informative in a lot of Community Health Nursing aspects. Although the tone could be a little more exciting it was a lot better book than some of the Community Health Nursing books I have seen from the past. It uses a variety of pictures and figures to help understand some of the more dull information but it does a fairly good job of it.

For a critical review of this book, please refer to the review published in the journal "Third World Planning Review", Volume 12, Number 2, May 1990, pages 197-198. The journal is published by Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, England. The book's theme centers around two arguments which the author posits as: 1) that patterns of responsibility in the traditional Muslim built environment were different from those today and affected all its aspects; and 2) that Muslim societies today can improve the quality of their built environment by changing the patterns of responsibility that operate within it.

For a critical review of this book, please refer to the review published in the journal "Third World Planning Review", Volume 12, Number 2, May 1990, pages 197-198. The journal is published by Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, England. The book's theme centers around two arguments which the author posits as: 1) that patterns of responsibility in the traditional Muslim built environment were different from those today and affected all its aspects; and 2) that Muslim societies today can improve the quality of their built environment by changing the patterns of responsibility that operate within it.