Patton Books

While this tome is mostly filled with several short stories created by fan's of the Goon, with some notable celebrities such as Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, and Thomas Lennon, giving us some pretty diverse fare, Eric Powell also lends a hand with a three part Little Unholy B@$t@rds tale. We get the pleasure of being introduced to Dwight T. Albatross, the TRUE creator of the Goon who lets Eric Powell ride on his mighty coattails, though Dwight is none to thrilled with the lack of female fans that exist in the comic book universe and is likely going to be moving in the direction of rocker next.
Though this does not move the main storyline of the Goon along, it is a nice addition to the collection. Much like the first story on these pages, this serves as a great Roast for the Goon.

I love finding books like this with inspiring words of wisdom. Thoele suggests thinking of ways to be a better friend to yourself. Note the ideas like giving yourself more compliments or getting a massage and then start making them happen with small steps everyday.
Since most of us don't take the time to nurture ourselves, this book makes you think (and hopefully take action).

As an active health club operator, I found this book to be very informative. It has incredible amount of information and covers about over 500 pages. I feel the book deals more on the day to day operation than most book on fitness cover. The aurthors have a proven track record in the industry.
Ron Thatcher Author Fitness, Memberships & Money

Alexandria, Virginia has been an important town on the Potomac River for centuries. This book has a bit more than 200 historic photographs taken of the city from the Civil War through the early 1970s. The four sections of the book are from 1860-1899. The second section takes us from the turn of the century through the just after the end of the First World War (1900-1919). The third section shows us the impact of the crash of the Great Depression to the eve of the Second World War (1920-1939). The fourth section takes us through WWII through the 1970s (1940-1970s).

I think that the pictures were wonderfully selected that show us how the people lived, their architecture, the technology, their dress, their trades, their pastimes, how the big events shaped the way people coped, and the captions provide just enough to put the pictures in context without getting in their way. Each section gets a page of text to set the tone.

Obviously, the book will mean most to the people who live or have lived in Alexandria and whose roots reach down into the history preserved here. However, for anyone interested in US History, these photographs give a good insight into the time periods covered and considering Alexandria's importance and proximity to Washington D.C., this is a very interesting and helpful book.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

FROM THE RICHNESS OF OUR PAST-ONE OF THE GIANT NOVELS OF OUR TIME: Here, in the mighty tradition of such magnificent sagas as 'The Big Sky' and 'Centennial', is a novel that uses the passionate drama of the American past to create an unforgettable human epic. Its setting is the huge sweep of the West during the Indian wars. Its superb heroine is a beautiful woman freed from captivity at the hands of the Apaches to face an even more savage ordeal at the hands of white frontier society. Its hero is the rigid young cavalry officer who both desires and despises her. Its narrative drive is irresistible, its sense of time and place extraordinary...

For non-profits hoping to secure funding from major foundations providing assurances of quantitative and qualitative evaluation is essential. This is the definitive text on the topic. Implementation of these methods into your organization will ensure that you can report to your funding sources, stakeholders, and Board that your organization is meeting its goals. Creates the preconditions for a measurable outcome at the outset of a project. Should be on every non-profit director's desk.

I must first state that I am not a member the Hindutva movement, indeed, I denounced the BJP for its sectarian rabble-rousing and Semitization of Hinduism in my The Oneness/Otherness Mystery: The Synthesis of Science and Mysticism (MLBD, 1999)
However, I am associated with a more fundamental Indian challenge to Western thought, attacking Materialist metaphysics after having identified the physical correlate of the yogic Pure Consciousness (Divine Light, cit; Atman, Buddha Nature, al haqq etc.) with the brainwaves of the Reticular Activating System, which supports the Brahmanic view of the ontological primacy of Consciousness. The vast majority of Westerners do not question the fact that Materialist science is based on the Christian myth of Creatio ex nihilo and it is easy to show epistemologically that the "physical world" is never experienced directly, outside consciousness. Furthermore, as J.L. Mehta states in his phenomenology of the Rg Veda, the "Arya" is one who seeks the (Divine) Light.
In 1997 as I finalized the manuscript of O/OM a bookseller showed me a copy of What is Enlightenment magazine featuring a Georg Feuerstein on the front cover (I had never heard of him). Synchronicitously, I found in the shop a copy of Feuerstein, Kak and Frawley's In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (published by the Theosophists) which introduced me to the new ideas about the Harappans being the Vedic Aryans. Their arguments included that the Vedic word for Man "Purusa" came from pur (town/city) dweller and the recently discovered LANDSAT images of the extinct great river in what is now the desert of Rajastan which seems to tie in with the Rg Vedic river Saraswati etc. However, the attempt to deracialise the "Aryans" as merely "nobles" seemed suspect and PC.
As I had written about colonialist distortions of Indian history (as in Inden's "Imagining India etc.) and knew that the self-hating pro-colonialist Indian N.C. Chaudhuri had argued that the Indus civilisation must have been an offshoot of Sumer, these new ideas were very appealing even though I had no problem with Aryans being invaders of India. Indeed, in 1989 on a trip to the USA an American woman asked if I was Iranian as I did not look Indian". I replied that as a brahman, I am an Aryan as are the Iranians, we are a branch of the Indo-Europeans. I was born in Assam where the natives are Thais and tribals and the majority of my fellow Bengalis show non-Aryan S.E. Asian and dark-skinned features.
In 2000 I attended the World Association of Vedic Studies conference in Hoboken where H.H. Hock and Konraad Elst were amongst the speakers on the Aryan Invasion debate. As the only UK-based Indian I was taken aback by the ferocity of the BJP-supporting USA Indians shouting down liberals. I was publicly denounced by one as a "self-hating Hindu" for telling an American that I was not a Hindu in a simple orthodox or henotheist sense but that my scientific and philosophical researches led me to Yoga, Advaita and Nondual Kashmir Saivism etc. in support of my ideas. Like many open-minded scientists, I found that Yogic mysticism contained essential truths about Reality cloaked in mythology (see www.sciencemysticism@zaadz.com). A US Bangladeshi Hindu loudly berated me for questioning his teenage daughter's ferociously sectarian speech about Muslim intolerance in Bangladesh.
In 1998 I read in India Today about the Rajastan "Saraswati" discovery linking it to Rg Veda ("Saraswati do not kick us away, do not force us to migrate to foreign lands"). At the same time I came across Western put-downs of such New Age or Hindu Revisionist "mythology". Even Thomas McEvilley who in The Shape of Western Thought argues powerfully for the Indian Jain origins of Greek philosophia (whose mystical nature is suppressed by Western academia) and transcendental monism, was sceptical of the Vedic Aryans as the Harappans claim. In August 2007, Indophile Michael Wood began his BBC Story of India asserting that a few thousand Aryans invaded from Central Asia. He also completely misrepresented Yoga as thinking and Hinduism as ritual in his effort to glorify his favoured Buddhism (ignoring its roots in Brahmanism) and, whilst focusing on "tolerant" Sufi Islam completely ignored the central role of the Brahmanical Ideology in unifying India's diverse little traditions (the idea of India is largely a Brahmanic one).
Following Wood's advocacy of the Aryan Invasion I searched and found this book and am pleased to see that this debate is clearly not just Hindu mythological revisionism trying to Indianize the Aryans even though Witzel et al. claim it is. As Colin Renfrew said in Archaeology and Language, Linguists and Archaeologists have used each others' tenuous speculations unquestioningly to concoct ever more fanciful speculations posing as "science". The LANDSAT images, the recently discovered submerged cities in the Gulf of Cambay etc. are much harder science than Linguistic theorizing! The Vedic 100-oar boats and fully Aryan (not Sankritized) river names in N.W. Indo-Pak and the archaeological evidence of BMAC cities and post-Harappan towns makes "nomadic Aryans" very suspect! Lars Fosse's critique of simplistic Hindu revisionism and nation-building myths whilst valid, is also revealing in his patronizing view that India is a "wounded civilization" on the brink of social and "economic disaster". Does the phonological hard scientist Fosse think 8-9% growth and the never-so strong sense of Indian national unity is a complete disaster or his he like other Western scholars imagining the India he would like to see!
Sutapas Bhattacharya

As an avid reader of quality books and graduate of UCLA School of Law, I strongly encourage the purchase of Ron Patton's Interrrupted Identity.

Not only does the book provide actual case examples of identity theft but it arms the would be victim with real solutions. In addition, Mr. Patton includes real laws and their citations so there is no place for the perpetrator to hide. Many people will become victims of identity theft is a harsh brutal reality.

Interrupted identity is a tool to combat the problem both before it occurs and after the unfortunate incident. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This hot new resource should make its way into the collection of anyone interested in protecting their identity.

I have had this book on my shelf for several years and had never read it. It's wonderful! I can't wait to read more of her books and to introduce them to my piano students. What an excellent presentation! And then to discover that she comes from the same town I live in was quite a nice surprise.

This is very interesting for anyone to read, particularly for students studying a musical instrument.

Bravo!

Four literacy experts combine their experience to investigate why strong literacy skills are necessary but no sufficient to ensure students' academic success in Is Literacy Enough?: Pathways to Academic Success for Adolescents. Surveying a group of children from low-income families from preschool through high school, and charting the students' outcomes using test data of language and literacy skills as well as interviews and self-report data of motivation and engagement in a classroom setting, Is Literacy Enough? offers insight and revelations borne directly from controlled and diligent social science. Critical protective and risk factors key to students' success are analyzed, including the presence of academic and motivational support, poverty, whether a student attends multiple schools, family disruption, social-emotional difficulties, and much more. A serious and scientific-minded dissection of the elements necessary to help students reach their full potential, brimming with recommendations to enhance the quality of learning programs for adolescents.