Rebecca Books

This is a great book for teachers who are using or thinking about using centers. It is divided by center (art, blocks, music, etc.) and each section explains what skills will be learned in that particular center, how to set the centers up and what materials are needed. Each exciting activity is labeled with the approximate age of children who should use the center along with the skills the child will build. Many of the materials needed are objects generally found in the classroom, but are used in ways you probably haven't thought of. This is a fantastic book for preschool teachers!

Well, Its safe to say that my mom has done it again. This is my favorite of all her books so far. Its a real winner.

Back cover reads:
Is it possible?
During Desert Storm, Rosie Armstrong's husband went off to war. He didn't return. She was told that he was missing in action--and presumed dead.
For years, she couldn't accept that Nick was dead, couldn't believe it. But she got on with her life because she had to--for her child's sake. Eventually she met another man and allowed herself to fall in love with him. She's finally said yes to Zach's proposal of marriage...
And then there's a phone call. "Your husband's not dead." He was a prisoner of war all those years, kept hidden in Iraqi bunkers.
He's coming home. A stranger.
How would you feel? What would you do?
Share Rosie Armstrong's story. And the stories of her husband, Nick, her son--and her fiance. Experience the emotion!

I have read many of Rebecca Winters books and Strangers When We Meet happens to be one of her best, if not the best. It is a story of a woman who falls in love after her husband is presumed dead during Desert Shield. It takes her two years to finally accept Zach's proposal only to find out a few hours later that her husband, Nick was a POW and is now alive and coming home. This book is a real tear jerker, one I couldn't put down. This book could easily be a made into a made for TV movie. If you are a fan of Rebecca Winters this book is a must; if you aren't, you will be after reading this book.

Herzig connects scientists who suffer for their beliefs to religious persons who would suffer for theirs----an incredible connection that is rarely talked about. Herzig's interesting perspective on the history of science at the turn of the century, the way she pulled together the philosophy of suffering, science, and history, made me want to fill in the gap from the "Barbarians" of the 1920's--the book's last era--to current science....how much has really changed?

With startling erudition, Dr. Herzig reveals a range of interests from the hard sciences, the aesthetics, American history, modern philosophy, and classic literature...with a remarkable grip on each. Full citations nurture and provide able source material to the academic, yet SFS will challenge and enlighten the armchair reader as well. I loved it.

This enlightening research burns like a torch and illuminates one of the darker periods of history. Totaro insightfully details how the horrific plagues of old influenced the literature and challenged the philosphies of their time. Like a great teacher, Totaro offers something for everyone. From the casual reader to the curious scholar, this book, will inform, enlighten, and amaze its reader. Suprisingly, Totaro uncovers new and fascinating information that will certainly provoke interest in all who read it. The mysteries of the past are vividly brought back to life by the author's use of intriguing illustrations, contemporary quotations, and astonishing historical facts. This book's sobering historical lessons seem to awaken us to our vulnerablilites as we witness contemporary reports of outbreaks, drug resistant infections, and biological weapons of mass destruction. We would do well to remember, revisit, and reconsider the lives of those who endured one of the most extraordinary eras through their haunting historical record, which Totaro has so astutely presented in this book.

Suffering in Paradise, Rebecca Rotaro's brilliant analysis of the bubonic plague in Early Modern England, demonstrates how that devastating disease influenced and articulated to the work of the most important writers of the time: More, Shakespeare, Milton. Rotaro's insightful and fresh readings shed new light on the despair, suffering, hope, and response of the English people during repeated episodes of the plague. The book will be an attractive addition to the library of those who study and teach the history of medicine, those who focus on plague, and the general reader with an interest in the history and literature of the period.

Larry Zaroff, M.D., Ph.D.
Stanford University
Consulting Professor
School of Medicine & Program in Human Biology
Senior Research Scholar   Center for Biomedical Ethics

This new Spiritual Directors International Book offers a valuable contribution to a relatively new educational field: the training of supervisors. Supervision of Spiritual Directors: Engaging in Holy Mystery is a collection of essays edited by two longtime practitioners in the field, Mary Rose Bumpus and Rebecca Bradburn Langer. They, along with eight additional contributors, hope their writings about formal supervision will expand and encourage further conversation about this arena of formation and training. The essays begin by defining supervision and shift to pertinent subjects such as gender and sexuality; parameters of supervision; supervision of beginning directors; ethical quagmires; "co-cultures" in supervision; working with diverse ethnicities; the differently-abled; and more. These topics permeate our teaching methods.
One crucial subject is the meaning of supervision itself. My first experience as a supervisor many years ago was difficult. At the end of the academic year I thanked the program director for trusting me to do the work. His response was simply, "Cissy, if you are going to be a good supervisor you need to learn how to trust yourself." Supervision is the process in which spiritual directors are helped by their supervisors to facilitate growth of a relationship between God and another individual. While good skills help this process, the writers tell us that we most often gain self-confidence as a supervisor and spiritual director by recognizing the particular gifts God gives each of us for our work. The reminder is to allow our gifts to unfold in their own time. It is my experience that the luxury of time is difficult in supervisory settings that span a few academic quarters, with the added pressure of grading vulnerable learning. A contemplative approach described by James Neafsey can help with this difficulty. The second part of this book grounds supervision in incarnational reality. Jesus becoming human makes it possible for every aspect of our own selves to be holy. Supervision acknowledges this by using the director's emotions, sexual desires, other bodily sensations, and thoughts to discern God's presence or absence. My heart further resonated with the final section of this book that invites us to see God in all things. Supervision can enlighten the process by helping us encounter God beyond the confines of silence in prayer, privacy in "me and God" relationships, and monastic settings. Seeing beyond limits widens our worldview and helps the spiritual director discover God within cultural diversity and in other settings. A chapter regarding spiritual direction with disabled persons is particularly helpful. These essays left me wanting more. I wondered, for instance, what qualities supervisors look for in a potentially good spiritual director. The answer seemed implied in the excellent writing throughout this book. An explicit list of core competencies, however, would have been helpful. The writing is, for the most part, well done. The writers are primarily from spiritual direction training and formation programs in California, USA. An international
flavor in future books of this type might add a broader perspective. Supervision of Spiritual Directors: Engaging in Holy Mystery makes a fine contribution to the training of spiritual directors. I highly recommend it as an excellent resource for new and experienced supervisors and spiritual
directors.

Cissy McLane has been a spiritual director and retreat
presenter for twenty-two years and has supervised spiritual
directors in a variety of training programs. She is co-founder
of the Ignatian Spirituality Center in Seattle, Washington,
USA. She is a wife, mother, and grandmother.

The book is a compilation of short essays on topics that could come up during spiritual direction between a director and directee. The essays are well written and cover almost every conceivable issue that may surface.

One of the best, ever, of WWII books by U.S. GI's.

Every college history class should have this book!

Highly recommended.

Frank Grady was a personal friend of my fathers. Maybe because I grew up knowing him, the story made more of an impression on me than it would have normally. But whatever it is, it was a moving story about the resiliency of the human spirit. It is also about the humor, obstinacy and stubbornness; which contributes to that resiliency. Mr. Grady and others like him were true heros. It was an honor to have known him and it is an honor to know more about him through his book.

I really enjoyed this book. At the beginning of this book you meet Dallas who's father has just told her that she has to find a husband within the next couple weeks. Dallas is a tomboy who has spent her whole life ranching. She rides, ropes & shoots better then most of the hired hands. When told that she has to marry she turns to Nick, a long time friend who is the foreman of the ranch. Nick is known as a ladies man & she figures he can help teach her how to be a lady & show her what a man looks for in a woman. When Nick gives Dallas a lesson in kissing they both realize they'd rather be with each other then anybody else but neither one of them think that it's an option. Dallas belives her father wants her to marry up with the son of the rancher whose land is beside theirs & Nick believes that he has nothing to offer Dallas. This book is now stop steamy romance. Highly recommended.

A great story. Witty, sassy, a fun read. I enjoyed it greatly the first time I read it and several times since then. The kind of characters you want to keep reading about. I wish the author, Rebecca Sinclair, would do a follow up story (maybe involving Dallas's younger sister).

Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education concerns the importance of trust in a functional democracy, and how this trust manifests in the extra-legal customary habits of citizenship.

The author, Danielle Allen, takes a fifty year old iconic picture, the picture of young black Elizabeth Eckford being shouted down by a angry white mob as she entered Central High School in 1957 Arkansas, as the point of departure for her treatment of the extra-legal habits of citizenship. Allen's point was that though this picture was taken five years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the difference between the changing of a law and the changing of the attitudes of a people is strikingly important.

Allen's main argument is that we need to rethink about the importance of our political habits of speech and friendship, and think carefully about how casual we are with the losing side of any political debate. The "winner-take-all" mentality is antithetical to the virtues of democracy, and breeds anger and resentment that's not easily or rightfully assuaged. If nothing else, the book got me to realize the importance of saying, "Hello" to people on the street.

Danielle Allen seems to be everywhere these days. From writing in academic journals such as POLITICAL THEORY to composing magazine pieces for THE NATION and THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR to various media appearances to reading personal works of poetry, Allen has rapidly become one of the leading young scholars in North America. Though young in age, her wisdom transcends any youthful categorizations. I resist labeling Allen a public intellectual as that phrase carries with it the aura of elite narcissism. Against the narcissistic tendency unfortunately prevalent among prominent academics, Allen represents what I call a "people's intellectual." A people's intellectual is an individual determined to take political theory, thought, and engaging ideas to the streets. This commitment to exposing theorists in academia as well as citizens in general to original thought-work is why I and many others are excited about Allen's current endeavors. Toni Morrison, Bonnie Honig, and Earl Shorris correctly point out that Allen is a worldly Rawls who meditates on our most pressing domestic and global questions by composing works that are part how-to-manuals, part political theory, and wholeheartedly possessing the goal of achieving Copernican insight by shifting our gaze regarding how we conceive of issues such as citizenship, race, trust, sacrifice, recognition, cosmopolitanism, and the future of democracy in these dark times.

Allen's first book dealt with the politics of punishing in democratic Athens. In TALKING TO STRANGERS, Allen bridges her expertise in ancient political thought with modern and contemporary political theory in order to address the role and anxieties of citizenship in the wake of the 1954 US Brown v. Board of Education decision. Specters of the late Ralph Waldo Ellison hover around the text as does the thought of thinkers such as Aristotle, Alexis de Tocqueville, Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, and James Baldwin. Interestingly, like Ellison in INVISIBLE MAN, Allen begins her work with a "Prologue." Unlike Ellison's unnamed narrator who reflects from the underground on the question of one's invisibility in society while physically being hyper-visible, Allen writes from above the ground and goes into the messy recent past of America to think about why people who see one another day to day simultaneously distrust one another and refuse to talk to one another in the mode of friends.

Drawing upon the prominent 1957 case of Elizabeth Eckford and school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, the author argues the US was reconstituted at that moment. That moment of reconstitution serves as the foundation upon which the ensuing discussions about distrust, trust, and political friendship occur. For Allen, the dilemmas of race and citizenship should be viewed as issues of distrust and trust. By calling for a "politics of friendship," the author thinks those in the American polity and elsewhere can overcome perennial states of distrust. By building up states of trust, the fabric underneath which democracy rests will be strengthened. We must talk to strangers if we desire truly to work through our most pressing problems. Rejecting the call for talking to strangers as mere utopianism is simply not good enough. Talking to strangers is hard work, and it ironically goes against the advice of "Don't talk to strangers!" given to children by their parents and other adult figures. But the hard work of talking to strangers holds the promise of societal transformation.

So what does this book provide the reader with? I believe Allen's book offers seven major contributions to political theory, critical race theory, and democratic politics: (1) a theory of political friendship; (2) a novel concept of sacrifice; (3) rethinking of the meaning of constitutionalism; (4) original analysis of the benefits and limitations of Habermas's theory of communicative action in terms of trust; (5) brilliant critique of Thomas Hobbes; (6) critique of the police state; and (7) resuscitation of the art of Rhetoric. I do not have the space to explain each of these points. However, I do want to address briefly a selection of them. Sacrifice occupies a central place in the text and in Allen's current theorizing. She contends loss and sacrifice are fundamental to democratic life. Understanding what we must sacrifice to achieve political and social transformation allows us insight into understanding to what extent we must fight to preserve democracy. In Chapter 3, Allen turns to the important debate between political theorist Hannah Arendt and the novelist Ralph Ellison. By describing Ellison's critique of Arendt's position on Little Rock desegregation, Allen highlights the vital role of sacrifice and why one should not separate political and social issues. That chapter is a gem. Allen's discussion of Hobbes in Chapter 6 provides a very unique reading of the English social contract theorist. Hobbes supported the idealization of unanimity and the repudiation of rhetoric in his theory of the Leviathan. Sovereignty for Hobbes rests in the figure of an all powerful Sovereign as opposed to the People. The Sovereign for him settled issues of distrust, not the masses. Allen questions Hobbes's way of imagining the People, yet she recognizes that Hobbes does put forth the question of how to overcome distrust.

This leads me to my last point on the topic of rhetoric. Chapter 10 as well as the Epilogue advance Allen's claim that we must return to the use of the art of rhetoric, an art form repudiated for centuries. Allen's reading of Aristotle's highly neglected text, THE ART OF RHETORIC, delineation of how to use rhetoric to garner heightened trust, and Epilogue discussion in which the reader witnesses the author composing a letter to members of the Faculty Senate of the University she resides in now compel even the skeptic of rhetoric to consider its possible benefits. For those interested in how I have utilized Allen's theorizing on rhetoric for Caribbean political thought, see the end of my 2003 lecture entitled, "Walter Rodney's Heresy" (...)

I shall leave it to you the reader to judge the text for itself. In closing, if you are committed to transforming democracy, then I urge you to pick up this book.

Five years ago Mark Bradley walked out on Eden Sommers and just disappeared.
Would she ever love another man as she had loved Mark?

She was chosen by The Raven for a covert operation. She was being sent to Pine Island to ascertain if the man being held there was really Lt. Col. Mark Bradley or some one smuggled in to take his place.

Major Ross Downing ran the Island by the book and he was determined to break the man under his control. So far the man know as Mark Bradley did not break - no information was pried out of him.
Now he was using the threat of an unpredictable truth serum that could kill Mark.

Dr. Hubbard has finally found someone he can talk shop to in Eden but just how far could he go? Would he pander to Downing?

Captain Walker, Lieutenant Price and Captain Yolanski were monitering the comings and goings of Eden and Mark. And listening in on all conversations.
Sgt. Wayne Marshall was Mark's male nurse who took is job very seriously, even to listening at the doorways.

The biggest danger was the East German doctor, Hans Erlich and what he may have put into Mark's mind. What kind of torture has the doctor subjected Mark to?

When it came to escaping the Island a very good friend of Mark's showed up to help - Michael Rome. He had worked with Mark before and Connie sent him as back-up.
The escape lead to humiliation, danger, and murder.

Eden still had to crack the hold Erlich had over Mark. And the Raven needed the information that Mark has gotten to expose the imbedded Russian spy in the Pentagon and to keep the Orion project safe.

Wow! lots of tense moments - a pulsing love story - lots of uncertianty of mind blowing proportions - great characters - definite intrigue that keeps the trail hot.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED -- m --- Another keeper trilogy for the book shelves.

This is one of the stories that makes you not want to run out of
book. Endearing characters and a well-designed mystery/romance--true intrigue.
From the rear cover:

Would his lips tell a lie? He had obsidian eyes and raven hair, unbound skill and a masterful air...and for a time Eden Sommers loved him. But five years ago, Lt. Col. Mark Bradley disappeared. Though she tried, she couldn't forget him...especially when a clandestine agency secreted her off to a windswept island to face him once again. But was the amn who claimed to have stolen away from his captors the real Mark Bradley? She'd spent nights in his arms, but now her days could be numbered. For if Mark hadn't been brainwashed by the enemy, as was suspected, then he was a cleverly coached impostor---one whose look, whose touch, whose kiss only Eden could tell....

What would you do if you woke up one morning feeling a little absentminded, only to discover that you had a brain tumor and little chance of surviving even for two years? That happened to Rebecca Libutti and, although not a trained writer, four years later she wrote this book about her experience. She has some important things to say.

That's Unacceptable is about how one survivor reacted when the unthinkable became the everyday, from extracting the news about her diagnosis from reluctant lips to choosing experimental medical treatment to dealing with insurance companies. Rebecca Libutti hasn't discovered a miracle cure for high grade astrocytomas, but her optimism and assertiveness may be part of how she beat the odds.

This book became one of my family's favorites when the same disease entered our lives. I have personally recommended it to dozens of others in the brain tumor community. Ms. Libutti offers hope: not false hope, but warm and humorous hope from practical experience.

At the time when a friend received that most terrible of diagnoses, GBM4, this book has been a lightbeam of hope and a treasure trove of practical advice.

It feels like Rebecca is seated in the chair talking right to you. Definitely required reading if you have a brain tumor dx, or if you're caring for or about someone who has.