Roger Books

I am very hard to please, it is very rare that I pick up a book I can not put down, but "The last ride of Grayson's Raiders" had me glued to each page. The characters are so alive and so real, I could put myself in the story. I am a John Wayne junkie and I know that he would have played the part of Captain Able Grayson to perfection. This book reminded me of the character and quality of people you find in the south. I tire of hero's who are not real men, the "Raiders" brought to mind my childhood hero's like Hoss Cartwright, and Brett Maverick, Lucas McCain, Matt Dillon, men with courage and character and honesty. I love the authors ability to create a love for each character and a desire to see them succeed, I was sad to finish the book and look forward to more from this author. I would love to see this turned into a movie with Tom Selleck in the lead. Our children need quality hero's to dream of and not selfish ball players who are paid millions and still cannot catch a ball. Thumbs up Mr.Russell you have inspired me...

I have not yet read this book, but I know the author enough to know that it's a good book. I talked with him while he was writing from time to time and he exuded a certain knowledge and passion for this work and I hope to be reading it in the near future. He also gave me advice as I wondered about my own ability, or lack thereof, to write a story. Roger is a good guy. I hope to see him again soon. Jason McFadden.

Excellent book! Great characters and a solid story. It makes me want to buy a horse and a six-gun and go looking for bad guys. The author gives us heroes to admire for their integrity and backbone, but also for the dirt and wrinkles they picked up along the way. An excellent read. Worth adding to your library.

This is a great book for the professional leader that is looking to understand multiple faceted problems.

This book forms the text for a one week residential training course. The course was a life changing event for me, game me confidence in my abilities and changed my whole attitude to the workplace. Instead of trying to get around conflict in the workplace I now have the tools to tackle it head on. Learn about the skill to critique everything you do in a way that is non-threatening and based on fact and not emotion. Everyone in the workplace should read this book.

Most management texts try to deal with how you as an individual can influence how other people behave so that you come out on top. This book goes under the skin of different personality types to show what it is that motivates them in the way they behave. Instead of showing how to "use" people to get what you want, it shows how to get the best out of everyone, yourself included, to get what is best for the Company / family / business whatever you need to improve. Instead of results driven management being the be-all and end-all it is clear that results are only one side of the equation. To be a good manager you need to bring people along with you, not drive them in front of you. This book forms the text for a management training course that can only be said to be revolutionary. I have three university degrees and I would gladly trade the lot for what I learned in the one week course! Everyone who works for a living should read this book.

I need to know all about John R. Commons What did he do in all his life?, What was his best book? etc..

I need to know all about John R. Commons What did he do in all his life?, What was his best book? etc..

I read this book back in law school, intrigued by the title. Initially I was confused by Commons's very strange analytical style (he is quite sui generis in his analytical framework) but the final product is an excellent education in the role courts and judges in UK and USA played in the emergence of the US economy pre-WWII. Within the right frame of mind, this book can be a very valuable opportunity for coming to appreciate the law-economics nexus in a way that gets clouded or obscured by the presuppositions of neoinstitutional economics and the Law & Economics movement. Commons' empirical data in this book consisted of 500 years of court cases involving litigation of commercial questions. From these court cases, Commons extracts a frame of analysis. Commons' method often involves on the one hand, finding analogies and connections between concepts that in our daily and professional lives we treat as separate and synthesizing them into new analytical tools (such as "Working Rules" and "Transactions"), and on the other hand, taking concepts we take for granted as reflecting a certain unity, and busting them open to reveal the internal diversity of different kinds of ideas/events/phenomena that get subsumed and supressed by such a unifying concept (this is done with particularly good result with the concepts of "value", "property" and "liberty" although one is left wishing Commons had not limited himself to judges' opinions in constructing his historical studies.
I think that recognizing this methodology is a key to understanding what Commons was attempting to accomplish in this and in his later works. Commons' technique results in a polyphonic argument that moves in multiple directions at once, sometimes coming together harmoniously into brilliant insights of synthesis. The final framework of analysis that emerges is summarized in Commons' final book - the Economics of Collective Action - which one might want to read as a good sort of introduction to this and to his magnum opus, Institutional Economics.

One of the implications of Commons' analysis is the idea of collective action - it seems to become a logical, defensible, necessary next step in American capitalism from Commons' 1924 point of view. And for many years, the idea gained momentum, but was ultimately gutted and destroyed by the Wagner Act and by a massive ideological campaign launched by the economics profession about the supposed inefficiencies of collective protection and bargaining.

But perhaps one of the richer take-aways of this book for contemporary readers is that, despite the title, one gets a sense that "capitalism" is a rather meaningless word. Commons' framework serves, more than anything, to drive home the fact that our current economic, political, legal, social context - or anyone's context - is really a set of particulars, each with its own history and baggage. Lawyers, I think, understand this since a single change in law, a shift in the allocation of liabilities, or a change in the interpretation of a word, can, slowly but surely, change the entire direction of a society and its economy. In fact, "capitalism" is a rather troublesome word whose role in our language and society seems to gloss over a vast internal diversity of economic practices, institutional frameworks, and social values over time and from place to place, subsuming it all under a catch-all phrase that doesn't really stand on its own two feet in the end. The value of using such a code word is that it allows people like Thatcher to cry "TINA" to shut down opposition to the status quo. A certain popular - though misguided - branch of progressive critical thought spends a lot of effort constructing critiques of capitalism, a tradition started by Marx and the social theorists and just as strong today, as if to confront Thatcher and the rest of the TINA contingent front-on. After reading Commons, I would hope that it would be as apparent to others as it is to me that such a project is futile. We would probably be better off banishing the word from our language. Frankly, I don't think there is any such thing as "capitalism." Capitalism is always used as a sort of placeholder for the any given speaker's internalized conception of the economic, political, and social context in which the speaker finds him- or herself, but rare - if non-existent - is the critic who is able to separate the contingent, local, temporal from some underlying, enduring, constant presence that we can point to and say "ah, here is the core of 'capitalism', whether in 1855 Paris or 1990 Bangkok, or 2007 Toronto". For example, a book I just started reading, by a prominent Italian-American sociologist begins with the claim that "over the lastst quarter of a century something fundamental seems to have changed in the way in which capitalism works. In the 1970s, many spoke of crisis." What crisis? Whose capitalism? Author and reader all seem to take for granted that they all know what capitalism is. I don't think for a minute that Mexican "capitalism" is really that similar to American "capitalism" or to Korean "capitalism" or any other country's capitalism. A thorough reading of Commons will dispell such delusions. Even if we could identify some common demoniminator among countries and over time, it would have to be such a minor element of the overall economy that it wouldn't make sense to frame the debate around such. After Commons, it doesn't make sense to talk in the abstract about grandiose systems, whose internal content is presuppsosed and allegedly comes predefined. Rather, all we are left with are specific policies, practices, institutions, and behaviors, all of which are subject to forces of change and inertias - in other words, all we can meaningfully talk about is the particulars, the subtle changes in "Working Rules," the meaning of "Property", the different kinds of "Bargains" that are available to different participants with respect tot different resources in a given context - in short, who has power to do what and with what consequences. Any grandiose discourse of "Capitalism" seems naive and senseless. It would be refreshing for us progressives if we could get out of the "No Alternative to Capitalism" debates so that we can role our sleaves up and start talking about real issues, rather than discussing the how to replace Capitalism over an espresso in a coffee shop.

A must read book for mothers of sons who are not "goody two-shoes." What a surprise this book was to me. The title and cover prove the axiom that you can't judge a book by its cover. I expected a story about a "little old lady" and instead found a wealth of information, inspiration, comfort and wisdom when faced with a prodigal son who had not yet come home. Readers will laugh and cry and praise God all in the same chapter. You will not want to put it down.

I travel for a living- and I was up early on a Monday (4am) and wanted to sleep on the plane. I started to read this book and did not put it down until I was finished- from Minneapolis to San Francisco. What a story about a woman's child-like faith in God. This is a well-written book that clearly displays the true works of God through His faithful people. A MUST read.

The book Lena is one of the best I have ever read. I wish I could have known Lena. I have met the author. She's a wonderful womam.

Lessons of the Locker Room

Sports build character. At least, that's what we've always heard. Why else would our schools invest so much time, effort, and money in student athletics? Andrew W. Miracle, Jr. and C. Roger Rees aren't so sure.

Historically, sports were introduced to public schools to attract students who would otherwise attend private schools. After public schools became the norm, as they are today, sports continued to be valued as an opportunity for community involvement and positive publicity for schools.

The authors suggest that sports serve other, less obvious purposes as well. Sports encourage conformity by requiring players to act as group. Sports may also promote submissiveness, in that players do as they are told, taking orders rather than making their own decisions. Sports also increase the authority of those in charge. They are the experts, and credit or blame for success or failure goes to coaches as much as or more than to players.

Research shows that, while many athletes have more positive attitudes towards school than other students, they also have decreased independence and self-control. So, what is touted as an opportunity for individual achievement may actually produce better followers than leaders.

Morality and sports is an issue as well. "Game reasoning" refers to a sense of right and wrong that changes according to the situation and a belief that the winner is morally superior to the loser. In some cases, game reasoning seems to flow over into everyday life.

Rees and Miracle propose that game reasoning accounts for many incidents of violence among athletes. Tests of moral reasoning of athletes show a willingness to believe that aggressive behavior is okay in any situation, if it serves the purpose at hand. What begins as a friendly rivalry can degenerate into violence if it is not checked by that slippery value called sportsmanship.

Miracle and Rees, while definitely on the side of classroom education over sports, present a fair assessment of school sports, presenting benefits as well as problems, and raising some interesting questions. The conclusion? Sports do not build character, they reveal it.

An excellent book that "pulls no punches," to use a sporting phrase. It has been known among those who study youth sports that especially among high school male athletes, excessive alcohol use and deviant behavior (fights, unprotected sex, etc.) have been present to a greater extent than among those not invovled in sport. Miracle and Rees clearly describe the genesis of the myth that sport builds character, and how it has been propogated by those who just want to believe. They clearly point out the problems that can occur, based on research. Competitive sport is not the same as exercise or physical education, activities that promotes health. The next time you read about coaches brawling over a youth hockey game, or parents attacking umpires after a "bad call," you might want to read Lessons of the Locker Room. It will explain to you why this is so. A must read for all parents of children who participate in sport and their coaches.

I came across this book long ago while studying criminal tendencies among student and professional athletes. This is an excellent book that examines the purpose and effect of organized school sports on children and young adults from the elementary to college level. The old addage that "sports builds character" is strongly challenged here as myth after myth regarding the beneficial aspects of school sports is exploded by the authors. In the post-Columbine era, when the detrimental aspects of obsessive sports culture have been finally pushed into the spotlight, these issues regarding athletics and sports-guided adolescent development are more relevant than ever. The authors show that while sports do provide a basic outlet for physical education, the idea that sports build leaders and create better students is shown to be false. In fact, they show that what results are students who tend to be more violent and have a warped sense of morality as a result of so-called "game reasoning" indoctrination. Organized school sports also encourage standardization, conformity, and an unquestioning submissiveness to authority, while denegrating individuality, creativity, self-expression, and academic acheievement. They tend to reward violence and punish weakness. The result is that in high schools today we find athletes who have an over-developed sense of superiority and arrogance that manifests itself as violence and intimidation against those peers viewed as weaker, whether it's a nerdy bookworm or a young coed who says "no". These are issues that have been ignored for far too long and this book addresses them well. The "boys will be boys" mentality must end. As others have already said, it should be required reading by high school teachers, coaches, and students to get a better understanding of the many problems that face kids today and how school sports contibute more to the problem rather than the solution.

This book provides an up front look at how to help children deal with meeting someone who is differently abled. It is worded so young children
in preschool can understand what they should or could do if they meet
someone who is different from them. The pictures provide an additional learning tool to discuss how the children are feeling on each page. Overall I think this book is a 5 star book and could be used just about
anywhere!!
Carla

I loved this book. It is difficult to find books that discuss disabled people. This book showed the many ways in which people with and without disabilities are alike. It also told children how to become acquainted with another child and that they might become good friends. This book talked about people who need different types of assistive technology devices like wheelchairs or talking devices. Overall, this was an excellent book. I would use it in my preschool classroom to introduce different types of disabilities to the students.

I ordered this book for my sister, who's 2 year old son has cerebral palsy. My idea was that she could place it in her local day care center that my nephew attends so that the other kids could have some of their questions answered about kids with special needs. This book really fit the bill..it is clear and concise, and seemed to address lots of questions that I have heard other children asking. Other than just seeing that something is "wrong" or different, maybe after reading the book they will realize that diversity is a part of life and that people with special needs can be just as fun and interesting as everyone else! The book really helped put into words what I would like kids to know about meeting and interacting with kids with disabilites. I also ordered "Someone special just like you", but found the Extraordinary friends book to be a much better choice for my particular needs.

Gaustad did an excellent job of portraying not only Williams' beliefs, politic and theology but the state of the world that led to their development and need. Very readable, never boring, practical and insightful to William's America as it is to ours. WE could learn a great deal from Williams, even so mamy years later. Gaustad truly brought him to life.

This beautifully written book brings to light, in an understated but poetic way, the genius and greatness of the man who, as Gaustad says, "was out to do nothing less than alter the institutional structure of the Western world." It is a measure of our time that many people, especially young people educated pursuant to the fashionable bromides of contemporary social science education, have never heard of this first founder of liberty of conscience and disestablishment of religion in America. In our epoch of attempted "faith-based" governmental initiatives, Gaustad's book reminds us, by constant reference to the writings of Roger Williams, of those principles that, after a bitter struggle of more than a century, came to distinguish this nation from the government-controlled religion and thought of the rest of the world. The life of Roger Williams shows that deeply held religious belief necessarily implies an unwavering commitment to the principle of absolute separation of church and state. Williams' life also demonstrates that at least one colonial leader tried, unsuccessfully, to overcome the tendency of the Puritans to treat Native Americans as less than human or as mere subjects for conversion to Christianity. The tragedy of Williams' life consisted solely in the failure of his decades-long effort to resolve the conflict between rapacious, religiously hypocritical English settlers and the Native Americans. The triumph of his life was his original pronouncement, in this country, of the enduring but often threatened principle that government should be restricted to civil, not religious, tasks. More than a century later, Jefferson and Madison built on the foundation that Roger Williams so nobly established in his writings and in the constitutional documents of Rhode Island.

Gaustad's Liberty of Conscience is the second biography of Roger Williams I have read this summer. Perhaps because the first, Covey's The Gentle Radical, was so prolix, I loved Gaustad's work. His selection of historical data, his clear sequencing, and his explication of Williams's own writings make this a delight to read. Seventeenth-century Britain and colonial America and all those names one vaguely remembers are vividly described. The prose is clear and attractive. I came away with a new appreciation of Williams. Gaustad sees him as the first to set forth those principles of religious liberty that were picked up after him by Locke, Penn, Jefferson, and others and which we take for granted today. Toleration is a subject of current conversation within the United States. This biography depicts someone who fought for toleration in a time when people were being banished and even executed for not believing what the political powers said they must believe. It really gives a healthy perspective on our times. I recommend it highly.

This is a beautiful book. I hoped there would be more photos of Nureyev, but those included are good. I recommend this book to Nureyev fans. Given the cost of the book, treat it as the treasure it is!!

It's easy to dismiss stories about Rudolf Nureyev's abilities as a dancer as mere "tall tales"--until you see this book. Nothing could be more astonishing than the shot of Nureyev leaping into the air in "Le Corsaire." This was an artist over whom gravity had no hold. The photos were taken in 1978, when the 40-year-old dancer was at the peak of his powers. His movement, his leaps, are all captured here in photographs of truly stunning quality. Nureyev's own recollections of those days are an additional treat, as are the scenes backstage and at practice, when you can see the man honing his craft. Well worth the price of admission.

This book of rare Nureyev photographs is of the highest quality, from the paper to the printing to the binding. Ansel Adams' former printer produced "Life Behind the Metaphor", which explains the astounding achievement. If you're a fan of fine photography or ballet or both, then this is definitely for you. There are next to no photographs of Nureyev in performance during the time period in which these were taken--the dancer's contracts forbade it. So, the fact that these photos exist at all is pretty amazing. In the book, the photographer, Urban, explains how he gained access to and the trust of Nureyev during a Dutch National Ballet tour of the US. The two eventually became friends. Given all the hoopla about the Nureyev biography released last year, it's a shame that this book hasn't garnered more attention. A worthwhile purchase, to say the least.

Little Miss Naughty (Mr. Men and Little Miss) is the item. I ordered it for my daughter because I had it as a child and enjoyed the series. Now that they are back on tv my daughter loves them so I ordered a couple. It is brand new and exactly the story I remember.

These books are great! They used to be very popular when I was a child and now some of them are out of print. I'm glad to see most of the books still available, they are great for young kids, and a laugh for adults!

Little Miss Naughty tries to be very naughty and do naughty things to other people. Some of the Mr. Men got tired of her naughty tricks. She was going to paint Mr. Nosey's nose red, but someone tweaked her nose. Everytime she wanted to do something naughty, a surprise person tweaked her nose. She got a very sore nose, and learned not to do so many naughty things. This is a very funny book.

I read Little Miss Trouble as a child and I enjoyed it. This book is excellent for all those childern who like to cause trouble

I read this book as a child, and here I am years later with a copy my sister recently purchased - and still remember the characters. An excellent way to teach children right from wrong - as well as helping them understand why people act the way they do. I recommend this book and all of the other "Little Miss" and "Mr." books. They are all wonderful!

I loved this book. I am an eight year old and still love this book. This book is about a little girl who always gets into trouble. She does things and then blames them on someone else. People that are ennocent are getting into trouble. Read the book to find out more!