Michigan Books

I have lived in Portland Michigan all my life, but until I purchased this book did I find out the incredible history of my town.

This book contains hundreds of outstanding historic photographs of Portland, Michigan. Highly recommended for any fan of Michigan history or local history. What really stands out are the many candid photos of townspeople from the 1890s. The camera captured them smiling and enjoying life (not stiff and stoic like we tend to think of people from that era).

Overall, a great book!

"A Portrait of Tradition" chronicles the history of the Michigan Marching Band, through spectacular photographs, in celebration of the band's centennial season. As the most visible symbol of the University, the Michigan Marching Band's unique mixture of tradition and innovation shine through in this beautiful 160 page pictorial. A "must-have" for anyone who enjoys one of America's great Saturday traditions-- the Michigan Marching Band.

This book is an exciting look into the history of the Michigan Marching Band. Produced in part by the band members, it has a unique and colorful examination of that which makes the band what it is today -- an organization of class, commitment and excellence. I truly enjoyed this book.

This is one of the best, perhaps the best, construction scheduling books available in the market. The book contains all important contents in this issue. The book is very easy to understand, therefore ones without knowledge in scheduling can understand readily. Moreover, it contains several advanced topics in scheduling, including PERT, overlapping networks, and time-cost tradeoff. The author, Robert Harris, is a well-known pioneer in this field and has been a professor teaching scheduling classes at the University of Michigan for many decades. I strongly recommend this book for everyone who wants to own an excellent scheduling book.

This book is one of the best construction scheduling books in term of quantitative analysis. The book does a good job on explaining the fundamental concepts of construction scheduling and further the concept to calculation part. Every concept is presented with examples and solutions, which are very useful. The contents of the book are:

1. Introduction. This chapter gives readers background in general about construction scheduling (such as resources, network, bar chart, and schedule).
2. Project Breakdown. This chapter is about deciding, preparing and organizing information (such as level of detail, activity data and constraints).
3. Basic Arrow Diagramming (or Activity On Arrow, AOA). This chapter is all about how to construct an arrow network (activities are represented by arrow shapes). If you don't plan to do manual calculation, he might want to skip this chapter. Moreover, commercial software these days does not use arrow diagram (AOA) anymore. However, redundant link, dummy activity (which is very tricky for AOA) and how/when to use dummy activity are well explained in this chapter.
4. Basic Precedence Diagram (or Activity On Node, AON). This chapter presents how to construct Precedence Diagram (AON) and show step-by-step how to eliminate redundant link.
5. Establish Activity Durations. This chapter is 5 pages long. However, I never read it. :P
6. Scheduling Computations for Arrow Networks (AOA) and 7. for Precedence Networks (AON). These chapters focus on the calculation of both types of the networks. The author shows how to use network diagrams (drawings) and how to use table (like spreadsheet but manually calculate) to calculate activity properties (such as early start date and floats). Formula for the calculation is well explained along with many examples. In both chapters, four types of floats and their formula are presented according to the type of the network (AOA and AON). In addition, the concept of using matrix (another kind of table) to update total float (TF) and free float (FF) is presented in the chapter 7. This matrix becomes handy when manual calculations of updating TF and FF are required. (You better get familiar with this matrix if you want to study one of the unlimited resource leveling concepts called Minimum Moment Method, explained later in chapter 11)
8. Communication the Schedule. This one is more like "How GUI of scheduling software (such as report format and bar chart) looks like 30 years ago". Surprisingly, nothing has changed much from today software. What a shame.
9. Project Control. This chapter discusses level of control, setting target scheduling, monitoring project, evaluating and forecasting project, control period, and updating project progress. This chapter shows you what can be done in term of project management and scheduling according to the knowledge discussed in previous 8 chapters. Moreover, it also guides readers to a new topic, Time-Cost Tradeoff.
10. Time-Cost Adjustments. This chapter presents the concept and the calculation of time-cost tradeoff analysis during pre-construction phase. The idea of varying crew sizes associated with their direct costs is discussed. A good example is used to demonstrate the idea and also the application of Fondahl's technique. Besides the concept of time-cost tradeoff which is well explained, I am not a big fan of Fondahl's technique because it is very tedious, error prone, and not guarantee an optimal solution. I suggest you to read the concept and try to use EXCEL to optimizing a time-cost tradeoff problem. Moreover, the author does not discuss cash flow analysis.
11. Resource Leveling. This is one of my favorite chapters since I am so into "resource leveling". This chapter discusses two different types of resource leveling which are Limited Resource Allocation and Unlimited Resource Leveling. For limited resource allocation, a traditional method (very simple and used in most commercial software) is explained. For unlimited resource leveling, the author uses an example to show how to level (reducing the fluctuation in resource required per day) unlimited resource by using Minimum Moment Method (MOM). Later, he furthers the leveling concept of single resource to multiple resources, and also demonstrates how to schedule activity so that the schedule will accommodate resource constraints. In brief, the author did a good job in this chapter compared to those in other scheduling books. Since this book was written in the early stage of construction engineering and management, the concept of leveling resources for multiple projects and the idea of leveling resource and still maximize resource learning curve are not discussed. In addition, later the author developed a new unlimited resource leveling called PACK which is more effective and less computational effort than MOM. Unfortunately, PACK method is not presented in the book. Last word about this chapter, MOM and PACK are most likely to outperform those resource leveling features some commercial software.
12. Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). PERT is a probabilistic scheduling method that calculates chance of finishing project within a particular period. This book as well as many other books probably say the same thing and show how the calculation of PERT. So, nothing is special. However, I would like tell you that these days we use simulation to get the same information from PERT with less pain. However, if you are old school, please read a method called Probabilistic Network Evaluation Technique (PNET). PERT only considers the longest path while PNET considers the longest path and other high independent paths with high variation in duration. Since variation exists in activity duration, the longest path may not always the critical path (hmm this sounds confusing).
13. Overlapping Network. From chapter 1 to 12, activity dependency is only described as finish-to-start relationship. This chapter introduces new types of activity constraint: start-to-start, start-to-finish, finish-to-finish. Formula and an example (which is enough) are used to explain the idea of overlapping network.
14. Selected Application. I never read this chapter since it is 30 years old.

The only major thing that is missing from this book is a scheduling concept of linear scheduling. Since this book was published when construction was not interested or not really appreciated the idea of maintaining resource utilization, eliminating resource idle time, the concept of scheduling linear project or repetitive project (such as high-rise buildings and highway projects) were not presented. Besides that, this book is an excellent book with cost of $60.

I tutor students for the Cambridge exams (FCE, CAE, CPE, etc.), and the TOEFL test, among others. The hardest part of these exam for all of them, no matter how long they've been studying the language, is the English in Use section. Prepositions are such an important part of the language (any language), but they are said so quickly that it's very hard for an English learner to catch them unless they are concentrating very hard, but it's a frustrating process. Up until now, I thought that simply by reading a lot they would subconsciously absorb the words, but, through my own struggles in learning prepositions in another language, I've finally realized, that prepositions have to be actually studied, then practised, and only then will the student be able to hear them consciously and use them correctly.

I found Tom Cole's book after a long search, and it is exactly what I've been looking for to help my students. It explains the prepositions and phrasal verbs in groups, gives clear explanations and examples, offers many excercises, and then gives a quiz at the end of every chapter. It also has the answers at the end of the chapter which I find much easier than having to look in the back.

The description of the book says that it's geared toward intermediate students, but even the most advanced students have the same problems with prepositions if they've never studied them, and so I would say that this book is very useful for pretty much any level.

It's a book that's been very well thought-out and it's just what students of these tests need to feel more confident about this extremely challenging part of many English language exams.

I recommend it highly.

I have been to many ESL classes.

However, I still have difficulties writing correct English sentences. All these classes overlooked my two major grammar problems.
Whenever I write, I have to think a lot before selecting an appropriate preposition or article.

Fortunately, I came across the books of this excellent author Tom Cole:
The Preposition Book
The Article Book

I like his way of teaching. First, he introduces a rule, then you have exercises with the answers. After several rules, you have a comprehensive test covering them all. Each book has a lot of material, but you do not have to cram the rules. You memorize them by doing all these exercises. So, the books are great for self-study.

40 years ago the family took a summer vacation to Isle Royale National Park. When we arrrived my father took me to a block of concrete in the ground at one of the campsites and said "Here's where the mess hall steps were when I was in the CCC's". I had no idea. It's a great book - long overdue.

Here in photos and frequently in their own words are the highlights of the CCC in Michigan. Boys from poor families went off to places like Isle Royale to keep from starving, to learn job and life skills and to help send home money to their destitute families. Well edited. Highly recommended. Great quotes from the CCC men.

In T.M. McNally's "Quick," you will find an array of characters struggling. Whether it's with their addictions, their propensity toward violence, their immortality, or simply their own pasts, these struggles rise off the page and make themselves known without embarrassment or apology. Complex and richly layered, McNally doesn't shy away from difficult images or emotions. And although at times it seemed to me to be trying too hard, it's easy to see why this collection won the Michigan Literary Fiction Award.

T. M. McNally is a wildly talented writer from Arizona of whom I had never heard till a friend urged me to read his collection, QUICK. "This is just the sort of book you should be reading," she said. "And writing." When she had gone I opened it up and plunged right in, as if to the bottom of one of the Tempe swimming pools McNally specializes in. My friend was correct. This writing is intense, with sordid encounters and strange, almost surreal things happening to his leading characters as a matter of course. I thought things were crazy here in SF, but the "Copper State" has us beat by a country mile.

In "Insomnia" a man wonders if his wife is having some kind of affair with their pool boy. He switches addictions, from cigarettes to booze, and takes a second honeymoon trip to St. Louis to celebrate. The vertiginous span of the Arch is perfect McNally material, and he makes the most of it. "The Last Year of the Soapbox" is a sad tale of a boy teased in school, pissed on in the showers and the target end of many a snapped jock. When he asks his father to help him defend himself he uncovers his dad's bruised, stoic masculinity, and he grows up with a certain wariness about his body which leads him to wear underwear in the jacuzzi and three condoms at the same time. Tellingly, he becomes an ace race driver, counting on speed to help him make the escape his father never could. Other stories tell equally heartbreaking tales of American life, often with women's lives, an arena in which he seems only slightly less familiar.

I sort of figured out how to write one of McNally's short stories. You divide your material into a series of two page "scenes." Half of these will take place in the past, the other half in the present tense. You can jumble them up if you like. Half of the scenes will begin with a proverb-like general statement that has something a little askew to it, like "Tragedy is what happens when you don't think anything will." The other half will be direct, first person, and often from somewhere deep in the narrator's past, such as, "Of course no one had ever touched my balls." Separate these scenes with some cryptic asterisks-in this case, three or four black squares. All your narrators use them. Add in some hot weather, a saguaro or two, and you're pretty much there.

Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? These labor intensive identity questions take a lifetime to answer. For adopted persons, sharing nature and nurture with two mothers and two fathers, responses are often more complicated. Fiction and drama involving adopted people have provided conscious and unconscious answers, advice and role models to deal with such complex family situations over the centuries.
In Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama, Marianne Novy, an adopted person who is a Professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, gives astute commentary about adoption literature from Oedipus to the novels of Barbara Kingsolver. As a sensitive memorist, Dr. Novy also reveals how adoption literature has enhanced and sometimes hindered her own search for self-definition. This author's goal is to "more of the next generation of adopttes to feel less alone" and to make adopted parents aware (through literature) of the stuggles necessary to meeting their children's needs.
If you love reading, if you are connected to the world of adoption, if you crave making connections between literature and drama and people's interior lives, this is the book you are looking for. As an English teacher and parent by adoption, I found it spoke directly to both my professional expertise and to my personal experiences. I applaud Marianne Novy for her fair, generous and interesting book, the work of a gifted scholar and mature daughter.

Marianne Novy's "Reading Adoption" is a breath of fresh air in the dismal swamp of sentimentalism and sloppy journalism that characterizes too much of adoption literature, both pro-adoption and pro-adoption reform. Ms. Novy, a professor of English Literature and an adopted person, intersperses her own story with examples of adoption and illegitimacy in literature, from such diverse sources as Shakespeare, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Barbara Kingsolver, and Edward Albee. Her examples range from Tom Jones to The Diary of Brigid Jones, from Oedipus to Carol Schafer's Sacred Virgin. She discusses both familiar favorites, and those new to some of us that makes us want to look into them, or to look at old favorites with a fresh viewpoint.

Unlike many adopted persons who have written their stories, when Ms. Novy found her birthmother and family, she did not find soul mates or people with whom she had a great deal in common, even though she was welcomed and values the ongoing relationship she has with them. She wrote, " There are two simple views that public discourse about adoption falls into too easily. One is the view that only adoptive relationships matter; the other view is that only birth relationships matter. Some people have articulated a third viewpoint, that both matter but probably in different ways, that it depends on the circumstances, that adoptees have a choice about how to negotiate their identity and their relationships. But this approach still is not as widespread as it should be. I hope that this book, by analyzing places in literature where simplifications are found and places where they are transcended, will show more people how their world looks with a third view."

Marianne Novy admirably succeeds in doing this, and illuminates the tension between families, birth and adoptive, that is always there, and is always much more complex than the all-nature or all-nurture camps try to make it. She makes us all question our dearly held myths and icons. By not accepting without comment either the "forever family" fairytales beloved of many adoptive parents, or the reunion fairytales beloved of many birthmothers and adoption reformers, she makes all of us think, not just feel, and she stretches our imagination to encompass the complexity and diversity of adoptees and adoption as it is lived.

This is a groundbreaking book that should be read and discussed by all who are touched by adoption.

Mary Anne Cohen
Feb.2006

Countless Americans patiently trace genealogies and histories through slowly crumbling archives and weathering marble, seeking answers to questions about the ones who preceded us. This is a story of the meaning of such a search to one searcher. As the book's title alludes, Recovering Ruth: A Biographer's Tale focuses on how recovering Ruth Edgerton Douglass' history affects her biographer, Robert Root. Parts of Ruth's journal are excerpted in Recovering Ruth, and those who are interested in reading her journal in its entirety can look to Time by Moments Steals Away: The 1848 Journal of Ruth Douglass, edited by Robert Root.
Root's task, as the book begins, is seemingly simple and straightforward: edit the 1848 journal of Mrs. C. C. Douglass for publication. The Michigan library catalog attributes the authorship to Lydia Douglass, the clan matriarch who lived to be an octogenarian. However, Root soon discovers that the journal was actually penned by the first Mrs. C. C. Douglass, Ruth Edgerton Douglass. This discovery compels him to reconstruct the people and places of the mid-nineteenth century Michigan frontier, from the then-booming young city of Detroit to the remote Lake Superior outpost, Isle Royale. Although his search begins in libraries and archives, he soon journeys to the places where Ruth triumphed over fears common to us all: loneliness, hardships, and loss.
In retracing her life's journey, Root travels from Detroit to Chicago to Lake Superior's Isle Royale. Root uses his carefully researched details to evoke the Michigan Ruth would have known. He describes their approach of Isle Royale thus: "At last the island begins to rise in the distance, a long thin line above the water that slowly thickens as we thump our way steadily across the waves" (109). His language not only shows the vastness of the Great Lake, but also the treachery and danger inherent in crossing the world's largest freshwater lake even for a modern traveler. Imagery such as this gives us insight into the courage and determination of settlers such as the Douglasses.
During the course of his timely yet timeless search, Root comes to realize that he is in search of the meaning not only of Ruth's life, but of his own. As Root says, "Perhaps I needed to recover Ruth in order to keep from losing myself" (xvi). History is comprised of a series of chance meetings and fortunate accidents not readily apparent by perusing a family tree. Our lives would be immeasurably different if our great-grandparents had decided that it was, after all, too difficult to make their way by wagon train westward to Kansas, if our grandmother had stayed home rather than attended a dance, if our father's soulful brown eyes hadn't met our mother's at a crowded wedding. Root directly acknowledges those subconscious murmurs: "Genealogy identifies lines of descent, who begat whom, the aftermath of events; what it doesn't recount are the myriad alternatives barely missed, the intangibles of attraction and attachment, the possibilities avoided, ignored, or rejected" (25). In recovering Ruth's story, Root sees the ways in which his own choices will impact the future course of history: a painful divorce, a hopeful remarriage, his beloved children.
Root's work serves as a window for us to view the interconnections between our world and Ruth's. As George Eliot wrote at the end of Middlemarch, "the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." In Recovering Ruth, Root has recorded Ruth's historic acts and unveiled her hidden life.
This book was chosen by the Library of Michigan as a 2004 Michigan Notable Book.

The author not only feels and understands the love of research, he writes of it with eloquence and charm. It reminds me of sections of Robert Penn Warren's ALL THE KING'S MEN, the quest to uncover the hidden truth. Or Byatt's POSSESSION. It is that good.

This author understands history. This author understands style. There are literary references and refreshing asides. It is a marvelous book.

My only regret is that I could not obtain it in hardcover--a luxurious gold gilted edition, say, with easy-to-read print, its own ribbon bookmark, and an annotated index. But it reads fine like it is. Highly recommended.

There is a problem in getting going with alg. geo. To learn the geometry you need commutative algebra and to contextualize commutative algebra you need algebraic geometry. Mumford is an excellent book to get going without the need for the heavy prereqs of the more classic books like Hartshore or G&H. A really good read.

This is not however a terrific reference text, you'll need something else as a reference. Its much to expository and their is no index.

In a nutshell, reading this book is like reading the mind of a great mathematician as he thinks about a great new idea. Anyone interested in schemes should read it. But a review needs more detail:

The RED BOOK is a concise, brilliant survey of schemes, by one of the first mathematicians to learn of them from Grothendieck. He gives wonderfully intuitive pictures of schemes, especially of "arithmetic schemes" where number theory appears as geometry. The geometry shines through it all: as in differentials, and etale maps, and how unique factorization relates to non-singularity. There is a bravura discussion of Zariski's Main Theorem (the algebraic property of being "normal" implies that a variety has only one branch at each point) comparing forms of it from older algebraic geometry, topology, power series, and schemes. Mumford cites proofs of these but does not give them. In fact, this theorem was one of the first things Mumford could use, to get Zariski to respect schemes.

Many accomplished algebraic geometers say this book got them started. But you probably cannot learn to work in the subject from this book alone--you either have to work with people who work with it, or use some other books besides (maybe both). The other book would probably be Hartshorne ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY, which is far more detailed, has far more examples, goes very much farther into cohomology--and is very much longer and denser (though also clearly written).

Eisenbud and Harris GEOMETRY OF SCHEMES covers a lot of the same ground as THE RED BOOK, with fewer advanced topics but many more details and examples, including classical geometric constructions like blow-ups and duals to projective plane curves. They use slightly more category theory than Mumford, more like Grothendieck.

Probably none of these books will work for you unless you already know some algebraic geometry: how polynomials define a variety, the Zariski topology, what regular and birational maps are. There is more than enough in Myles Reid's humorously titled UNDERGRADUATE ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY and UNDERGRADUATE COMMUTATIVE ALGEBRA with vividly geometric ideas in slightly scheme-theoretic language.

The RED BOOK now includes the Michigan lectures, which are reputedly terrific, but I have not worked through them.

Compiled and edited by museum administrator Marcia Mason, Remember The Distance That Divides Us: The Family Letters Of Philadelphia Quaker Abolitionist And Michigan Pioneer Elizabeth Margaret Chandler 1830-1842 is the true story of a middle-class woman who left behind privelege in her early 20's to head into the wilderness of Michigan Territory with her brother and aunt. She became an enthusiastic abolitionist and activist for four years, until her unfortunate death four years later. Her literate and inspirational correspondence, most of which was written to family members during her years in Michigan, has been straightforwardly transcribed and presented, along with a smattering of letters from other family members concerning her life. Her tireless contribution to the abolitionist cause as well as her remarkable contributions has caused her to be viewed as a precursor to the more well-known Grimke sisters. A first-hand glimpse into a fascinating pioneer life.

Numerous letters to and from Elizabeth Margaret Chandler not only provide incomparable knowledge about the early days of the abolitionist movement, but also American Midwestern society of the time. One of the appendices is a list of the household effects relating to Chandler. But the book is of interest mostly for the sympathies and activities of the young Elizabeth Chandler regarding the issue of abolition. She died in 1834 before she was 30. The letters are written in the now-archaic language used by the Quakers of the time--e. g., "I thank thee my dear Elizabeth for thy large sheet or sheets so well filled for I believe there are several of thy letters yet unanswered by me...," from a lengthy letter by Chandler's aunt to her. The length of many of the letters, which go on for three or more pages, imparts to an exceptional degree the thoughts and activities of the individuals as well as their relationships with others. In her short life spent mostly in Michigan, Chandler contributed much to raising the consciousness of the region about the issue of abolition. The founder of the Logan Female Antislavery Society, she is also seen as an early activist in the fledgling women's movement. When she died, some individuals were moved to write poems about her. These are included in another appendix. The voluminous and varied materials brought together with editor Mason's deft sense of organization and worthiness is not only an invaluable source book on the little-known but influential Chadler; but it is a rich picture of individuals and their involvement in a major social issue of the time as well as their ordinary, daily activities and concerns. From the length and depth of the letters of Chandler and others she communicated with, the reader becomes involved with them as if they were subjects of a biography or characters in a historical novel.