Central America Books

The book Spinning Wheels represents a series of books that have outlined the breakdown of the traditional adminstrative model of education. The book does an outstanding job investigating the inherent paradoxes of urban education. The traditional model has collapsed and a new model for the 21st Century is critical to the future K-12 education in America. It is amazing that the restructuring of the Adminstrative cadre has not taken place in 1999. The tragedy of the traditional model is that it does not reflect the massive changes of the quality management movement instituted by Juran. The mistaken notion that today's adminstrative cadre needs no essential training in modern management theory and practice is very similar to the Communist Chinese cadre who believe that a modern capitalistic economy can be created without a fundamental understanding of modern economic theory and practice. Spinning Wheels captures the triumph of political rhetoric over real managerial changes that need to be implemented in adminstration. The modern urban superintendent is trapped by a demographic paradox between the X generation and the Achievement generation that has created a "policy churn" in the killing fields of modern urban education.

This book is about a very basic problem in urban schools, the problem of reform churn. In surveying over 60 urban schools, the author found that there is a pattern of school boards hiring new school superintendents, who comes in with great promise and lots of new ideas. There are lots of changes for a couple years, but there is no dramatic improvement, so the current school superintendent gets fired because things are still bad. Then a new superintendent comes in, again promising to fix things by implementing a lot of changes. The net result is no reform last long enough to truly fix any problems. The school district keeps lurching in different directions every couple years, never making any real progress.

As I read this book I thought of:

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"We trained hard, but it seemed every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization"

From Petronii Arbitri Satyricon AD 66.
Attributed to Gaius Petronus

Gaius Petronus, a Roman General, later committed suicide
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A pattern on constant reform is not new. Frederick Hess analyses the environment that produces this pattern in the school environment. He finds that in general members of the school board want to be re-elected. Many are using the office of school board as a stepping stone to other elected political offices. In general school boards which fight with each other don't get re-elected, so they are motivated to find issues they can agree on, and reform is an issue for which most board members see a need. So when there is a problem in the school district, they don't hire a new school superintendent who comes in promising to continue the reforms of the previous superintendent, they hire someone with fresh new ideas. The result is the old reforms which may have just started producing fruit are ignored and teachers are told to try some new methods. The result is things are not improving in the urban schools.

The author makes the point that schools deal with two very important subjects, children and money. People are concerned that both are taken care of well. Unfortunately there are no simple objective measures to see how well a school is doing. This is partly the result of there being no clear, agreed upon, purpose to education. Some want children taught academic subjects, some want children to learn to be good citizens, some want children to be taught to take care of the earth, and so on. All of this means that people care very much about schools, but people can't tell how well a school is doing. So appearances become very important. Both the school board and the superintendent are strongly influenced to put on a good front.

This idea of appearances being very important is explored in great depth in the book. And other related ideas are mentioned on why there is such a dizzying rate of reform efforts in urban schools.

The book is well written. It is well structured. The author has done his research. It is interesting to read, though often painful to learn how bad things are. If you are looking for a better understanding of one of the key problems with public schools, this book is very worth reading.

This was such a great cook book. Wonderful unique dished and beautiful pictures. If you are looking for unique recipes this is a must! The stories behind the food are great too

I purchased this cookbook because of a growing interest in the cooking of Latin America. The authors cover in depth cooking from the regions where the Maya, Aztec, and Inca kingdoms once reigned. Their knowledge of the history and food culture of each region is evident. I have made recipes from all three sections, and although all dishes have come out well, I think that this book's strength is in the recipes from Peru and Chile. Pastel de Choclo (sort of a casserole of beef and corn) and Papas a la Huancaina (potato salad with cheese and chili dressing) were particular standouts. I have tried these recipes from other cookbooks, and this book's versions were the best.

Some specialty ingredients are needed, but many recipes can be prepared with basic ingredients from the supermarket, and the authors give suggestions for substitutions when possible (which I have sometimes used with successful results). Very helpful instructions are included for preparing some of the ingredients on your own at home.

John Sheahan, chairperson of the Bryce Wood Award Committee said, "Robert Williams' book is an extraordinarily good example of systematic economic and historical analysis used to answer an intriguing question. The question is how to explain the striking differences among Central American countries in the dimensions of democracy, political repression, and social concern. Williams goes deeply into their different responses to the rise of the world coffee market in the late nineteenth century, and explains clearly the view that these experiences have marked the political and social evolutions of the countries ever since."

I have read dozens of books on the history of coffee and how it has shaped the lives of hundreds of millions of people, but in some respects this is the very best. Note: it is can be scholarly in the depth of its investigation, but for me that was all for the best. And it never reads like an "academic" piece, but rather is compelling, at least if you're already concerned about this topic.

This is one of the first books that I recommend to people who want to know why so many people who supply the world with coffee are so poor, and denied serious options to change their conditions. The reader should note that this book does not try to describe all coffee producting countries, rather just three, each of which has been profoundly shaped by coffee, but in ways distinct from one another. That demonstrates that there is nothing pre-ordained about societies that are economically dependent upon coffee production.

Whether you're political, or artistic, every American should own this book. What does the Statue of Liberty mean to you? An intangible concept that is broken down into encyclopedia form for scholars and us regular folks to digest. There are dozens of books about the Statue, but I found this one is by far the most comprehensive and the pictures are of outstanding quality. Highly recommended.

Finally, a book worth having! There were a lot of books published between 1984 and 1986 for the statue's centennial and only a few were worth having. This newly published book is a must have for the Statue of Liberty collector, historian, or proud American.

"The Statue of Encyclopedia, serves as the first ever top-to-bottom reference on one of the most beloved national monuments. Barry Moreno, the premier expert and historian of the Statue of Liberty, leads readers on a comprehensive, beautifully illustrated A-to-Z tour. Featuring an abundance of little-known but fascinating aspects and curiosities about her history, the book also includes a vast collection of photographs - many never before published."

I always appreciate learning more about history in a way that is easy to digest. This book is thought out and well-written. The characters and languare are rich. This book has given Captain Morgans Spiced Rum ads a whole new meaning for me.

I read a lot of fiction and, quite frankly, loved this book as much as anything I've read lately. Stough has written an unpretentious chronicle of Panama from the Spanish conquest to the present--and beyond. The story is told through people connected by blood and also by Panama's rich, varied culture. There are enough heroic, doomed, quixotic characters--spread over 350 years--to shame the Bard, a collection of natives, Spanish conquistadors, English pirates, opportunists of every ilk and, of course, French and American canal builders.

I agree with another Amazon reviewer that the reading can be a tad 'dry' at times, quite uncustomary for the author.

However, it still has that "Thurner style" fast, pleasing pace that precludes excess verbiage and allows for the covering of a rather-broad topic in a single, readable volume. Furthermore, the author is a native to the area, which doesn't hurt his case.

For 'complete' coverage of the Copper Country, look no further than Mr. Thurner's three such books.

I purchased this book after a vacation to the beautiful Keweenaw Peninsula where I toured one of the copper mines mentioned in the book.

To enjoy this book it helps if one has a curiosity about the region's history it's industry and the melting pot of people that made up it's workforce.

Although a dry history at times, I believe this book to be one of if not the best on the topic. An important contribution to Michigan History. It is my hope that upon reading it people will recognize this book as the labor of love it truly is.

Based on exhaustive research and interviews, this detailed and extensively footnoted history of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics is both a fine reference work for scholars, and an eye-opening, exciting narrative for the general reader. The book itself is the highest quality, made to last for generations, and includes a section of rare photographs, and an appendix consisting of a rogue's gallery from the FBN's files. The FBN, headed by Harry J. Anslinger, was the precursor agency to today's DEA. The War on Drugs that has been waged for years now, with a price is no object mentality, is now being reconsidered by more and more people as either an ill-considered mistake, or perhaps even as a Big Government/Big Brother monkey on the public's fiscal back. The War has surely not stopped the supply of drugs, and if you have ever thought that it was never intended to, but wondered why that was so, The Strength of The Wolf, will provide some answers. There are many books about drug enforcement (or lack thereof) in the recent past, but this work is unique in that it looks at what might be called the dawn of drug enforcement.

Given how much money this country spends to fight drug dealers and to lock up drug dealers & users both, I am amazed how little I hear people question the War on Drugs.

This book provides the historical framework critical to understand this, with the War on Drugs beginning as an attempt to provide what equates to trade protection to the pharmaceutical companies (who competed with the real thing of the day, opium/heroin), and how later racism led to marijuana users being targeted as well (Black Americans in Harlem and Latinos in the SW and California), and of course the violence fueled by the cocaine/crack trade made it a national buzzword.

It is a crime that this assault on our own citizens continues today - one would think that after the dismal failure of Prohibition that we would have learned our lesson.

Hopefully this book can start raising a consciousness to question it, at the very least more public debate (without the hysteria) is long overdue.

This is a very interesting book on a very short but crucial period of time in film history. This book combines biographical information, business strategies of the studios, cultural ramifications, and the actual technical aspects of the transition to sound in a somewhat academic style that is both entertaining and informative.

Particularly interesting is the skeptical attitude of the studio business community about adding sound to pictures. So great was their concern about audience acceptance that Warner Brother's first talkie film was a piece on the automobile and how it made its forerunner obsolete, an obvious ploy at coaxing the consumer to see sound in pictures in the same light as the auto - as a step forward in progress. Of course now it seems silly to think that audiences would have preferred the lack of use of one of their human senses when the technology was present to integrate it into their viewing experience, but such was the outlook of the business community in 1926.

Another interesting chapter is on the little-known figure of Lee de Forest and his invention of the Phonofilm process in 1920, a way to make the movies talk by adding a synchronized optical soundtrack to the film. This process used a device called a light valve to expose a series of light and dark areas on the film which were read by a photocell and converted to audio. Although basically correct in principle, its operating quality was poor, and the inventor found himself unable to interest film producers in its possibilities. Ironically, with the Vitaphone "sound on disk" system being such a difficult process to work with both technically and logistically, within a few years' time the motion-picture industry converted to talking pictures by using a sound-on-film process similar to that of de Forest's.

On the corporate level, Crafton frames the battle over sound technology as ERPI versus RCA. In 1926, Fox signed an agreement with ERPI to combine its Movietone sound-on-film method with Western Electric's amplification methods for theater use. The ERPI variable density system would compete for the next decade with the RCA variable area system that was adopted by RKO after 1928. Crafton does a good job of making this battle of the titans very interesting, involving all kinds of maneuvering and even, of all people, Joe Kennedy.

Crafton goes over theatrical and tactical issues of converting to sound as well, including how changes in direction and acting techniques were required, as actors in early talkies were still making the wild gestures that were necessary to convey the action taking place in silent films, but just looked ridiculous when sound was added. Likewise, dialogue was initially extremely pedestrian, as is best illustrated in the first feature-length all-talking picture "The Lights of New York" with such hammy gangster lines as "Take him for a ride." Thus, Crafton goes over a variety of early talkie successes and failures and how the budding film industry learned from both.

The back of the book has an extensive bibliography and even box office receipts for the years 1928 through 1931. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in this fascinating era in cinema history.

Crafton out-did himself and his established firm scholarship in this book. A "must have."
I am told this is the definitive series of books and believe it from this one. Maybe libraries will also pick up on these and have them on the shelves. All ten books are now published by Charles Scribner Sons which is now a part of Thomson and Gale or by the University of Calif. Press.

Phillip Heymann offers a clear-minded, if somewhat cursory, appraisal of the difficulties terrorist activity presents democratic and "open" societies. He manages in just a little over 150 pages to clearly identify the dangers over-reaction to either terrorist threats or actions can pose to a society, as well the risks posed when a terrorist incident involves more than one country, without burdening the reader with too much detail.

This is not, however, an intellectual treatise or theoretical work. Heymann very clearly illustrates his points by examining specific incidents and their consequences involving not merely the US, but Italy, the UK, Germany, Israel, Columbia, and others. Perhaps most illustrative is his examination of the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking, which drives home the complications arising when multiple governments and competing policies become involved, and Chapter 7 on the criminal just system, which touches on everything from the difficulties of investigation to witness intimidation to the use (and possible abuse) of deadly force to the issue of civil rights.

By the end, Heymann delivers on his promise of a "common sense" strategy for dealing with both domestic and international terrorism. Pragmatically admitting the danger of terrorism can never be completely eliminated, it can at least be minimized by a combination of steps, including more targetted intelligence gathering, greater sharing of information with our allies, resisting giving into terrorist demands, and better training of law enforcement in dealing with terrorism.

The book has two small failings however. First, it provides only a cursory examination of what terrorism itself involves. While he devotes an entire chapter to the phenomenon of political violence, Heymann gives only passing mention to the motives and actions that could be involved and almost no examinaiton of the differences between them. This leaves the reader with little appreciation of the differences, both in motive and method, between the decades of bombings committed by Basque Sepratists in Spain and the more sinister activities of the Aum Shinrikyo cult between 1994 and 1995. An in-depth analysis would have actually detracted from Heymann's intent, but a few pages on these distinctions wouldn't have hurt the text.

Secondly, he concentrates almost exclusively on conventional forms of terrorism. He mentions the threats of nuclear, chemical, and biological (NBC) terrorism, but does so in context of conflicts between states, stating the prospect of NBC terrorism is "unlikely". While this is certainly true now, this may well change in coming years. And the specter of an incident like that of the Tokyo subway gassing done by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995 can significantly change a government's options in terms of response. This is actually a minor point given the number of excellent books on the subject already out there, but even a short examination of the dangers NBC presents would have helped here.

In summary, Terrorism and America makes an excellent starting point for readers interested in either terrorism or government's response against it. It should not be mistaken for any ground-breaking analysis on the subjects or a grand strategy for making society impervious to terrorism; the former would take a book easily three times its size, and the latter is quite simply impossible. This is as clear-headed and pragmatic an work on the subject you're likely to find. I highly recommend it.

Phillip Heymann offers a clear-minded, if somewhat cursory, appraisal of the difficulties terrorist activity presents democratic and "open" societies. He manages in just a little over 150 pages to clearly identify the dangers over-reaction to either terrorist threats or actions can pose to a society, as well the risks posed when a terrorist incident involves more than one country, without burdening the reader with too much detail.

This is not, however, an intellectual treatise or theoretical work. Heymann very clearly illustrates his points by examining specific incidents and their consequences involving not merely the US, but Italy, the UK, Germany, Israel, Columbia, and others. Perhaps most illustrative is his examination of the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking, which drives home the complications arising when multiple governments and competing policies become involved, and Chapter 7 on the criminal just system, which touches on everything from the difficulties of investigation to witness intimidation to the use (and possible abuse) of deadly force to the issue of civil rights.

By the end, Heymann delivers on his promise of a "common sense" strategy for dealing with both domestic and international terrorism. Pragmatically admitting the danger of terrorism can never be completely eliminated, it can at least be minimized by a combination of steps, including more targetted intelligence gathering, greater sharing of information with our allies, resisting giving into terrorist demands, and better training of law enforcement in dealing with terrorism.

The book has two small failings however. First, it provides only a cursory examination of what terrorism itself involves. While he devotes an entire chapter to the phenomenon of political violence, Heymann gives only passing mention to the motives and actions that could be involved and almost no examinaiton of the differences between them. This leaves the reader with little appreciation of the differences, both in motive and method, between the decades of bombings committed by Basque Sepratists in Spain and the more sinister activities of the Aum Shinrikyo cult between 1994 and 1995. An in-depth analysis would have actually detracted from Heymann's intent, but a few pages on these distinctions wouldn't have hurt the text.

Secondly, he concentrates almost exclusively on conventional forms of terrorism. He mentions the threats of nuclear, chemical, and biological (NBC) terrorism, but does so in context of conflicts between states, stating the prospect of NBC terrorism is "unlikely". While this is certainly true now, this may well change in coming years. And the specter of an incident like that of the Tokyo subway gassing done by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995 can significantly change a government's options in terms of response. This is actually a minor point given the number of excellent books on the subject already out there, but even a short examination of the dangers NBC presents would have helped here.

In summary, Terrorism and America makes an excellent starting point for readers interested in either terrorism or government's response against it. It should not be mistaken for any ground-breaking analysis on the subjects or a grand strategy for making society impervious to terrorism; the former would take a book easily three times its size, and the latter is quite simply impossible. This is as clear-headed and pragmatic an work on the subject you're likely to find. I highly recommend it.

This book was originally written by my Great-grandfather, Robert Vaughn, who came to this country from Wales. He wrote the book for his daughter, Arvonia Elizabeth Vaughn Sprague. The original book is extremely interesting, as it gives a very graphic view of what life was like in Montana during the latter part of the 1800s. I am intentionally spelling Vaughn this way because it was altered when he was getting a title for some land that he purchased. In Robert Vaughn's original book, the spelling of his name is the same throughout the book. I have not read Walter's reprint of Robert Vaughn's book, but the incorrect spelling of Vaughn's name and the fact that none of the descendents of Robert Vaughn were ever consulted about this book raises concerns about the accuracy of this book. My rating reflects the quality of the original book.

This book was originally written by my great-grandfather Robert Vaughn who came to this country from Wales. He wrote the book for his daughter, Arvonia Elizabeth Vaughn Sprague. The original book is extremely interesting, as it gives a very graphic view of what life was like in Montana during the latter part of the 1800s. I am intentionally spelling Vaughn this way because it was altered when he was getting a title for some land that he purchased. In Robert Vaughn's original book, the spelling of his name is the same throughout the book. I have not read Walter's reprint of Robert Vaughn's book, but the incorrect spelling of Vaughn's name and the fact that none of the descendents of Robert Vaughn were ever consulted about this book raises concerns about the accuracy of this book. My rating reflects the quality of the original book.