Senses Books

This is the autobiography of the Rev. C.C. White, a minister of the Church of God in Christ, and founder of God's Storehouse, a building filled with smoked hams, food, and clothing to be distributed to locals in need. Ada Holland, who had written articles on White for Ebony and Texas Magazine (see pp. x, 206, 213; incidentally, she donated most of the fees she received to God's Storehouse), provided him with tapes and a recorder, working the result "into a logical, readable form" (at p. xi). Although "done largely in his exact words," Holland notes that "[m]any good incidents had to be eliminated, and others had to be condensed" (at id.). After reading No Quittin' Sense, one can only hope that the tapes have been preserved.

What White gives us, with Holland's assistance, is a first rate autobiography, showing what it was like to grow up black in East Texas at the turn of the century. His eye for the apt phrase is remarkable; Lucille, his first wife, tells him, "'You know, Charley, even the rocks look pretty,'" when they clear their land (at p. 107), while only someone with a heart of stone could fail to be moved by the description of her new kitchen furniture:

Lucille was so proud of her new safe she could hardly leave it alone. She rearranged her things in it nearly every evening. Once, when she didn't know I was watching, she pushed her drawer in and out several times and didn't put anything in it or take anything out. Then she opened the doors and shut them a time or two, and run her hand over the smooth wood, just as gentle like. She never did know I seen her (at p. 111).

Any description of black life at that place and time would be interesting; it is our good fortune that Rev. White is a master raconteur. We are given descriptions of a creek baptism (at pp. 3-4), hog butchering (at p. 24), laying out a corpse with a saucer of salt on its chest and silver dollars on its eyes (at p. 69), and of an extramarital affair at a schoolhouse (at pp. 100-01; Rev. White was the custodian at the time). We learn about "stick and cat" chimneys (at p. 28), using old hornets' nests for gun wadding (at pp. 51-52), and the Reverend can almost make you taste his mother's biscuits (see p. 66). The reader moves seamlessly from C.C. White's childhood, when he shows early signs of his vocation by baptizing sticks and burying Old Poke, his doll (at pp. 5, 11), through the building of his storehouse for tithes (at pp. 166-67), to race relations in Texas in the 1960's ("'They may beat a man half to death trying to make him confess something he never done, but they've always let him vote'"- at p. 212).

This book offers a window into a world that has now largely disappeared. You don't have to be religious to enjoy No Quittin' Sense.

Samuel Pyeatt Menefee

If you want to feel the power of determination, positive thinking, the energy of faith and self belief, read this book. Uri Geller. www.urigeller.com

"ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Randolph I. James has worked in the field of performance technoloty for over eleven years in the public and private sectors.

Randy holds a graduate degree in Psycholoty (Industrial/Organizational) from California State University, Sacramento.

He was a member of the university's part-time faculty teaching "Psychology in Personnel Training and Development."

Randy has been responsible for the design and implementation of several quality and productivity improvement efforts.

He has extensive project experience in the white collar arena.

Randy has published several articles about improving performance and has presented at national conferences and workshops.

He is a member of the National Society for Performance and Instruction...."
[from the book of the back]

".... This book isn't about common sense.
It outlines a simple three-step process that can be used to support organizational (or work group) efforts to improve organizational operations.
Two distinct philosophies about job performance have been merged into one analytic framework that should work well with the personality of most organizations.
The quality improvement methodology presented is easy to use and understand.
As such, this guide can be used as a reference:
* for general information about quality improvement.
* for a specific methodology to support individual and group quality improvement efforts.
* for detailed information about specific quality improvement tools and methods....."

THE DOOR TO QUALITY IMPROVEMENT IS OPEN FOR ANY ORGANIZATION and its employees.
It requires action (not simpley reaction) and a comitment to quality improvement....."
[from the book of the preface]

Each page in this book has a giant fold-out page for babies to open. The question on the top of the page is answered when you open the page.

"What noise does the cement mixer's drum make?"

Open page to see: Picture of a cement mixer and the word "whirrrr."

Each page is different, so some pages open up to the side and some to the top. So, each page gives baby a new challenge.

Lovely pictures of toys and lots of color and activity.

~The Rebecca Review

He carries it around wherever he goes. He like to read it with his mom and dad and interacts with the sounds when the story calls for them to be pressed. A great gift choice.

Here's another Rookie Reader! This one teaches directions, a must for teaching how to read maps and geography! I will use it with 8th graders with a lack of prior educational experiences and a need to learn about maps and geography. In future years, it could be another group of students of any age who requires access to beginning reading materials in English.

Rose can find anything. She's got a nose for finding things you lose.

One day her talent earns her a nickname. But she doesn't much care for it.

Rose decides she won't even respond to the others if they call her Nosy Rosie. Her friends decide they don't need her services anymore anyway.

Rose sets out to find a way to ditch her nickname. In the meantime, her friends decide to ditch her.

Rose is fine with that. The nickname she finds mean isn't worth putting up with anymore just to make people happy by finding their lost items.

But that's when her friends find they need her the most. Rose also finds she needs them too.

Nosy Rosie is sure to be another hit for Keller. The vivid illustrations help tell the story beautifully and Keller's writing will entertain readers ages 4-8 while helping them learn to become better readers.

"Now what can I do?" asks the young raccoon to his mother throughout a rainy day. Mother's responses make the day go by quickly for both of them. Margaret Park Bridges creates a fantastic adventure for the most mundane of tasks in this wonderfully creative story. Melissa Sweet's acrylic illustrations show the loving relationship between mother and son, and the imaginary adventures that occur throughout the day.

As a math teacher, I love to refer to this book and use theactivities often. I especially liked the section on decimals.Students can have difficulty realizing how big or small a decimal is and there is an activity that allows them to group the pictoral and the number version according to its size. It allows the students to see that a decimal close to 0 has very little shaded pictorally and that the decimal number starts with 0, 1, or 2. That is very important for those visual learners. Also, the estimation activities are very good because it covers estimation in terms of how many are in a space and estimates where rounding and then performing an operation are necessary. As a math resource teacher I have people coming to me a lot and when I show them activities from this book they are pleased and one has even bought it herself!

In simple and accessible prose, Allman outlines the contemporary importance of Marx in having given us the conceptual tools to understand global capitalism--and to understand its culpability in the production and sustenance of the major problems facing humanity today. Rendering visible the invisible interconnections between economics and politics, Allman forces to the surface the legacy of the relations capitalism has established between people; essentially a competitive and in many ways "feral" relationship where humans have reverted to treating each other as means rather than ends. As she so clearly shows, the logic of capitalism ("thinking") thus creates a specific type of "being" that in turn perpetuates further dehumanised thought and action.

I do not know of a better work--i.e., short, affordable, complex but readable--that captures the central importance of Marx's ideas to our world today. As Allman explains, without minds that can understand the rich legacy of Marx's insights, society will remain imprisoned by its own ignorance. That is why Marx's ideas are revolutionary she argues; they challenge our ideas of who we are.

This book will especially appeal to educators, given the consequences of an omission of these sorts of understandings from our present programmes of study. It could well be said that the future health of our society--if it is to remain truly democratic--depends on works such as this being bought and read.