Virginia Books

A good resource for faculty. Well written with nice integrated examples. I always recommend this book to faculty looking to develop rubrics for their teaching.

While it may not seem like it to students, grading is a very complex exercise for teachers and instructors. Anyone hoping to go into that line of work will have to learn about how complex and uncertain the art of grading can be, and this book is a strong compendium of current theory on such matters. An especially valuable aspect of this book is its coverage of the different schools of thought on whether grading is really an accurate assessment tool at all, and how all parties in the education process (students, teachers, administrators, parents, employers) have different conceptions of the usefulness and value of grades. But while this book is hugely informative at the practical level, beware of a few larger theoretical weaknesses. Frequently, certain practices that are currently held in high esteem become overused examples of larger concepts. The most glaring example is the inaccurately-titled chapter "Establishing Criteria and Standards for Grading" which is entirely about just one method, Primary Trait Analysis. At a higher level, this book assumes that all instructors will have the privilege of smaller class sizes, or welcoming administrative environments, in which experimenting with grading methods is possible or practical at all. Meanwhile this book (and many others like it) fails to distinguish between future advancements in theory and the real world in which such theories and practices have yet to be implemented on any appreciable scale. [~doomsdayer520~]

Do you love to teach but hate the grading process? That's where I was when I picked up this book. Very practically written, "Effective Grading" shows you how to choose the proper grading model for a class, how to motivate students through properly communicating your grading system, and how to structure your assignments to increase student learning. All this while drastically reducing the amount of time you need to spend on grading papers. Within a week of reading this book, I've made some drastic changes in my courses which will benefit both my students and myself.

I admit I was skeptical when I started this book--so many pedagogically oriented texts seem to sacrifice content and standards for "feel-good" solutions to education. However, I have found this book to offer excellent suggestions for every aspect of structuring classes to teach and evaluate what you most want your students to learn. In my college English classes, I've used variations of Primary Trait Analyses and Gateway Criteria and they have made a big difference in the levels of thinking and writing in my own students. Giving students specific guidelines allows them to focus on what's important about the assignment, set their priorities appropriately, and makes things much easier for me when the time comes for grading. I highly recommend this book.

Virginia's intimate words flow easily, evoking vivid images and feelings about familial relationships and childhood memories. I have never read so many poems in one sitting!

The very best writing paints in three dimensions - and Virginia Chase Sutton's first book is a garden of sculptures. Her statuary is brittle glass, glistening steel, tough-textured granite - and the reader's mind feels the need to touch and stroke and rotate these remarkable poems to feel every inch of them. The sharpest edges have been worn smooth by long handling, but there is still danger here. The reader must be careful.
Ms. Sutton's stories are revealed in the details...each poem a vignette, a tableau, a deer in the headlights...and with each comes greater understanding of this author who has invited us to share her therapy, and of ourselves. Her timeless poems are classical stories of blood and bonds, of nature and nurture, of love and whatever. The author's gift is to reveal her stories so carefully that we don't feel the hard parts until we are past them, when it is safe to look back. Still, this book is not for the faint of heart. Self-knowledge lurks here, and readers will close "Embellishments" enriched and themselves embellished.

Virginia Chase Sutton's poems create a world of sensual detail and brutal honesty that pull the reader into a journey they would not dare travel on their own. Every day objects and events become exotic images capturing the fragility of the moment. Embellishments is to be read over and over again as a constant reminder of the power and possibilites of the heart. If I could recommend only one book of poetry this year, Embellishments would be it.

Here one finds poems of hope and renewal. Virginia Chase Sutton's book offers to take the reader into a circle of fierce light where the constructs of an "ordinary American life" are savagely rendered. Yet, utlimately, the reader is made aware of an authentic voice which speaks with brutal empathy about the complex nature of human relationships. Finally, this book stubbornly refuses to "give up." Despite it's unflinching look at despair, these poems shimmer with an unspoken clarity of vision which sees--and believes in--in our common future.

I hope they do a reprint of this book, as there are a few errors in it. As my family is included in book. My family & I bought this book for $25, and it shows a price of 150.00 . I cannot understand why...Please let me know, as it is a great book, and the inaccurate info can be re-written, (like spelling names of my first name, and sisters son's name...just to note a few.
It is a remarkable book, that I am proud to be a part of.

The book was fine and I would have loved it if it had turned out that this was my family. I must keep searching.

This book is a wonderful resource of information for my genealogical research of my family. This book covers the immigration of the Lewis family from Ireland in the early 1700's and the early settlement of Virginia. I enjoy it immensely and reference it often.

This book is just what you're looking for if your family line goes back to John Lewis. Plenty of information and great pictures.

This is a great book for teachers and Christians to read! I really enjoyed the different perspectives that the two voices shared.

This is an excelent book for all people all ages.Mrs.Whited I am so happy for you,and I hope that you continue to suceed with your writing and teaching.

Parents, students, future educators, and Christians should all grab a copy of this book. I thought it was a very insightful book into a world in which we tend to overlook. Very few people realize the impact that educators have on our children and the challenges that face them.

I was unable to put the book down. This book gives a new perspective on educators and the hard, thankless job they perform day in and day out. Now throw in the fact they are Christian educators with an even higher responsibility! Wow, you just have to read it to understand.

The 2 voices speak loud and clear.

You must own this book. It will open your eyes and change your heart.

I agree that great men have been neglected in the overtures of history, such as General Lewis.However, he is intered at East Hill Cemetary just above downtown Salem, VA.

I really enjoyed this book after searching for it for years! The General was one of my ancestors. My Gr. Grandmother was Samantha Lewis Westfall. It was a well researched book. However, the General's burial is in Hampton W. Va. As a small child I used to put flowers on his grave. This is near Buckhannon W.Va. I feel the same way that Johnson does, that so many greats were ignored while too much attention was paid to George Washington. General Lewis was at the very least, equal to Washington during and before the revolutionary way. A great book for history buffs!

I really enjoyed this book after searching for it for years! The General was one of my ancestors. My Gr. Grandmother was Samantha Lewis Westfall. It was a well researched book. However, the General's burial is in Hampton W. Va. As a small child I used to put flowers on his grave. This is near Buckhannon W.Va. I feel the same way that Johnson does, that so many greats were ignored while too much attention was paid to George Washington. General Lewis was at the very least, equal to Washington during and before the revolutionary way. A great book for history buffs!

I really enjoyed this book after searching for it for years! The General was one of my ancestors. My Gr. Grandmother was Samantha Lewis Westfall. It was a well researched book. However, the General's burial is in Hampton W. Va. As a small child I used to put flowers on his grave. This is near Buckhannon W.Va. I feel the same way that Johnson does, that so many greats were ignored while too much attention was paid to George Washington. General Lewis was at the very least, equal to Washington during and before the revolutionary way. A great book for history buffs!

Ivan Bunin is a great writer. And as for the readers, reading his stories and enjoying them are a mark of achievement. As you read his stories fierce chill pierces through you simultaneously as grand pictures fill your imaginations.

Bunin is one of the most brilliant Russian writers of the early 20th century. His short stories express more in a couple of pages than most novels do in hundreds. It is poetry in prose.

In the meditation entitled "Night," Bunin's unnamed narrator says: "Why did God choose to brand me so deeply with wonderment, thought and `wisdom', and why is that fatal mark constantly growing inside me?" Although the voice is abstract, I think it works as a description of Bunin himself. He wasbclearly a man with (again in his own words) "the capacity to feel with a singular intensity ... not only their own identities but those of other people...." And although he may feel that his capacity is somehow unusual, he does a remarkable job of imagining (or is it projection?) that capacity in others. Everybody, he says somewhere (although I can't put my finger on it), has a story that deserves to be told.

In his introduction, David Richards calls Bunin "egocentric." In context I think I know what it means, but it's an odd choice of words and I suspect misleading. Conceded that Bunin is not a "social" novelist in the sense that Tolstoi is, nor a dramatist like Dostoevsky: his metier is, indeed, the minute attention to feelings. In some sense I suppose these feelings are "his own," but in some sense, every artist's feelings are "his own." Perhaps closer to the mark to suggest that at some level every one of us is an egocentric, and that Bunin may be able to capture the egocentricity in all of us.

Caution: Bunin won a Nobel Prize, but don't be misled into disappointment. He's a fine and rewarding writer, but not better than several others who did not win the prize, the award of which inevitably has more to do with politics than with intrinsic merit.

No wonder he won the Nobel Prize! Four hauntingly magnificent short stories, all but the third with death as the end. Or maybe not the end, but the raison d'etre of the story. "The Gentleman from San Francisco" almost half the book, translated rather badly, I suspect, in the version I read, by D. H. Lawrence; "Gentle Breathing", an incredibly subtle story; "Kasimir Stanislavatch", and "Son". In each, he takes the human tragedy and contrasts it with beautiful nature. His detail is remarkable. The stories are all short, plots not intricate or even eventful, but he manages to make each one simply live and breathe and have being. It rather reminds me of all Russian writers; they're all so tragic. What is it about being a Russian? And nobody remembers him as they do Chekhov, or Tolstoy. I wonder why. Perhaps his volume of writing was not large enough.

I openned this book expecting to read a story about a house and how it was built. I was surprised, and impressed, to discover that what went on as Mt. Vernon took form was far more interesting than I had expected. This is not so much a book about a house as it is the story of how George Washington related to the slaves on whom he relied to execute his architecture. In other words, the story here reverberates far beyond the boundaries of the plantation. It went to the heart of the republic, and it goes to the heart of this nation. Slavery is encoded in our national DNA (sorry, Jefferson). The Dalzells make it clear that it is also mortared in the wood and plaster (cut and painted to look like stone) of our national edifice. Are you tormented, or at least intrigued, that a slaveowner could style himself father of a republic dedicated to freedom? Maybe Washington was, too. Find out. Visit Mt. Vernon, and do it by reading this book.

Knowing Professor Dalzell and Mrs. Dalzell personally, I was incredibly curious to see how they blended the two seemingly connected but perhaps contrasting topics of George Washington and his home. Essentially, they were connected very successfully. The entire history of the home itself is told vividly with photographs, anecdotes, and objective descriptions of its development. Following, Washington's own personal, military, and political history is told in light of the times, and in the book's shining ability, in relation to the home itself. The Dalzell's cleverly-melded arguments and discussions leads the reader to a full knowledge of Mt. Vernon and its inspiring owner.

For an Architect practicing in any era since Monticello was built, it has always been easy to enter into Jefferson's process--to commune with the models and the methods he sat down with as he designed (time and again) the house that he built as a monument to his ideas and his place in history. In part, this has been because he planned and drew much as we do today. We have the drawings. We know (and can quickly avert our eyes from) the form of labor. We can hold these two-dimensional maps up to the brilliant artifact, and be satisfied, with ourselves, that we have made a connection to the past. Mount Vernon, however, has had to wait for the Dalzells to read, for us, the full and fully three-dimensional process of its becoming. This beautifully written book brings to George Washington's home, a context of meaning and National symbolism that time and distance had almost obliterated. The book is a restoration project: and as such, it is a key compliment to the preservation work so ably executed over the years by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. I heartily recommend this book to architects (amateur and professional), their clients (who may find comfort in learning that building has always been a trial), architectural historians, or anyone at all who is curious about the faithfulness of our democracy to the designs of one of its primary draftsmen.

Mount Vernon was both architecturally innovative and a true mirror of Washington's feelings and mind. He never wrote an autobiography and his diaries consist largely of farm accounts, but in Mount Vernon, the authors write, "he produced a text from which it is possible to coax a remarkably full sense of his political convictions and of how, over time, they changed." The book, George Washington's Mount Vernon, combines the public and the private sides of his life and uses the combination to enrich our understanding of both.

This is by far the best and most definitive biography of George Washington to date. Meticulously researched with extensive and interesting footnotes, it is a must for anyone looking for an accurate account of this amazing man's life. I have read hundreds of books on Washington and this one is at the top of my list. The author won a Pulitzer Prize for this one and it is well deserved.

THE definitive biography of our first president. Freeman can only be faulted for providing too much detail. If you really desire to find out about George Washington, read this book. It should be required study material for contemporary, so called historians.

Ok well I read this book for the first time, and I can say confidently that Freeman must've known Washington personally. The detail in which Freeman goes into does not leave the reader questioning anything about Washington. Everything is there in the book!! A must read for the lovers of history!

Volumes 3, 4, & 5 are the essential bedrock of any respectable American's library -- the starting point from which any serious investigation of the American Revolution commences -- there is only one word to describe Freeman's achievement -- SUPERB -- to fault Freeman for his detail suggests the mind of an adolescent seeking easy crib notes for a school paper -- the footnotes (relegated to back pages of less scholarly histories) tempt the reader down little-trodden paths of historical investigation leading to new & fascinating insights -- it is the detail and Freeman's lean transcendent prose that make the difference in comparison to the abridgement -- for any American with an interest in our history -- how independence was wrested from defeat by the sheer will perserverence & determination of one man -- a man who refused to be cowed or mentally defeated by the world's great superpower or by even more insidious enemies -- those selfish conservatives who wished to find common cause with Britain to return to the status quo & maintain their perogatives without risk of loss -- how Washington overcame all odds despite the obstinate stupidity of Congress -- the incompetence of state legislatures & governors (including Jefferson) as well as the greedy selfishness & studied indifference of the propertied classes -- these volumes describe Washington's monumental achievement -- but the biography does not concern itself solely with the man himself but also with that dedicated band of true-believers inspired by his example -- some of modest talents -- some of great -- and some who proved unable to keep the faith -- but most important of all it descibes the achievements possible what a great leader can achieve with an army of starving ragamuffins & scarecrow refugees, the refuse of colonial society, unmarried men of small means representing all races, nations, & ages (& not a few women as well) bound together by hope for a better future (based on promises Congress failed to keep) and their undying love & respect for Washington -- volumes 3, 4, 5 represent the essential core of classical American history -- books I'd want along if I were marooned on a desert island -- these volumes are nothing less than the prose outline of an AMERICAN ILIAD.

This product is the same book I have been using for the past two years. This book is as good as the last two I received. The problem is with the people who send the books. The last vendor took three weeks to mail the book, then the US Mail took 18 days to carry it from California to east Alabama. It took five days to carry it from Atlanta to me. This is disgraceful.

Recieved item on time, right when we were told it would arrive. Book in very good condition.

Fine transaction. Item arrived quickly and was as described. Would recommend this seller.

I think this is a great algebra 1 textbook. It covers alot of needs and has odd-numbered problem answers in the back of the textbook.
It has examples, etc.

A multi-layered story about grief, confronting fear head-on, and finding hope and healing.

Dill can't face the loss of her mother to cancer, and life just keeps kicking her when she's down. She has an ailing grandpa, a grieving father, and a dog that may be killing local livestock. Just how far will Dill go to save the dog that belonged to her mother? And at what cost?

Dog Gone is a great read for middle schoolers, particularly those who love dogs and horses.

A beautifully told story about a girl who is emotionally running away from the recent death of her beloved mother and about how life won't let her. The tension between what the reader knows the main character, Dil, is doing and what she believes she is doing makes this wonderfully poignant and rich. Lots of other great characters including Dil's charming best friend Cub, her colorful grandfather, and her increasingly distant father who has his own wounds to heal. The farm country setting and animal focus make this broadly appealing on a whole other level. Highly recommended!

I just finished Dog Gone and felt compelled to write a review. This book moved me in a way I hadn't expected. Having been raised in the South, it was great to visit it once again through the sights, sounds, and characters the author uses to tell the tale of a girl struggling with the loss of her mother and the possible loss of her beloved dog--who may or may not be doing something harmful to the local farmers' livestock. Like an engine leaving the station, the tension slowly builds in the story until it races past you and you can no longer put the book down. Then, the climactic scene in the driveway, leaves you breathless and teary-eyed as the main character's realization or what has been and what will be smacks her and you, the reader, in the face. It was a powerful moment and speaks to the great command this writer has over her craft. This is a gripping, must-read novel for school-age children and adults. Kudos to Cynthia Chapman Willis. I can't wait to read her next book!

This is a wonderfully written story about the love of a dog by a girl who has just undergone a tragic life experience with the loss of her mother. Very insightful with a happy ending ! A perfect life experience for those 9-13 year olds who are the target audience of this new author. I would definitely recommend this book !