Washington Books

Jean Marie Christenson's mastery of documentary journalism shines through in this compelling collection of interviews, from the world behind prison bars, a world that the large majority of Americans do their best to deny, ignore and wish away. The great conundrums of the topic are portrayed, including: (1) the "prison industry", which employs tens of thousands of Americans to keep caged millions of other Americans, at huge financial expense to American society; (2)human tales: 1st-person interviews of a Governor, prison heads, prison guards, and, most of all, prisoners. Reading the book refreshes one's respect for the enormity of the topic. American governments, particularly our local governments, must devote immense, ever-growing sums of money to keep law-breakers separated from polite society... so much money (taxes) that insufficient tax resources are left for the many positive functions of local government: eduction, public health, social services... so much money (taxes) is required to cage people (consistent with all the criminal laws which we insist our lawmakers pass), the weight of the resulting tax burdens lead to tax revolts, in which society cuts off its nose to spite its face. Christenson's book comes from her heart and her own life-experiences... and that is obvious in reading her work. A passionate work of documentary journalism, about vital issues facing society which are manifestly unsolved, and cry out for solution.

READ THIS BOOK, YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO PUT IT DOWN! FASINATING! INFORMATION THAT IS NO OTHER PLACE.

THIS IS A MUST READ IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT GOES ON ON THE "INSIDE". A very interesting book. Many insights. You won't be able to put it down!

This is the best guide to the DC and surrounding area, but in some cases this book needs to be updated. Some attractions have relocated or closed since the book was published. Fortunately, the book lists phone numbers and websites so you can make sure of the current location and hours of operation. I would highly recommend it to anyone, with or without kids, who wants to see the sights in DC and the surrounding Virginia and Maryland area.

Great resource. I just was hoping it would be updated, since it's been a while, and not all information is still current.

We live in DC and we love this book! Whenever I feel like we need a new place to visit, I flip the pages and find something perfect to do. All of the places we've discovered through the book have been places we've vowed to return. My son is one and a half -- I look forward to exploring more and more as he grows up in DC. I work at a school and have also purchased copies for teachers to give them great ideas for field trips.

This is one of the best books about the Northwest. Corr does a great job blending the story of an activist family with the rise of Seattle after World War II. Next to "Skid Road," my favorite on Seattle. Should be a movie. A great female lead character in Dorothy Bullitt.

Corr's book is more valuable than the narrow title suggests. More than a history of a powerful Seattle family and its TV-Radio empire, Corr's larger theme is the post-war growth of Seattle, the price of its progress and the universal tension between idealism and commerce. This story is interesting because Dorothy Bullitt did not set out to make money in the new medium of TV. Rather, she and her son, Stimson, created a new media force that shook up the sleepy newspaper-dominated local media. Well into the 70's KING-TV scooped many big stories. Corr does a masterful job of tracing the early deviations from the "King ideal"--Dorothy's dumping of her son in favor of Ancil Payne, the shift from hard news to TV celebrities, and the ultimate cash out by Payne and Dorothy's daughters. Along the way Corr paints many colorful portraits--the Machiavellian Payne, Dorothy's hopelessly dysfunctional grandchildren, the bright and attractive Jean Enersen--the lone remaining link to the glory days, the irasicble Don McGaffin--a throwback to the hard drinking, hard working, macho muckrakers of the turn of the century, and the glib, shallow Jim Foreman--the self-described "ratings machine" and low water mark for KING's television journalism. There is much to savor in this well written and colorful book. One hopes that Corr will soon devote his considerable talent to a subject with broader appeal.

Corr has done lovers of radio, and television, specifically those of us in the Pacific Northwest a tremendous favor, capturing the drama of the Bullitt family. His writing is lively and the story is compelling in its narritive detail. You'll learn of the struggles, gambles and tremendous paybacks the Bulletts made as they began and grew their broadcasting kingdom. If I had any criticism, it would be that the book is a little short of details concerning KING-AM and KGW-AM's heydays as Top 40 Rock N Roll outlets. The author completely fails to include, KINK-FM, one of the most interesting and hybrid FM radio stations in the country. If you are at all interested in radio, television or Northwest business history, this is definately a book worthy of purchasing.

We live in Southern California so I was a bit dubious how useful this book would be. Happily, it still has much to offer for anyone wishing to wildscape. There's plenty of general advice re. food/water/nesting sites etc. and good plans for bird houses and bat houses. There's a nice chapter on attracting hummingbirds and butterflies, and plenty about creating and maintaining water features (a huge attraction for wildlife in hot areas like ours).

You will need to cross reference the plant lists against what's native for your area, and find your own local native plant nurseries, but there's still lots of great advice here for wildlife gardeners that can be adapted to almost any region.

Trish

Link, Russell, Landscaping for Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1999, 320p.

Soft cover, perfect binding, acid free paper, 8.5 X 11.

The book is divided into 5 parts 1) Wildlife Habitat Design and Maintenance 2) Pacific Northwest Wildlife in the Landscape 3) Special Features for Wildlife Landscapes 4) Coexisting with Wildlife 5) Appendices

Volume has good index , bibliographic references and is clearly printed.

Over one third of the book is in the Appendices, they are excellent, perhaps its best `part'.

A) Pacific Northwest Habitats B) Wildlife Plants Lists, Tables, and Maps C) Landscape and Wildlife Information for Specific Plants D) Construction Plans for Nest Boxes and Bird Feeders E) Resources (in my opinion, very important)

Content:

Well written, educationally enhanced by wonderful illustrations, good examples and step-by-step procedures. Quality, abet small, section of color photos of wildlife identification and descriptions. Includes description of habitat construction from apartment balcony to acreage. Also discusses ponds, dust paths, nest boxes and nest structures, feeders with detailed tables, brush piles, snags, hedgerows, bird watching, problems with wildlife and responsible pet ownership.

Book can be read as text or used as a reference resource. The publication is a must for any land steward or wildlife enthusiast. An excellent purchase as a gift for yourself or fellow enthusiast. Available in bookstores or if you order from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife you receive a copy autographed by Russell.

This is my 4th or 5th purchase of this wonderful book. I have given all my copies away and need another for myself. It has great resources on the plants birds, insects and animals use for food, cover, etc. We made our voilet green swallow nest boxes from the plans in the book. We've watched new swallows peek out and take their first flight every year since we put them up.

We live in the foothills of Mt. Hood and it took me a few months after moving here to realize I shouldn't bring the invasive plants I used in town to the mountains. And I realized I could have turned my city home into a wildlife haven. The book is a great resources for all city, suburb or rural locales in the PNW.

It's just a wonderful book!

By any measure, humans are pretty amazing animals. Only humans build cities, drive cars, fly airplanes, surf the Internet and write book reviews to post on Amazon. Clearly intelligence is what underlies all these abilities, but where does our intellectual endowment come from? The standard explanation has to do with brain-to-body ratio, which is far greater in humans than in any other species. On this view, our big brains make us more intelligent, giving us the ability to solve problems, make plans and communicate with each other effectively. Because it seems obvious that intelligence is advantageous to survival, it is assumed that it would be selected for and that evolution would push hominids towards larger and larger brains.

However, linguist Derek Bickerton takes issue with the standard model. In particular with regard to the relationship between intelligence and language, he believes the evolutionary scientists have the process backwards. Instead of viewing language as a product of intelligence, Bickerton argues instead that intelligence is a product of language. In "Language and Human Behavior," Bickerton presents the case that humans stumbled upon language, which then drove brain expansion and intelligence.

Bickerton argues that language evolved in two stages, and that "fossils" of the first stage still exist today. The distinction he makes here is between proto-language and full language. Proto-language has a limited vocabulary and no syntax; it is spoken in a halting fashion and has limited range of expression compared to full language. Full language, other the other hand, is represented by English, Chinese, or any other language spoken in the world. It also includes most signed languages, as well as the languages of so-called "primitive" peoples. (It should be noted that while their technologies are primitive compared to ours, their languages are every bit as complex.)

The speech of young children is one example of proto-language. From about one year of age until around age three, children's vocabularies are extremely limited, and the utterances they produce are simple, typically consisting of a single word or a two-to-three word string. A second example of proto-language is pidgins. When adults who do not speak a common language are forced to live and work together, they quickly develop a simple communication system consisting of a small vocabulary and virtually no syntax. Pidgins have arisen naturally many times over recorded history. A third example of proto-language comes from attempts to teach language to apes. In some cases, primates (and even a parrot) have been able to learn a vocabulary of several hundred words that they can understand and produce; however, they never seem to pick up on the rules of syntax. Finally, some mentally disabled and aphasics are only able to produce short, halting utterances with the same characteristics of proto-language.

Bickerton reviews the evidence on human evolution and argues that a punctuated-equilibrium approach best explains the data. Technological advancement (as judged by tool remains) has proceeded in a stepwise fashion from homo habilis to homo erectus to homo sapiens. That is, there is some technological advancement at the rise of each new species, followed by a long period of stagnation. And then around fifty thousand years ago there was a "great leap forward," from which time human technology has been advancing apace. Bickerton maintains that such a fossil record is inconsistent with a gradualist approach. Rather, some important change occurred two million years ago in homo habilis, and then again in homo sapiens fifty thousand years ago.

What made homo habilis different from any other primate, Bickerton speculates, is proto-language. Having stumbled upon a simple communication system, homo habilis was now able to coordinate group activity toward directed goals. Just as half an eye is better than no eye at all, proto-language gave homo habilis a significant evolutionary advantage. It also gave them a means for thinking out problems.

Continuing in this line of thought, Bickerton explains the great leap forward fifty thousand years ago by the advent of full language. A key difference between proto-language and full language is syntax, which allows for complex thought, including causal inferences. Thus, Bickerton argues, human intelligence arose from language, and not the other way around.

In the remainder of the book, Bickerton fleshes out his theory of linguistically driven intelligence. First, he makes a distinction between on-line and off-line thinking. On-line thinking involves direct interaction with the environment; inputs are received by the senses and processed by the brain, which then programs responses. Driving a car is a good example of on-line thinking in humans. Any creature with a nervous system engages in on-line thinking, although the degree of complexity varies greatly from species to species. Off-line thinking, on the other hand, is detached from the immediate environment, and operates on mental models instead. Making future plans, abstract problem solving and hypothetical supposition are all examples of off-line thinking. As far as we know, only humans engage in off-line thinking.

Language is related to thinking by the way each type of thinking is represented. On-line thinking works on sensory inputs and motor outputs, and Bickerton calls such a system a primary representational system. But off-line thinking operates on abstract representations that have no direct connection to the immediate environment. Bickerton calls such a system a secondary representational system, and he argues that it is language that provides these abstract representations.

Bickerton swims against the mainstream; however, his arguments are not without merit. Most evolutionary scientists do not fully appreciate the complexity of language and discount its importance, viewing it simply as a communication system only tangentially related to thinking and intelligence. Most linguists are woefully (and sometimes even blissfully) ignorant of human evolution, and do not even attempt to build linguistic theories that are evolutionary plausible. Bickerton is well versed in both fields, and so both evolutionary scientists and linguists alike should pay heed to what he has to say.

It is easy to suspect that we humans can talk because we have smart brains. Bickerton instead argues that as our brains developed the capacity for speech we thereby became smart. Like other animals we have "on-line" thinking to help us survive. This consists of sensory('objective') knowledge of the world and ('subjective') inner states of consciousness. These latter are sometimes automatic responses to sensory knowledge --when you see a lion slinking, run! Sometimes they are awareness of inner states such as pain or body position. On-line thinking is automatic, either instinctual or a kind of learned stimulus-response process. But humans also have "off-line" consciousness. This consists of mental representations of the world and of ourselves, but even of events that are not really occuring. We can think about things not present to us, far away or in the past or in possible futures. So we can evaluate possibilities and make choices in our head; we can plan ahead. Bickerton uses his expertise in pidgin and creole languages to compare different kinds of thought. By this he shows that full "online" thinking is much more than koko, washoe, and kanzi, the sign-using primates (and two-year old children for that matter) are able to do. How he gets from pidgin and creoles to his conclusions is a major aspect of the book. He does it clearly and elegantly. Overall, he argues that as the mind developed capacity for full language, it was also developing the capacity to formulate, hold on to, and manipulate concepts and the relations among them. This language skill is also skill at thinking. So as the human brain developed the structures and connections to make language possible, this created the possibility of offline thought--the power to manipulate ideas well beyond the limits of ordinary "online" sensory experience and flash responses to those experiences.

If you like Dennett's books, I urge you to read this one, "Language and Human Bahavior", by Bickerton. The whole book, which is not long, developes a single argument clearly and cogently. It is Vytgotsky's argument (see "Thought and Language" written in 1934), but updated and expanded. In Bickerton's own words: "human cognition came out of language" (page 160), though the title of this review is more exact. So Vygotsky from psychology and Bickerton from linguistics reach the same heretical conclusion. I believe very deeply that they are right.

Summary: The book is very interesting and very well written; it was easy reading for me. It deserves the best score and I strongly recommend it.

Did you know that the illustrator who did the art for Lootas also did the art for People of Salmon and Cedar. My kids loved the pictures in this books and liked the fact that they knew this otter personally.

Lootas was selected as a 1999 Notable Books for Children by Smithsonian Magazine! It also received a great review in School Library Journal. And no wonder. This book engages the reader at all levels: it's a wonderful story, and filled with great factual information. A "must-have" in home and school!

Delightful! Entertaining and Educational

A great book. I was a career government employee rather than a political, but the advice is great for everyone who aspires to accomplish something in government. For that matter, most of the lessons transfer well to the private sector if you just use a little common sense.

Certainly anyone coming to Washington as a political appointee should read this book. I worked for too many who did not.

Full disclosure: I read this book because I met Dave Oliver and liked him. Now that I have read the book I like him even more.

Most management texts seem to be aimed at the private sector. Oliver makes a great contribution with a text focusing on the different management and leadership environment within the government, including relations with civil servants, Congress and personnel in other agencies/Departments. In addition to useful tips on organizing a personal staff and managing a schedule, he provides insight on loyalty -- an essential currency inside the beltway -- and information management. Case studies unsurprisingly draw on Oliver's experience at the Defense Department, and some parts of the book seem overwhelmingly focused on the military, but nearly all of the lessons Oliver offers appear applicable to any part of the federal government. The book, which is a quick read due to the clear writing and logical organization, should be required reading, not just for political appointees, but for civil servants who will be working for political appointees, as well as lobbyists, lawyers and industry representatives who need to understand political appointees in seeking to persuade them to adopt a particular viewpoint. One minor quibble: a good copy editor should have caught more of the typos scattered throughout the text. Hopefully, this will be corrected in future editions.

This is an excellent book no matter where you are trying to succeed. The leadership skills apply to any profession. It's also a good education about the way our country is run. The author is entertaining as well as informative. If this book had been required reading in any of my high school or college classes I would have actually read and retained the information beyond the test. Dave Oliver manages to capture the attention of a broad audience with his entertaining and intelligent writing.
Where is this man and how do I get a chance to work for him?

Perhaps a bit tough for the younger reader, but well researched and presented with short chapters. I especially appreciate the author's research (and debunking) of unfavorable characterizations of Washington.

This is a wonderful book for someone wanting a short read on a complex subject. The author has great style and is a superb writer. This is the best biographical book I have read and has spurred me on to read more about Washington.

The writer of this book went to great lengths to make sure that all the information in it was completely accurate, and also made a huge effort to include information that isn't available anywhere else. A wonderful book to read for anyone wanting to understand the man George Washington by understanding the boy.

This book is written in a very structured format.
The repetitive structure of the lessons is classic and becomes easy to read after a couple of chapters.
It includes interesting sidebars on people in not just marketing-related careers, but a wide range of product-related occupations, including enterpreneurs and business owners. It breaks up the lessons nicely.

Lois Farese is quite simply one of the greatest entrepreneurial educators I have ever had the privilege of studying under. Mrs. Farese introduced me to `Marketing Essentials' when I took her Marketing I & II high school classes, and she inspired the slacker in me to become a DECA (http://www.deca.org) state finalist. Learning from this book gave me a tremendous advantage when I continued studying business at Babson College, and the lessons I learned from it have been applied countless times in several years of entrepreneurial practice since!

Lois Farese, is not only an excellent educator but also a great writer. This book not only teaches students the basics of Marketing but I'll bet that even Marketing big wigs could learn a thing or two from the book....try it I think that you'll like it. Oh by the way I want to say "Hi" to Mrs. Farese and thank her for assigning this book when I took her class

This is the historical food researcher's answer to Oprah's "AHH HAA" moments in your life! Sit back and let MS. Hess fill you full of delight as you find out exactly where and how gingerbread got its beginnings and why do we call turkey, well, turkey. The amount of historic research and information is a true goldmine for one serious in their food history or for the novice who would just love to know where all our food preferences comes from. I am a teacher of historic foodways and tell each and every one of my students to start here first! You won't be disapointed.

This book is a jewel. Being a 16th-17th century reenactor, I would not have thought that Martha Washington's cookbook would have become such a favorite of mine. The annotations by Karen Hess make it invaluable to anyone interested in historical cookery from the Elizabethan age onwards, and it is a darned good read, informative and fun even if you aren't. This is the book I will give someone who thinks they might possibly be vaguely interested in historical cookery and would like to learn more. It is very well-researched and there is something to learn on every page. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I stumbled upon this book when I was visiting Mt. Vernon for the first time a few years ago. It looked so interesting I had to purchase it. Even though this is a cookbook, it's very unique with a lot of additional material that explains cooking and the recipes from the time period that the book was written. I'm more of a history buff than a cook, but I really, really enjoyed it.