Bates Books

Psi Laws continues the tradition of the excellent Trinity Field Reports series: high quality in a small package at a very affordable price. Like all published Repots, Psi Laws is all-color and in-character. It can be roughly divided in two sessions: one talking about how authorities generally deal with each Aptitude, and another presenting cases in different countries that involved the use of psionic power. The previous two Trinity Field Reports (Extrasolar Colonies and Aliens) were nice, but most of the info found on them has eventually been covered by bigger sourcebooks. Not Psi Laws. The information here is extremely important for a serious Trinity campaign, and here's the only place you'll find it.

This is a good introduction to the topic of industrial minerals. Readers interested in more detail should see Bate's much more thorough, but not so profusely illustrated, "Geology of the Industrial Rocks and Minerals"

This book is great. It is funny, interesting and very informative. I never knew so many of our everyday phrases and termology dirived their origins from our sea faring history. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I would highly recommend it.

Bates never wastes words, and this is one of his longer works, but it moves briskly.
Bates's perennially popular World War II novel tells the story of three very different men who, after their aircraft crashes, are forced to trek miles across the Burmese wilderness to safety. The names of the three are Carrington, Blore, and Forrester. The story is told through the eyes of Forrester, the leader whom the other two don't trust.
After his young wife has been killed during the Blitz, Forrester wishes to die in combat as a pilot. But when his plane crash-lands in enemy territory in Burma, he realizes that he must save himself in order to guide his two injured companions to safety. As they cross the Burmese desert with no food and little water Forrester's will to live grows stronger than ever.

I came across this book by accident when our local librarian delivered it to my classroom to go along with my current theme. I absolutely loved it! Being from Letcher County, it brought back many memories for me, and the pictures accurately portray those memories. A great resource to introduce my students to my Applachian heritage.

This book traces the descendants of Alexander Ramsey (?-1785 York County, Pennsylvania) and Ruth Lockhart across the U.S. to California. The counties they lived in are listed in the title. More than 1100 descendants are described.

Copies of the book can be found in the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, the Tazewell County Genealogical Society Library in Pekin, Illinois, the York County Historical Society Library in York County, Pennsylvania, the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Ohio Historical Library in Columbus, and several other places.

Permission has been given to the Family History Library to make it available in digitized format.

I hope you find it helpful,
Lynn Marks 12/19/2007

If you need assistance in differentiating respirotary disorders by lungfunction test, take this book, look in the index and you will find decisive recommendations, obviously based on great clinical experience of the author, and a lot of literature for further reading ( about 5 000 ). It helps to find out the easiest way to conclusive tests. Though 11 years old now, it is a basic guide to respiratory function. I wish my a new edition.

Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Bates Gill offers in Rising Star a refreshing and certainly less alarming assessment of the spectacular "rise" of China than the one painted by the security intelligentsia in recent years. In other words, his position on the "rise" of China is that it is, or can be, more peaceful.

Gill's principal argument, that a clash at some point in future involving the US and China is not inevitable, rests on three pillars that he argues are guiding Beijing as it expands its power: alleviating external tensions so that it can focus on domestic problems; reassuring neighbors about its peaceful intentions; and finding ways to quietly balance the US. Gill contends that the key to a successful rise - one that avoids war - lies in the US and its allies understanding and judiciously responding to China's new security diplomacy.

While China's "rise" has been long in the making, Gill argues that the strategic reorientation of the US following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has created an opportunity for China to flex its muscles diplomatically. On issues that are linked to the "war" on terror, the US has been receptive to - and has in fact encouraged - a bigger role for China. Nonproliferation is one area where Gill sees China as having made progress, mostly through its participation in or dialogue with nonproliferation regimes such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement. He points out, however, that at present the Chinese government is unable to adequately deal with proliferation in the private sector, an onerous task under normal circumstances and a gargantuan one given China's incomplete laws, the size of its territory, rampant corruption and longstanding trade and military alliances with states like Pakistan and Iran.

Another dynamic that is shaping China's security diplomacy is its opposition to US hegemony, which has compelled Beijing to shed its historical aversion to alliances and treaties. In its immediate area, China has spearheaded the creation of a number of regional organizations, including the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Shanghai Five and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). It was no coincidence that the latter was launched to coincide with NATO expansion in the mid-1990s.

Beyond regional trade agreements, conflict resolution mechanisms, counterterrorism and joint military exercises, the Shanghai Five, ARF and SCO have provided China with a greater say in Central and Southeast Asia and the acknowledgement by participants that "every state has the right to choose its own political system, economic model and path of social development," with special focus on territorial integrity. What these security arrangements have in common, furthermore, is the tendency to exclude or counterbalance the US, and the premise that other states or alliances should not meddle in the international affairs of another state. Gill observes that China's provision of military equipment to those allies, which has often resulted in criticism by the West, has a precedent in how the US conducts diplomacy and should therefore be recognized as such.

China's alliances are also the result of its fear of states ganging up on it - especially in its immediate region, more specifically the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait. While recognizing that the presence of the US military in the Asia-Pacific has been beneficial to China, in that it prevented the reemergence of an expeditionary Japanese military, and despite the fact that in recent years Beijing has, in certain respects, come to accept the reality of that presence, it nevertheless retains an existential (perhaps not altogether unjustified) fear of encirclement. This, Gill contends, explains its active participation in the North Korea disarmament talks, where failure could spark rearmament in Japan and perhaps military action against Pyongyang, which in either case would result in a large concentration of foreign military forces in its vicinity and the possibility, should war break out, that tens of thousands of North Koreans would seek refuge in China and threaten its domestic stability.

As with its newfound enthusiasm for regional alliances, the modernization of China's military, Gill argues, could primarily be a reaction to its perception of being surrounded, which in part stems from the introduction of US missile defense systems in Japan and Taiwan. The stockpiling and refinement of China's conventional missile arsenal - including the 1,300 it is aiming at Taiwan - is largely, albeit not solely, a response to its perception that the US and its allies are seeking to deny China its deterrent capability. The nexus of pro-US regional alliances and missile defense also helps explain why China and Russia, which both feel threatened by encroachment, have in recent years not only resolved longstanding territorial disputes but have become allies.

In all, Gill's book shows us that in certain, if not most, areas China can be a pragmatic player that will act as a responsible stakeholder. Its increasing participation in peacekeeping missions, even if at times nothing more than a means to improve its image abroad, is also a positive development in terms of its desire for multilateralism. Through well-calibrated diplomacy and better attention to its interests, Gill argues that China can be goaded in the right direction on issues that so far have not led to success, such as in its relations with "rogue states" like Sudan and Iran.

On a more pessimistic note, Gill shows us that Beijing has retained its tendency to use compliance with international norms as a bargaining chip, which represents a failure to see treaties and multilateralism as a common good and could cast doubt on its contention that it is rising "peacefully." Another worrying area - one that Gill leaves largely unexplored - is Beijing's inclination to act irrationally whenever domestic issues or Taiwan are concerned.

While Rising Star convincingly argues that China has made tremendous progress on the international front, all those developments could quickly be undermined should its domestic situation - perennially the main concern of decision-makers in Beijing, around which everything else, including foreign policy, revolves - deteriorate. Only then, perhaps, would the world see China's other, dreaded "rise."

(Originally published in the Taipei Times, March 30, 2008, page 19.)

As a victim of sexual abuse from a therapist, I ordered this book to see if it would help me work out my feelings of blaming myself and attachment to the perpetrator. It has some good information and I do recommend it if you're experiencing or have experienced sexual abuse by a therapist or psychiatrist. Mainly, though, because it's really the only book out there on the subject. It does have some good information, but it's a bit boring.

With his usual clarity and lack of bias and hyperbole Bate shows Ovid's influence on WS. A useful index helps greatly in looking for that influence on specific works.