Bryant Books

I'm not sure how many of you are considering reading this, but it's definitely a worthwhile read for the open minded, also for those who have been made a second rate citizen over our ever growing immigrant populations. The race issue needs discussion, it also needs freedom on both sides to speak openly and honestly.
This is a brave foray into a thought provoking arena, I suggest you read and learn. As for whether you'll agree with it or not, heaven only knows.

I'm not sure how many of you are considering reading this, but it's definitely a worthwhile read for the open minded, also for those who have been made a second rate citizen over our ever growing immigrant populations. The race issue needs discussion, it also needs freedom on both sides to speak openly and honestly.
This is a brave foray into a thought provoking arena, I suggest you read and learn. As for whether you'll agree with it or not, heaven only knows.

I read this book because I love being fit, but want to find a way to do so that doesn't feel so mechanistic, guzzle resources (like driving to the gym), or take so much time.
I did enjoy the book for its upbeat attitude and encouraging premise: that you can stay fit within your daily activities. It has a lot of interesting data and ideas about keeping active and burning calories by doing chores, walking, and playing with your kids. It's definitely not a license to be a couch potato. In fact, you almost have to be more motivated -- especially if, like me, you rely on outside encouragement such as classes or routines.
I also wonder about the conclusion of more recent research (like in M.E. Nelson's "Strong Women Stay Young," 1997): that for healthy aging, we need to do more specific strength training. True, "Fitness Without Exercise" says there's nothing wrong with doing some casual weight-lifting if the mood strikes; but I wonder if that's enough to maintain bone density, balance, etc. As a culture, we no longer accept frailty as an inevitable part of aging. Obviously, given our automated society, it makes sense to reintroduce more movement into our daily lives, but I wonder if the activity levels of nonindustrial cultures were (or are) enough to keep the elderly as strong as they could be. I am hopeful that, despite the liabilies of modern life, we are still evolving.
Overall, I would recommend this book most for someone who is self-motivated, and curious about how daily activities stack up in terms of fitness benefits.

I found this in our public library and I immediately went to Amazon.com (of course) to purchase it.
This is the best, of endless books, that I have every read on exercise and in this case.......NO exercise! (You liked that, huh?)
I am recovering from a broken leg, needed to get myself in shape and this book is heaven-sent.
It's a super-simple, horse-sense approach that you can use for a LIFETIME.
Forget about all your exercise marathons, which don't work.......these authors tell you why!

YOU WILL LOVE THIS BOOK---I PROMISE!

i have got to admit it was a very good story. Took me a while to find the book, but the guy is right. It was worth reading. To Justin,keep writing, it seems you might actually have a gift there. Not kidding Justin , looks like you really do. ray f.

(note: rating is actually 4.5) I absolutely fell in love with Forlorn Hope when I first read it several years. It is such a hard to book to find, probably due to a lack of popularity. But, as a "spare time writer", I can tell you that many books go that route. You miss out on a lot of golden books in stores by going for big name authors (i.e. Michael Crichton and Stephen King). This is one of those books. It absolutely was a blast, and I've gotten many of my friends to read it. They enjoyed it as well. (another note: it's only 4.5 because he hasn't written the sequels to Forlorn Hope!)

The Four Corners - where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah come together - is itself a desolate place simply consisting of a large marker surrounded by a number of native American vendors. The predominant nearby attraction is Monument Valley, about 60 miles away. Bryant, however, provides just a few photos of that area, and instead goes hundreds of miles further, including eg. photos from the Flagstaff, AZ. area and the Grand Canyon - omitting much closer Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend (Page, AZ.), Natural Bridges National Monument (Utah), etc. Also, there was too much printed material, and not enough photos, and NO photo of the Four Corners Monument.

The Four Corners, Timeless Lands of the Southwest is another visually perfect offering by Northland Publishing in their travel series. Having lived in Northern Arizona and made several pilgrimages to the Four Corners area, I have always felt that no book could ever capture the intensity and energy that comes from this amazing real estate. I am delighted to share that this book does just that. The photography is breathtaking and it will haunt you into visiting there. Author, Kathleen Bryant, gives the reader a diverse sampling of the four corners areas as well as the culture, arts and flavor of all that call this special landscape home; truly as the subtitle states, "A Visual Tour of Hopi and Navajo Homelands." This softbound, coffee table size book is most affordable at under $10.00 and you will want to keep it within easy reach when you want to escape to this wonderous place.

Written in 1953, Maud Martha was the first and only novel to be released by the late poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Although written over 50 years ago, the story and its heroine, Maud Martha Brown, continues to have a strong impact in the literary world today. Edited by Jacqueline Bryant, a series of writers offer a critical perspective in GWENDOLYN BROOKS' MAUD MARTHA: A CRITICAL COLLECTION.

A collection of ten chapters, this book is comprised of writers from many different backgrounds offer their own perspective on Brooks' novel. With supporting evidence, each contributor presents their unique perspective exploring various topics from the story's social themes to the heroine herself. Several interesting criticisms include Larry Andrew's "The Aliveness of Things: Nature in Maud Martha," Dolores Kendrick's "Brooksian Poetic Elegance," and D.H. Melhem's "Maud Martha, Bronzeville Boys and Girls".

Although geared towards supporting the book on a college level, MAUD MARTHA: A CRITICAL COLLECTION offers varying perspectives on Brooks' tale. This collection will open your eyes to new views and allow you to see Maud Martha in a whole new light.

Reviewed by Kanika A. Wade
THE RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Just a brief word of warning, as of March 2004 Amazon's title for this includes the words Critical *EDITION* which is a bit misleading (the actual title is a Critical *COLLECTION*). Semantics perhaps, but EDITION implies that the full text of the novel is included here, which it is not. This is a collection of essays about Brooks' "Maud Martha" but IT DOES NOT INCLUDE THE ACTUAL NOVEL. Felt that should be pointed out so other buyers don't make the same mistake I did. Otherwise, this is a fine assembly of ten diverse criticisms from an eclectic and well-informed base of authors.

Though I agree with this books "diagnosis" of the field of death and dying-that it has become "intellectually unmanageable" and that anattempt should be made to aggregate, consolidate, classify etc the plethora of materials related to the subject I think this book fails to do accomplish such.

Certainly, As Ernest Becker states in his classic: The Denial of Death that we should fashion something out of ourselves and offer it to the life instinct-this should be done after one has undergone a thorough process of contemplating death. This book, in my estimation has failed to undergo a thorough process of contemplating the many facets of mans encounter with death despite its asseverations to the contrary.

This book covers a wide range of subjects but does so superficially and focuses largely on the social aspects of death-AIDs, Funerals,Hospice,death education,mortality rates, ghosts, the death awareness movement, death in popular culture,life insurance,social construction of death, terrorism,capital puinishment, etc. The social aspects of the death system are emphasized without a thorough understanding of the individual as an agentic self interacting with the elements of the death system in the book-suggesting a belief that the contributors believe in sociological determinism.
Conspicuously absent from this book is the intrapsychic persepective and the many contributions to our understanding from depth psychology. The role of the body image,the stimulus barrier, habits,the sense of aliveness, the nonhuman environment-are absent.

Howard Gardner in a recent book suggests what matters when it comes to learning is not the understanding of others but ones own understanding. This book is not based on helping individuals gain their own unique understanding of death but merely in an instructionistic fashion shows the understanding of experts.
This book reinforces the modern approach to death in that it in a Procrustean and reductionistic manner approaches the subject without a sense of how the individual might use it to construct a better understanding of themselves as authentic individuals who can reconstruct their own orientation to death. At the end of each article is a section for concluding remarks. I think readers are better served by providing the "scaffolding" for individualized explorations of death rather then tacitly assume what counts is what the experts say about death and dying and not how such can be used by individuals in an authentic manner.

I somewhat agree with the first review of this work . . . I think. The two-volume set does focus "largely on the social aspects of death," as it is meant to be a largely sociological and "cultural studies" approach to death and dying. For some, including myself, it does not succulently address either the theological or psychological questions of how one is to face their own mortality, of how to make sense of death in a seemingly non-sensical world. But then again, this has never been the realm of sociology, history, or even culture studies.

What these two books do, and do well in my opinion, is address (among other things) the larger reasons why death has become so removed from our culture, as well as explore other cultural, historical and social approachs to death and dying. It also reveals the particular ways in which we make sense of death as a culture . . . death as "accident," death as suicide, death as punishment.

For those seeking to explore their own theological or psychological relationship to death, I suggest other well-known works. Philosophically, one should perhaps start with Plato's Apology in the western tradition, or various "non-western" philosophical approaches to death and dying found in Hinduism and Buddhism. Theologically, the list is almost endless in the Judeo-Christian tradition, not only in terms of religious texts, but in the succession of thinkers such as Origin of Alexandria to Augustine to Kierkegaard to Martin Buber. These people have written, and written well, on the theological aspect of one's own death.

Psychologically, one might look to Freud's later works regarding the "death drive" (i.e. Beyond the Pleasure Principle), to Jung's work on the relationship between archetypes and death, or more recently to Ernst Becker's well-known The Denial of Death.

My point is that, as a sociologist, I have never looked to my discipline as a means to address my own relationship to death. When sociology becomes theological or psychological, it is just bad sociology. What my discipline does do well, and by extension the well-written and researched articles in this set, is to provide a contextual and historical framework from which to move forward into my own theological or psychological questions.

As a final note, I hesitated even writing this "response." I so thoroughly agree with the first reviewer that people should look elsewhere to help them make sense of their own death. They should look to their communities, their family, their churches. They should look to works in their own traditions, along with other cultures, to make sense of the fact that they will die, and nothing can stop this.

Yet sociology enters where social disruption begins, and in this regard, the question of why death has become so separated from our daily lives is the domain of sociological analysis. Neither theology nor psychology has been able to adequately address this question. Thus, a "sociological" analysis may lend little to our own relationship to death. On the other hand, it may (ironically) serve to frame and define the very notion that death has become untenable, un-approachable, un-thinkable. The notion that this has not always been true; this is what the disciplines of sociology and history can do, if they do it well.

To start with: This is volume 1 of the series, not volume 2. The cataloging information should read: A History of Industrial Power in the U.S., 1780-1930. Vol 1: Water Power in the Century of the Steam Engine. Charlottesville, NC: The University Press of Virginia, 1979. And FWIW, the book is 606 blinding pages long. Oooh, my eyes!

Tables, numbers, jaw-dropping research. But the author is fond of words "potentialities," "hyperbole," "appurtenant," and "foregoing." If you're looking for Burt Reynolds and a little Deliverance in this water-logged story, you'll be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you want to know everything there is to know about the Fourneyron turbine...zzzz...sorry, I fell asleep for a moment there...then this is the book for you.

To start with: This is volume 1 of the series, not volume 2. The cataloging information should read: A History of Industrial Power in the U.S., 1780-1930. Vol 1: Water Power in the Century of the Steam Engine. Charlottesville, NC: The University Press of Virginia, 1979. And FWIW, the book is 606 blinding pages long. Oooh, my eyes!

Tables, numbers, jaw-dropping research. But the author is fond of words like "potentialities," "hyperbole," "appurtenant," and "foregoing." If you're looking for Burt Reynolds and a little Deliverance in this water-logged story, you'll be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you want to know everything there is to know about the Fourneyron turbine...zzzz...sorry, I fell asleep for a moment there...then this is the book for you.

I love the saddle club series, but this book was definitly not the best IT is goodcompared to some other author's books, thogh. Read the rest of the series they rock

The Saddle Club's Pony Club is doing a drill on Founder's Day. Then, Lisa meets Sal, an abused horse at CARL. Doc Toc, the vet, says that CARL thinks Sal won't live much longer. It breaks Lisa' heart. Then, Lisa comes up with an idea. The Saddle Club can tell fortunes! Stevie's dream has been fulfilled! They tell that stuck up Veronica DeAngelo's fortunes. Veronica actully belives them!!! But what will The Saddle Club do when a junior rider wants her fortune told?

Chabon's narratives can sometimes go endlessly rambling along to the poient where meaning is completely lost! For instance on page 63 you will find a sentence with 124 words! (Yes, I counted). I also found the ending of the bood to be a bit abrupt, and I was left with alot of questions. What I did like the photo on the book, it was quite cool. And you should of put alot more stuff about his family and life.

This book was pretty good but there was one part in the book that you didn't put. You should of listed where he lived, how old he is, what his life was when he growing up, whats his mom's like and what his friends were like.

Upon reading this book I was overwhelmed with a feeling of compassion for this Author, her detailed accounts of her lifes events, made me imagine I was right there with her as I read. Wow, she really went through a lot, but I could not tell from the smile, on her cover. I think she picked the correct name for her book. This is definitely worth the read. If you have been abused or know someone who has this may be the book for you. Makes a great gift!

Not sure where I came on this book about a lady who has endured some adversity and we all have a story to get out and she should be proud she followed her voice and did. We can learn from it. It is not very well written and at times hard to follow but worth the read.