Burns Books

I taught this entire unit for the first time this school year (97-97) and the kids absolutely loved it. The end of math would come, and I heard, "That was math?" and "Math is over?" I highly recommend this unit, especially to anyone with a combination class. You don't have to be two people at once!

Jennifer Broussard, combination teacher

Eleanor Burns always makes a quilting project fun and easy to do. Steps are broken down and easy to understand for beginner to expert.

Drug use and mis-use is a complex subject. It is addressed here by leading experts from pharmacology, toxicology, law enforcement, psychology, and the law. For those involved in the detection, treatment, arrest, or prosecution of drug use, this is a valuable resource.

If faith is seen as the fundamental orientation of human existence to the mystery we know as God, the goal and fulfilment of that faith cannot be measured with the instruments of human calculation. Faith of that order lives by hope, above all by the courage that lies at the heart of hope; and the Spirit. If a person courageously and freely responds to the impulses of the Spirit, then he or she is a true believer, even though - measured by life's mundane rules - he or she is a failure, or cannot fully accept all the Church's formal articles of faith. Even in the midst of the manipulations and deadness of the organized world, social or ecclessiastical, the individual can preserve his uniqueness and prevail against all darkness. This is the message of these powerful meditations. Writing at the height of his powers, spiritual and conceptual, Rahner addresses himself to central problems of the Christian life today: faith as courage; tolerance in the Church; freedom and manipulation in society and the Church. He offers the only valid blue-print for the Church now and to come: the divine plan of freedom and the Spirit.
--- from book's back cover

Meeting Standards Through Integrated Curriculum is a guidebook created in response to the unfortunate tendency K-12 schools have encountered to adopt a narrow curriculum that places severe boundaries on the scope of what students are taught, under the mistaken belief that this is the best way to achieve higher standards. Meeting Standards Through Integrated Curriculum offers an approach to improve the quality of grade school education without sacrificing depth. The KNOW/DO/BE framework at the heart of the discussion embraces rigor and relevance alike in the K-12 curriculum. Drawn from extensive research as well as real-life experiences of teachers who have successfully integrated their curricula, Meeting Standards Through Integrated Curriculum is a combination of vision, how-to instructions, extensive questions and answers, trouble shooting tips, multi-disciplinary models, and more. The is a very welcome and timely contribution to education reference shelves.

This book presents a large number of songs, many not well known, and suprisingly beautiful and melodic. There is a respect for Burns and an apreciation of history and accuracy. The arrangements are unusually excellent, often simple, and so intriguing and exactly right -- sometimes pleasantly quirky -- beautiful.

Much of this volume of some eighty-five folk-lyrics on erotic themes is probably the work of the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796). It was privately printed c. 1799 under the auspices of the Crochallan Fencibles, an Edinburgh men's club to which Burns had been initiated in 1786 or 1787 by his publisher William Creech, a founder of the group. Some of the texts included are undoubtedly by other hands; but as the Fencibles surreptitiously published this as a tribute to Burns within a few years of his death, it is reasonable to assume that much or most of it is by the poet himself. The Fencibles have usually been viewed merely as a drinking club, fraternal and convivial. But recent research has emphasized their subversive Jacobite and Jacobin sympathies as well. When in Edinburgh, Burns enjoyed composing bawdy songs for the enjoyment of his "brothers" at the Fencibles, who regularly met in Dawnie Douglas's tavern in Anchor Close to sing bawdry together. After 1789, when he moved to Dumfries, Burns continued to compose bawdy songs (often, like "When Princes and Prelates" with a revolutionary subtext), mailing them to cronies like Robert Saughton, also a member of the Fencibles.

This volume contains the (often corrupt) text of some twenty songs that also exist in Burns's handwriting--material usually omitted because of its erotic content from popular editions of Burns, but included in the standard scholarly edition (Kinsley, Clarendon, 1968). At least twelve of these songs are there established as fully the work of the poet, with a further nine identified by Kinsley as collected and transcribed by him as curiosities.

It is the other sixty-five texts that make this rare _Merry Muses_ volume (there are only two known copies of the 1799 edition) an invaluable resource. The Thomas Cooper Library of the University of South Carolina acquired it when the great Burns editor G. Ross Roy, an emeritus professor at USC, donated his large collection of Burnsiana and Scottish literature to the USC library. Most Burns scholars (including Prof. Roy, who contributes a lucid separate pamphlet describing the complex history of the volume) see the non-authenticated texts in _The Merry Muses_ as Scottish folk erotica added by various members of the Fencibles, or perhaps collected by Burns (an avid preserver of folk traditions). But having looked carefully at the contents, I consider all but five or six of the songs to be either the work of Burns himself or pastiches in which Burns revises as frequently as he transcribes. My reason--based on contexts rather than texts, so not authoritative--is the emphasis on mutual consent. In his signed and authenticated songs, RB is notable for this emphasis on consensual sexuality. The erotic song tradition in Scottish folk literature is, by contrast, rife with cautionary tales of rape and incest, but there are only a few such songs in this collection.

The very existence of this book was denied for more than a century by Burns admirers who were embarrassed by its frank sexual content: this denial was easily enough accomplished with only two extant copies of the work, one of them in the private hands of the Earl of Rosebery! But it is time for admirers of the poet to consider the bawdy songs of Burns. They are definitely obscene: some texts use Scottish vernacular obscenities such as "mow," but others make plentiful use of standard English and the f-word. But as the scenarios (typically--there are exceptions) emphasize the mutual joys of adult consensual sex, I think the term pornography is not quite accurate. The imagery is sometimes gross and shocking, but an episode of "Sex in the City" is more spicy. These obscene song-lyrics (the names of the suggested tunes are specified, but no music is printed) are better read as telling artifacts of masculine (masculinist?) culture during the Age of Enlightenment than as embarrassments to Burns's Immortal Memory. The poet lived a short, painful life, enduring the daily symptoms of terminal heart disease from his teens. Love and liberty--sexual as well as political freedom--were the great concerns of his poetry. For Burns, the composition of poetry (and the sharing it with kindred spirits) were his anodynes for poverty, social oppression (Burns is British literature's only great peasant poet), personal unhappiness, and chronic poor health. Like it or not, the bawdy element in Burns is fundamental to understanding his views on language, poetry, and human liberation. There are two modern editions of _Merry Muses_, but the notes in both cases are marred by sexism and poor scholarship. This facsimile is expensive, but all the profits go to the USC library by Prof. Roy's generous agreement. If you're looking for pornography, you'll be disappointed. If you're looking to understand the total Robert Burns in Scottish cultural context--and to gain insight into the inner demons and drive behind his writng--you'll be surprised and enlightened.

I picked up a few of these books while I was looking for schools. They're really a good read.

With the constant change in media law this is an excellent book for both students and working journalists. The book offers an excellent overview of current law and helps the non-lawyer understand what can be a complicated topic. With more legal decisions and legislation affecting the work of media, this is an excellent book to have in the newsroom, as well for use in the classroom. The authors are some of the best in business and known throughout Michigan and the country in news media circles.

This book is an autobiography of one of volleyball's most respected and successful coaches. Although, written before many modern developments and rules changes in the game, it is still a very worthwhile read for any coach. Hebert shares his joys and frustrations, ones most of us in the coaching game have experienced on one level or another. Even more, he allows the reader to see the inner workings of one of the great coaching minds of the day.