Curtis Books

I was excited to review Dirty Dancing At The Prom. As a mother of three daughters, the oldest being [...], I admit I need all the help I can get. Especially, when my oldest is already dealing with "freak dancing" and friends who are having sex. Being a parent is a scary job, especially when you have made so many mistakes yourself. I knew that I could use a little encouragement and Barbara Curtis delivers.

Interestingly enough, a lot of the book didn't really appeal to me. I know that doesn't make sense considering what I wrote in the previous paragraph, but I will explain. My children are facing problems that, according to the book, Barbara's children didn't have to deal with at such an early age. Her children were in their late teens. Where I live, "freak dancing" is all too common and ten year old children are doing it every weekend at parties hosted by their parents. Sex ... my next door neighbor's daughter is already sneaking out of the house and meeting boys for sex and she is only twelve. She lost her virginity when she was eleven. And, this is a child that my daughter has been friends with since she was two years old. Which, left me wondering if I was going to find some value in Dirty Dancing At The Prom, especially after I had already read a few chapters and was feeling like I wish life was as easy, and teaching my kids what God has for them was as simple, as Barbara made it sound.

Then I read Chapter Six. I cried through the whole chapter, thanking God that not only was the author willing to admit her mistakes, but that she shared how she dealt with that when it came to her kids. It is hard to raise children in today's world. It is even harder to actively raise them, keep tabs on them, know who their friends are, what they are doing ... especially when there are so many more parents who treat you like you are some kind of alien for trying to raise your children right. And, it only makes it harder when you have failed in so many areas of your own life. It makes you feel like some kind of hypocrite to tell your children not to do things you, yourself, have done ... even when you know they shouldn't do those things. Barbara helped me get past that and showed me a way that I could do so in humility and obedience to God, while showing my kids how much I love and value them. She also showed me how I can deal with their mistakes in the spirit of Christ. I so appreciate it.

Honestly, that one chapter alone makes this book worth the read ... though I am sure you will find value in the rest of the book as well. While I sometimes felt the author was a little out of touch, she still delivers a solid message. And, I happen to agree with her. She definitely has her own little spot on the "how to be a better parent" shelf. I thank God for her spot. Dirty Dancing At The Prom gave me some much needed insight that I was praying for.

As a parent of a twenty-something and a former youth leader and Sunday school teacher, I've read more than my share of books on raising teens. Some lean toward academic and theological perspectives, while others present purely anecdotal experiences. Barbara Curtis' book, Dirty Dancing at the Prom, weaves together the spiritual, practical, and scientific, creating a rich tapestry of wisdom for parents of teens everywhere.

Written in a practical, easy-to-read format, readers can finish this book in just one or two sittings or can chew on bite-size pieces over the course of several days. The chapters are short and include practical, ready-to-apply takeaways sprinkled in sidebars throughout each chapter: Get Involved, What Does God Say, Discussion Starters, and The Bottom Line for Parents. Barbara also goes directly to the source--she speaks to teens themselves, which serves as a lesson in and of itself. Their responses give her book an authenticity that other books on the topic lack.

But best of all, reading Barbara's book is like sitting down with a friend. She speaks with gentleness and humility and with the quiet confidence of someone who has been there. She is a gifted communicator, and I highly recommend her book.

This book was amazing and extremely helpful for me. The battlefield
our kids face in high school seems to be the same throughout the country. I am saddened by the experiences that so many of these teens seem to face in the areas of sexuality and lost innocence. This book empowers me as a parent to know what I can do help my kids navigate this tough time. Since I still have a younger child at home, too, I now know what I can do at her young age to help her deal with high school. Barbara Curtis is an inspiring author. Her honesty with her past and what she reveals about her own family's struggles made me want to read the book all at once. Thank you!

Great book! Photograhs are rich with history. Presents Native Americans as they were. Gives a hope for the future. It is a BIG, heavy book. Not for lap reading, but an excellent resource for any home library.

This 16 3/4 X 12 inch book with sewn binding and semi-gloss pages with 2 large photos on each page is a great value. At 256 pages, one would think the paper itself would cost more than the book price. Selected from a vast series of photographs Curtis took near the end of America's Westward Expansion, the book includes a biographical account of Curtis himself and a brief description of the American political context in which Curtis made the photographs. This description is insufficient in relaying the impact of all the treaties broken by the American govt. in the course of removing the Indians from their lands and their means of existence. The book points out that Curtis often had to ask his subjects to don their traditional garb for the photograph because by the early 1900s many wore the same clothes as European-Americans. THIS IS NOT A STAND-ALONE BOOK; it provides a rare and rich visual account by a former studio photographer who spent thirty years trying to capture the sympathy of white Americans on behalf of the people they had recently nearly killed off. For that reason, and because Curtis considered himself to be documenting the death of a race, the emphasis is on the past, the "heyday" of Native American cultures. No doubt naivete on Curtis's part, it served well the need of Congress to obliterate the fact that Indians still exist and want justice. Thus the book can also be read as a portrait of good intentions and their insufficiency when they privilege the values of the reigning culture. At least read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee in conjunction with this book. Within these constraints, the photographs are stunning.

This book includes photographs and/or information on the Apache, Jicarilla, Navajo, Pima, Papago, Qahatika, Mohave, Yuma, Maricopa, Walapai, Havasupai, Yavapai, Teton Sioux, Yanktonai, Assiniboin, Apsaroke, Hidatsa, Mandan, Arikara, Atsina, Piegan, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Yakima, Klickitat, Salishan, Kutenai, Nex Perces, Kwakiutl, Nootka, Haida, Hopi, Hupa, Yurok, Karok, Wiyot, Tolowa, Tututni, Shasta, Achomawi, Klamath, Kato, Wailaki, Yuki, Pomo, Wintun, Maidu, Miwok, Yokuts, Dieguenos, Washo, Tiwa, Keres, Tewa, Zuni, Chipewyan, Cree, Sarsi, Wichita, Cheyenne, Oto, Comanche, Peyote Cult, Nunivak, Eskimos of various bays, islands and capes, as well as others.

I found this book shortly after Christmas of 2007. There may be larger or multi-volume offerings of Edward S. Curtis' photographs, I'm not sure, but this is a very nice one at an affordable price. The background history does not treat him blindly as a hero or villain. It illustrates both his faults and better attributes. The book mentions pictures that are staged, as in the case of Red Dog on page 66. Curtis described the Sioux as living in terrible poverty on the reservation when he photographed them, but one would not know that from the regal photo of Red Dog that clearly points back towards much better times.

The book includes many regions, tribes and ages of people, and in some ways even some of the more negative aspects of his photographs are invaluable because they informed much of the mainstream American (worldwide, really) mythology that surrounds First Nations peoples of North America. The photos are somewhere between documentary and romanticism. Where he could have taken straight documentary photos of poverty and tattered Western/white clothing, he instead staged warrior meetings on horseback and the like. In one sense though, even those seem valuable to me. Not so much as historical data from, say, 1903 when a given photo was taken, but just in the sense that these were the sorts of scenes that the older people in and around these photos would have remembered from their youth.

There are a couple famous faces, such as a lesser-known photo of Red Cloud. You'll also see men who were there at the Battle of the Greasy Grass... er... Little Bighorn.

Curtis' work will always be viewed historically as having good and bad aspects. His work now (even the pay-offs, etc...) is part of American history, and that makes this book important for those of us who can't afford something huge, or whose libraries don't have big collections of the original volumes. One way or the other (and I would guess both), the book will move you.

The paper, binding and cover are all very nice. It feels like a quality book that belies the fact that it's only $20ish for such a big, hardcover book.

I wish there was some way that books like this filtered money back into the communities today. This is by a UK publisher and printed in Hong Kong. At least you can also pick up the fantastic, original "homeland security. Fighting terrorism since 1492" shirts at the westwindworld site where the money does go where you'd like it to go.

Tactical data links are the key elements for the evolution of EW systems performances inside a battlefield. "Dynamic libraries" of passive and active EW systems make those systems, "adaptive" to the threat environment, the variations of which run according to the INFORMATION playing in "real time".

This book brings the reader up to date on almost every aspect of modern Electronic Warfare, and is well worth reading.

But I must add two caveats. First, Schleher covers so much ground in one volume that a great deal of background material is necessarily left out. The reader needs to be reasonably familiar with military electronics and the relevant aspects of physics to understand a lot of the material presented here. Indeed,in a few places, such as the discussion in Section 8.1.1 of high-power microwave weapons, so much has been left out that I doubt whether anybody who lacks specialized knowledge of that particular topic can infer the implications of what Schleher says.

My second caveat is that, perhaps because of space limitations, the book contains essentially no material relating the great mass of technical information it provides to operational doctrine and the tactical implications of operational doctrine. Given that it's impossible to put all of the very latest-and-greatest technical innovations into every weapon and every platform (because it would cost too much, add too much weight, take up too much space, and make maintenance inordinately difficult) the choice of what to use where has to be made on the basis of how the platform or weapon is to be used, and that can only be determined by considering operational doctrine. Many engineers, and even some military personnel, tend to overlook this, so in a book like Schleher's it would be invaluable to have this relationship discussed. But it isn't.

However, I found the book fascinating and informative.

This is a good place to expanded your knowledge on the Electronic warfare side of a battle. The ins and outs of using Radio, Radar, TV to fight a modern 21st centruy battle. This book cover subjects such as how Command and Control works to how people using Signal intelligence(Sigint) and Electronic Intelligence (Elint) to find thier opponets Headquarters. As before this is a good book to expand your knowledge. Maybe not start, but at least to expand any knowledge you have

Aiden "Spider" Rodas is the third wildland firefighter to have a story.
Yup! she used him as a stud to sire her child. Great line for the "9 months later" series.

Becca Thomas, like so many misguided women, puts her desire to have a child on hold, to further her career. Now she is getting desperate. She cruises the night clubs and bars looking for a man who wants no commitments to a family life.
That way the baby will be all hers. Like so many, she forgets that a child needs a father for his own identity.

Spider is another dedicated wildland firefighter, and is a swinging bachelor, just about 30 years old. Becca is 38.
Aiden has a problem with the thought of fatherhood as his own father left him and his mother. But we learn of a problem with Abulita.

Jackson "Golden" Garrett, and Logan "Tin Man" McCall and many others from the Silver Bend firefighting team are called into Montana to help with a sleeper fire.

It seems like only Becca is slowly becoming aware of the dangers of this fire. She is training a gal called Julia who doesn't want to go out into the field. There are more mangement problems.
And "Roadhouse" shows up to agravate Spider. All Roadhouse wants is to get to know Spider.

Well, I never did find out what Sirus's problem was but it seems like NIFC is not sending in the help that the Montana teams needed. Only after some close calls with the burn overs.
[I will certainly add these wonderful men to my prayers - meaning the real ones.]

Great story as Spider slowly adjusts to the idea of becoming a father - falling in love with an older woman - and takes on the responsibilities of heading up the Hot Shot team in a dangerous fire.
Don't forget to injoy the inclusion of bits of more story of Cole "Chainsaw" Hudson -- his story is coming up next in March of 2006.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - great set of stories - definitely keepers.

Nearing forty, National Interagency Fire Center Fire Behavior Analyst Becca Thomas decided to become pregnant though she is not married. She researched whom she thought would provide good genes and decided that Hot Shot Aiden Rodas is perfect. She seduced the hotshot and became pregnant, but hid her delicate condition from the man she has since avoided like he has the plague.

However, her success at eluding Aidan ends when they are forced to work a dangerous Montana blaze together. He takes one look at her belly, does some quick mental calculations and profiling Becca as someone who would not sleep around, he concludes she is carrying his baby. He demands a major role in raising their child expected to be born in under two months.

The protagonists are an intriguing duo as Becca has no explanation that is acceptable by the responsible playboy who impregnated her without his knowledge. His demands cramp her thoughts more than the fetus she carries. However, in spite of a fabulous pairing of a likable couple, the star of Melinda Curtis' deep thriller is the fires as she interweaves into the plot the danger and the modern techniques in battling an inferno.

Harriet Klausner

EXPECTANT FATHER by Melinda Curtis
October 1, 2005

Amazon rating 3.5/5

"Melinda Curtis's Expectant Father takes the reader into the world of firefighters who work with controlled blazes in the Montana forests of Flathead National Park. Becca Thomas, a 38-year old expert in fire analysis, works with a team that includes the father of her unborn baby. However, no one knows that Spider Aidan Rodas has anything to do with Becca, socially or otherwise. It's Becca's secret, one that she hopes to keep, so that she can have her baby and live her life without the hassle of dealing with a relationship. The story takes place in a short span of a few days, revealing the leads' backgrounds and what makes them tick.

Spider is the type of man who doesn't like to be tied down. When he and Becca had their one-night stand in Vegas, Spider had no idea that her main goal was to get pregnant by a man who wasn't looking for a commitment. As the two work together to tame a fire that is getting out of control, Spider eventually recognizes her - but instead of thinking that the baby is his, he believes that Becca is pregnant with her husband's child, and was cheating on said husband with Spider." Complete review at BookLoons - M Lofton.

Great story, but felt it was a bit bogged down in the beginning with too many characters being introduced at once, and too much technical jargon thrown in as well. Otherwise, interesting love story of a woman whose sole focus was to have a baby, not a husband.

I love this book, it's easy to read and understand even for an artistic type. The book is spangled with pictures, and visual guides. I use this for my beginning motion graphics class and all kinds of students are able to understand it.
AND above all it is not horribly expensive like all other software books!
Great starter book if you want to get familiar with After Effects!

As an artist with a lot of 2d experience in animation who needs to absorb several new animation programs quickly, I find this book very easy to read and well organized.
There is one major problem though (actually, perhaps two).
Key components of the book are the 'downloadable' files located at the publishers' site online (rather than on CD as with other computer books). Many of these files seem to be corrupted or do not open in a newer version of AI. In addition there appears to be no 'help' page or resource for this problem from the publishers. I am unsure how much I'll be able to learn here without being able to perform many of the examples and lessons featured in the book.
I really want to like this book a lot more than I feel I am able.

After Effects is an amazing program, so powerful, so intuitive. People that are already committed to taking it on will be better off with the excellent but very dense Trish Meyers books. People that have gentler goals and less technical experience will be overwhelmed by them, and probably quit before they really crack AE, so that's where this book comes in.

AE is potentially a radical tool; with it anyone with a computer and a DVD burner is a film and animation studio. Far more people could learn it, and to that end this book is a useful thing: it isn't as thorough as the Meyers books or the also-excellent H.O.T. book, but as a quick spin through the essentials, a teaser to get you excited and briefed so you'll be ready to take on heavier selections, it's a good choice.

This book proved itself very useful for out weekend drive up the coast. Naturally, there are many places to stay or dine, but you can't list them all (in this "portable" book). However, we did need to purchase a Maine Highway Map for better directions. I wish I'd gotten the book BEFORE I made Hotel reservations!

I read a lot of travel books of all sizes, and I've traveled to Maine quite a bit. This little Frommer's guide is the best I've found for those who want an introduction to the Maine coast that they can carry around with them on their trip. On my first trip to Maine, I used it in tandem with a larger, more comprehensive book (Maine: An Explorer's Guide), which I consulted ahead of time and left at home because it was too cumbersome to carry around. (The larger book also tended to list lots of activities and places but lacked many of the pertinent details that are included in the Frommer's Guide.) The authors of the Frommer's Guide pack a lot of good information into a small volume, selecting their details carefully and reliably -- I found that all of their descriptions were on the mark, and all of their suggestions were well taken. (Without this book, for instance, I might have bypassed the spectacular Harpswell Peninsula.) You can't include everything in a little volume -- and for readers who want more, there are bigger, more comprehensive books out there. But I find myself returning again and again to this little guide every time I plan a trip to the Maine coast -- its focus is more on quality than quantity and it's extremely well organized, well written, and easy to use. It's also great at pinpointing places that are a little unusual and not overrun by tourists. Highly recommended!

This book is not quite as comprehensive as I had hoped. At approximately 200 pages, it tries to cover the most popular areas of the Maine coast. It does list prices and reviews hotels - perhaps the best feature of all. The print is also quite small in this little guide. It is indeed portable/pocket size, but you may need other guides to help supplement the information given in this book.

I bought this book because LA Times writer Ann Powers referenced it in her article on Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin and the movie Dreamgirls. I can see why Ann thought so highly of this work. Craig Werner has written the most insightful and the deepest book we are ever likely to get concerning the simultaneous influence of soul greats Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Curtis Mayfield. This book is the bomb!

As a lifelong Aretha-file, I was astonished by the author's multi-dimensional portrait of Aretha and her musical journey. There is more information here about Aretha than I have ever found anywhere---including in Aretha's very disappointing autobiography.

The portraits of musical genuises Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield are as deep and as indelible as the one of Aretha. These three artists very simply changed the face of American music. Not just soul music, but American music.

We can see---sometimes in frightening ways---the influence of these great musical sensations on American Idol every year. Not that any singer/songwriters of the last 20 years can touch these geniuses.

God Bless Aretha, Steve and Curtis! And God speed Craig Werner on to his next great book!

This book doesn't fit neatly into any genre boxes. It's not a dedicated biography. It's not a musical history. It's not really cultural theory. It's a fusion between a joint biography of Wonder, Franklin, and Mayfield with a connection to the cultural history that fuels their work. I learned some things along the way, but I found this book to fall short of other recent reads in popular music such as "I Never Loved a Man" focusing on Aretha Franklin's first album and "Shout: The Beatles and Their Generation".

This book is very ambitious. It covers the lives of three subjects and 40 years of social history in about 290 pages. Consequently, it's more a series of events that support the author's central ideal: black music is most vital when it speaks in a gospel voice to community themes.

The work on Mayfield is very helpful and was most beneficial to me. Mayfield has traditionally been underrated. This book skillfully connects Mayfield to Cabrini-Green and traditions of black entrepreneurship. Mayfield sacrificed some of the chart success of Motown to remain independent and this book provides some quality interview excerpts from Mayfield and gives key highlights from his career. Let's hope there's a Black Studies student out there who will read this and be led to give Mayfield the full scale critical biography he deserves.

It's hard to do justice to Stevie in the space allowed. Werner is a big believer that Songs in the Key of Life is the peak of Stevie's powers. I'd like more support for this viewpoint with closer reading of Stevie's lyrics. Werner's a big fan of Conversation Peace for recent Stevie and dismisses Jungle Fever. I gained some key episodes on Stevie's life, though, and having just read about the Beatles, I gained a great deal from Werner's discussion about how Stevie gained artistic strength from rock music and artists like Jeff Beck.

Aretha resists analysis because she has not been as an open an interview subject as Stevie and Mayfield. Still, this book does communicate how powerful a symbol of womanist advocacy Aretha has become and how she has struggled to be true to her gospel roots while succeeding in a pop environment that often opposes those roots.

This book is not as thorough a history as other things that I've read, but it does offer one man's interpretation of some key figures and, especially in the case of Curtis Mayfield, bring attention to some underrated work. I recommend this for those deeply interested in these artists and those exploring a range of options for revitalizing soul music.

4 stars

---SD

Werner, whose masterpiece, A CHANGE IS GONNA COME: RACE, MUSIC AND THE SOUL OF AMERICA, is widely considered a classic, strikes again with an equally profound book that is an even better read. The narrative speedskates on three fascinating and nicely braided portraits of artists who reshaped American music in the image of the best black dreams of freedom. Not only do we get three great life stories; we also get a complex cultural history of how the black freedom movement transformed American culture, infusing the "gospel vision" into all manner of music. And on top of that, Werner has written a fine short history of the movement "up South" in Detroit and Chicago, two urban crucibles that reveal, in distinct ways, the tragedy of America's failure to respond to the African American call for R-e-s-p-e-c-t and to the call of its own best inner visions. This book sings like Aretha.

I didn't know how to skate at all, and my instructor thought I didn't care, but I just didn't know the basics! This book really helped me learn to skate.

Not the greatest guide to ice skating! There is a lot on what you should wear and look for in skates, but as far as the skating goes. . . There's practically nothing in it! But what's in it is written well.

I didn't know ANYTHING about skating, but this book made me look good on the ice. Now I can skate, stop, do cross-overs and somebody even asked ME for advice the other day. I really recommend it to anyone getting started in skating.

This book is about basic technique. The picture sequences are very good and show exactly how to execute these basic techniques. Although the descriptions are not very involved, the photos make it clear what the authors are trying to teach. This is a good companion to Get Rolling by Liz Miller.

This a real wonderful book with sequence colour pictures for all the basic movements. It's a joy to read this book. There is nothing else in this book really, just techniques and techniques. It's pure skating.

Good book for the beginner. Lots of pictures. Reviews various techniques. Would like to have more explanation at times.

I have no prior background in Biology except for some dabblings at High School, so this book was definitely informative.

The text is simple for the non-biologist to follow, good diagrams, and easy explanations.

It still needs more work, because many ideas put forth could have been put in very concise words.

As a volunteer science reader for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, I have probably read 20 beginning Biology texts cover to cover in the past 10 years. This one is by far my favorite. It is extremely well-written, has amazing illustrations, and is one of the few introductory texts that treats plant biology as more than a footnote to the biology of animals.
The book never talks down to the reader and is engaging enough that even volunteeers with no interest or background in science looked forward to working with it and on more than one occassion I had to stop recording because my monitor wanted to ask quetions about the current subject.

I'm a student in a medical school and I'm still using this book whenever I need good quality pictures of anything from microscobic views of miosis to relatively simpler and understandable illustrations and tables.