Franklin Books

Five years ago I found an ad in FOCUS POINT, requesting writers who wanted to contribute to a book for gay and lesbian youth. I contacted Larry Dane Brimner and as time passed, my essay "Addressing Harassment: You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" was accepted for publication in LETTERS TO OUR CHILDREN.

It was an honor, not only to be included in this collection of essays to ease gay youth into the acceptance of the difficulties they face as they come out, but to see so many other fine contributions in this book. When I was coming out in the late 1970s, there were many similar stories, but nothing of this nature was available to me. Thank goodness, Brimner decided to put this material together for all of you, because, hopefully, it will have a positive effect on everyone who reads it, and will make the coming out process easier for the new generation of gays and lesbians.

In 1995, I read an article in FOCUS POINT, a local gay publication, regarding contributions to a book for gay youth. I applied and sent an essay I'd just completed titled "Addressing Harassment: You've Got to be Carefully Taught." What a surprise to find that I would be a part of Larry Dane Brimner's book, LETTERS TO OUR CHILDREN.

Since then, I've read and reread this book, and have shared sections with people. Everyone who's read my essay has complimented me on it, and it was truly an honor to be part of this experience.

Growing up in Wisconsin during the 1960s and 70s, there were no outlets for gay youth. Fortunately that has changed, and the contributors to this book all share things they've been through, because each and every one of us believes that no one else should go through the same experiences without knowing it's happened before, and furthermore, learning how to cope with the situation.

LETTERS TO OUR CHILDREN is a terrific book, and I'm proud of my part in it!

This book (along with others in the Straightforward Science Series) is incredibly informative and exciting. It on every other page, there are practical ways to bring the subject matter to life. The books are very colorful, interesting and informative. Best science series that I've read.

The Straightforward Science, Color and Light is just what I've been looking for in an affordable trade book on the topic. It covers all the main concepts of the properties of light with good illustrations and presentation of essential vocabulary.

S.L. Taylor's review of this book was most helpful, however:
1.) Remember, it doesn't necessarily have to be big to satisfy!
2.) Emile Zola's prose was only turgid after he had been
drinking. the rest of the time he didn't say enough to make
any sense to a reader what-so-ever.
3.) Who wants to be associated with Proust anyway? Nobody named
"Marcel" could have written a book like this in the 1st
place.
4.) Christopher Hitchen's talks funny, but I like his hair.

5.) There are worst hobbies than dead postmasters general you
know, like bowling, air guitar, goal tending, & marrying
cops!
I find the book a fascinating addition to the library of obscure FDR related bits of trivia.

There are 5 reasons that no stamp collector who is interested in stamps of the FDR era should be without this book.
1.) It is not as big as A la Recherche du Temps Perdue.
2.) Brian C.Baur's prose is not as turgid as that of Emile Zola.
3.) Much like Proust and Zola nobody knows who Brian C. Baur is either.
4.)Mr. Baur does not use as many big words as Christopher Hitchens.
5.)This book contains important historical information not found anywhere else.(e.g The names of Postmasters who have been dead for more than half a century.)

A practical drill in the use of Linux in everyday small businesses. Linux eTudes are about two dozen Lessons in using the Linux operating system & applications for every day office use. What is unique about this book, is that the Author teaches the small businessman to use Linux & open source applications for basic accounting & other relevant tools. All in all the businessman will reduce his software overhead.

Linux Etudes is unique. It's a Linux book written for the small office, home office user trying to do business with Linux. It is not a Linux installation or system installation guide.

An etude is a musical composition designed to develop skill through practice. Linux Etudes gives you a set of 27 practical tutorials. Each Etude lab exercise was designed so you can apply your new Linux knowledge to your unique business. Each Etude starts with a discussion, is divided into easily digestible parts and includes step-by-step, business-oriented exercises you can try on virtually any Linux operating system. You learn to use the utility programs provided free with Linux to improve your productivity and enhance your creativity.

The first four etudes are core topics: file operations with either gnome file manager or Konqueror, Kedit editor and the ins and outs of using floppy disks with Linux. Then you learn how to share files between Microsoft and Linux partitions and the pitfalls to watch for when doing so.

Need a personal organizer, a time tracker, an organized note taker, or need to make screen captures for presentations or tutorials or need to use a spreadsheet? The next six etudes show you what to use. The activity for the spreadsheet even shows you how to create frequency of occurrence or Pareto charts.

Own a Palm Pilot? Linux Etudes shows you step-by-step how to install J-Pilot, the Linux Palm Pilot desktop program with all the functionality of the Windows version. You are carefully stepped through how to set it up and how to inform Linux about your serial cable connected to your Palm cradle.

Need an accounting program similar to Quicken? Try gnucash. This Etude really shines. You are taught more than merely how to punch buttons. The author first teaches you the basics of double-entry accounting and how to create a chart of accounts. Then the activities walk you through the accounting features. By the end, you've created a useable accounting system and can extend it to meet your needs.

Remember the quick and easy programming fun using Basic before it became Visual? It's back in Linux. Etude 14 teaches you how to download YA Basic and how to install and use it. Not only do you gain YA Basic but also the knowledge of how to download and install a program from the Internet. YA Basic lets you unleash your creativity again.

Linux also makes extensive use of the command line - where you have a command prompt and type commands. Learning the command line increases your speed and flexibility. Drawing on his Unix and Linux teaching experience, Professor Tancig painlessly leads you to command line mastery. Navigate the directory tree and learn file commands. Learn piping and redirection and how they're really just assembly line operations. Use alias to create short cuts the history mechanism to speed up using repetitive commands. Next comes grep which finds patterns, words and phrases and this leads into awk. Although awk finds patterns, too, it was also designed to be a simple yet powerful database programming language.

All these skills and knowledge can be integrated when you learn to write shell and awk scripts and learn to pass information you type on the command line into the shell script. Using this capability, the shell script can then make choices, perform looping or anything else you program it to do with the information you pass in.

StarOffice was not included. StarOffice tutorials already exist.

Linux Etudes is the place to start to build a solid foundation that you can actually use in a small office or home office. This is a reference you'll reach for. That's why the publisher printed it on quality paper and gave it non-curl covers. You won't be disappointed.

The author, David Tancig, has been a college professor of electronics engineering computer science for twenty three years, has owned and operated a small electronics manufacturing company and made and saved money for AT&T. Linux Etudes includes his business insights and his insights on using technology in business. As Professor Tancig said, "I've never forgotten the wolf at my door when I ran my own business: weekly payroll. You don't have time in business for wannabe software. I included nothing I wouldn't use in my own business. If it didn't work as expected with zero crashes, it didn't make it into Linux Etudes."

When asked to suggest a new textbook for our new OS course, I recommended this book.
After speaking with a Franklin-Beedle editor, who allowed us to work closely with the author to help produce this book, it proved to be not only a good fit for our course but an excellent beginner's guide to Linux, the Gnome windowed environment and Red Hat Linux distro.
I highly recommend this text for anyone who is new to and would like to see side-by side examples of the command-line and windowed environments that make Linux such a stable and reliable computing solution.
Bob Ruby II (mentioned in the "Acknowledgements" of this book)
www.bobrubyii.com
bobrubyii.ning.com

My college Unix instructor used this book in class. I found it to be a truly exceptional book both in and out of the classroom. Comes with a Red Hat Linux CD too! The examples were truly outstanding and very "real world applicable". I would strongly recommend this book to any beginner such as myself. We found only one or two minor mistakes in the entire book. Needless to say, I Aced the course.

this book is beatiful and preatty. y watch the movie of this book and it was sad bot really good.

A Little Princess follows the story of Sara Crewe, a young girl whose mother died when she was a baby and who has been sent to bording school. She has the finest clothes and toys and anything she wants but isn't spoiled (the story is a fairy tale, by the way). She imagines herself as a princess and wants to be kind wise and just. She does good deeds as her way of "scattering largess to the population." This results in her being the social butterfly of the bording school and earns her the animosity of its queen bee. All this changes in an instant when her fortune is lost and she becomes a scullery maid in the same boarding school. She works all day, sleeps in an unheated attic, and is underfed. She now imagines herself as a princess in disguise, and continues to try and do good deeds for anyone less fotunate. But now she has another identity too - a soldier, like her father, who must live on rations and bravely face each day.

I didn't find this book to be overly sappy and sentimental, but it got close to the borderline at times. There were plenty of discussions of dolls and lacey dresses and ribbons. I read this as an adult. I guess these are supposed to appeal to little girls who want to have a little princessy playground and so would love to read about ribbons, but I think descriptions of lace would have put me off as a child as well. Like I said, these only get borderline sappy, probably because Sara soon becomes penniless and enters the lower class. As a scullery maid she experiences hunger, phsychological abuse from the bording school mistress, and a grinding work schedule. This is not sugar coated for the children, but it isn't the focus either. The focus is on Sara's internal thoughts, her relationships with her few loyal student friends, and what she thinks of the neighbors and the new people she meets and things she sees. So even though there is all this poverty it is there as a setting and not because the author has an axe to grind. Even the ending is fairy tale, but partly bitter-sweet. Strangely enough, this book came across as realistic.

This is a children's book, but functions as a book for adults as well. For example, the estate agent's diplomacy in getting Sara hired by the bording school after she is found to be penniless has some subtlties that are going to be more real for older readers.

I recommend this book to all. It is a children's book that works for adults too. It skirts the border of sappy, but for me didn't cross over at any point. It was a good story that I read through quickly and did not get bored with or bogged down by.

I bought this book to help my son Cameron and myself learn and deal with his albinism. The book has alot of wonderful pictures of people that look just like him. The layout was very simple so I could understand it and then relay it back to my son. The parts we both liked best were the different stories about albino`s.They were treasured by many different cultures. The american indians especially worshiped someone with very light color. To them it was a sign of good luck from their god. All different races also can have albinism of varing severeness. I would recommend this book to anyone who wanted to understand what people like my son go through everyday.I am so glad that I have had the oppertunity to relay my story to someone who cares.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I found it to be very informative.I have a son that is albino and I now see that there are many other albinos and what they experience.I also enjoyed reading about some of the genetics of albinism.I was also pleased to see my uncle in the book. Albinism runs heavily in my family. The research that was done to make this book was phenomenal.I especially liked that this book is designed for children to help them get a better understanding of albinos and may teach them more sensitivity.

Compiled and edited in 1889 by Ednah Cheney, this book offers an interesting look into the life of Louisa May Alcott. Cheney intersperses the letters and journal entries with some biographical information. The Alcotts were very poor and lived off the money Louisa made from her writing; Alcott keeps track of how much money she gets for each story, even after the success of "Little Women". Unfortunately, the amount of time she spent writing (up to 14 hours a day), plus the illness she caught after nursing civil war soldiers took a toll on her and many of her letters, plus many of the journal entries mention her various illnesses and describe how she had to take morphine to help her sleep.

Fans of "Little Women" will be most interested in the segments regarding that book and may be surprised to find out that Alcott thought the book was boring. It's hard to believe she really meant that because it's clear from her letters and journal entries how very biographical "Little Women" is. In fact, Alcott's journal description of Beth's death in real life is used almost word for word in the book. Other elements in "Little Women" are fiction (there was, alas, no real life Professor Bhaer and Alcott included him against her better judgement - she would have preferred Jo remain single, as Alcott herself did) and Teddy was based on a Polish acquaintance, not a next door neighbor. However, the four sisters are based on Louisa and her sisters and the journal entries and letters make you realize how perfectly she caught them on paper.

This is an interesting book about not only a fascinating woman but also a fascinating family. The Alcotts' friends included the Emersons, the Thoreaus and the Hawthornes, all whose influences helped shape Louisa May Alcott's writings. Despite her success, her life was not an easy one and was often filled with sorrow. Yet, despite her sorrow and illnesses, Louise May Alcott's works enchanted children then and now.

Louisa May Alcott, when speaking of herself, writes with humility and grace. Her words are always wise and quietly moving. Her story is rich and engaging. This is an awesome inside view to an amazing woman and author.

This book should be in every library (school and public) in America. It has gorgeous art work that captivates children but is very appealing to adults, too. You can look at the pages for hours and keep finding new details. Very interesting story, too-- I learned some things I didn't know. I would like to see 1 of these books on every President.

I ordered this book right away because I am such a history buff--I love reading this book to my children. It is a wonderful way to introduce them to a historic figure such as President Roosevelt, and it brings him down to earth for them to see that he was a child once too.

The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous! Beautiful colors and imagery, overall I give this book two thumbs up! What a talented pairing of author and illustrator. I will look for more books from this series.

This book is one of the best researched and documented that I have read on the subject of radio in thirties America.

Well researched, interesting, entertaining and informative. BRAVO!!