Pitt Books

An truthful book covering the life trials of one courageous woman. Her dedication and ability to overcome these obstacles will inspire all who read it.

Has opened my eyes and the eyes of my teenage daughter on how we both can work on ourselves for a better relationship and future. Also an amazing true story of obstacles this woman had to go thru and over come. It is also a amazing look at our Justice system. I enjoyed this book very much and would recommend it to anyone not just teens and parents. Hope to see it on the shelves soon.

One cannot escape the brilliant beauty of Kathleen Peirce's poetry; not that any would ever wish to.

MERCY by Kathleen Peirce is an extraordinary book. The images presented in this collection of poetry will stay with you for a long time, and you will find yourself repeating lines of the poems to yourself throughout the day.

In the eight-page poem "Sleeping Lessons," "Adirondack chairs lay fractured on/the lawn, dismantled by the storm." The poet knows of the destructive, uncompromisng power of storms. Yet a few lines later in this same poem, this "weatherman at heart...imagine[s] and therefore remember[s] perfect forms." In "Sugaring," he realizes "the world was one behind the guise of leaves." No matter what may come into the poet's life, he always, by a combination of instinct, belief, and willfulness, searches for unity at least; and often, better, the heartening, heady feeling of redemption and transcendence.

Night Mowing is a collection of free-verse poetry by Associate Professor of English Chard DeNiord. Many poems feature a wistful first-person narrative tone. Speaking to both minute and profound subjects, and the resonance of memory long after the event has passed, Night Mowing evokes lengthy contemplation from brief inspiration. I Get Up When I'm Dead: The earth is more beautiful / to me now than when I was alive. / I am wise at last, laughing / at my grave, confusing my dates. / These clothes I wear were laundered / by the sky, pressed by earth. / I'm different now but still here, / smoking a cigarette that won't go out, / writing nothing down, finding everything / I lost but no longer need. / I'm never tired or hungry anymore, / although I continue to sleep in order to dream / and eat to taste the salt I craved. / Nothing has changed. / My heart has stopped, stilling my blood, / settling my thoughts. / I am still alive, slipping down / the street like the shadow of a cloud.

Very few of us have an inkling of what a piano tuner's duties might entail. Thankfully, Denele Pitts Campbell shares some of her experiences with us in this lovely memoir. "I sometimes see my professional duty as an almost sacred task, a ministration to eternal muses which give music to speak what words cannot say in questions or answers that are never clearly formed." (page 8) Wow! We accompany her on this noble mission as she travels the back roads of Arkansas to get to her customers -- the payers as well as the players. Hers is the kind of job that gets her out and traveling through the landscape, which she seems to enjoy almost as much as the pianos and people she meets along the way. She visits and performs her work at a variety of venues: private homes of all kinds, churches, schools, concert halls. Each has it own unique demands; and to say she has seen a wide variety of keyboards is the ultimate understatement. Still, one woman can only do so much, and Campbell can't create a concert-hall Steinway from a rinkey-tink mouse-house spinet. Issuing death sentences on mistreated instruments -- ones left too long exposed to the elements (dirt floors, barns, mice, snakes (!), extreme humidity, or extreme temperatures) -- is seemingly the toughest part of her job, especially if it means removing the possibility of music from a deserving but impoverished home. And the reader has to wonder: is Campbell of a dying breed, a fading past? As electronics and computers take over our lives, will our need for piano tuners diminish in return? After reading this book, one hopes not.

This book is wonderful, gentle and moving. The author truly loves what she does, and she loves the people whose pianos she tunes.

Fiction is a window to the culture. "Out Loud" is an anthology of insightful short fiction from award winning author Anthony Varallo. Touching on the loneliness of some, the exclusion and shunning of others yet the desire to be included by oneself, the stories told within are a vivid picture of the inner conflict that consumes many Americans daily. "Out Loud" is good, solid literature, something to be considered for short fiction enthusiasts.

Varallo's characters have authentic voices and relate to everyone's childhood's awkwardness and experiences. And his stories are outrageously hilarious to boot! Tony Varallo himself is hysterical and genuine, and his stories show a sort of affectionate, yet scrutinizing, magnifying glass on adolescence and on life.
Highly, highly recommended!

a pity, this book should be out of print / it is difficult - painful - to read; and to discover that it does not talk of Clarice, or of any unknown protagonist, but of each one of us; of you!

With her exquisit sense of integrity and fear of putting the reader in trouble because of her deep search of the self, the author begs the reader not to leave her alone while developing one of the most beautiful (sometimes painful) vision of life itself. La Lispector takes a deep breath and with courage, develops an intriguing story, where through the eyes of a cockroach, she is able to feel, taste and experience her (our) "Human Condition". She grabs our hands, with some kind of despair, but promisses not to let anything do us harm until the story is over. At the end, swetting hands, a sense of relief and the strange feeling that something has changed. (Rubens Barbosa

A sensitive exploration of the anguish and sometimes guarded hope that spring from loss. Elegantly, movingly written, without artifice or fashionable tropes. The finest book of contemporary poetry I have read in years.

This award-winning volume by the gifted Sandy Solomon is a stunning collection of gems. Ms. Solomon directs her clear vision on a variety of subjects and the results reflect her graceful use of language and unflinching attachment to truth. I eagerly await her next volume.

Advance Reviews

"Brilliant, subtle, and richly documented, Burds's study of how the village and urban worlds remade one another puts the study of the peasantry, of urbanization, and of industrialization in Russia on a wholly new footing. His eye for the telling details of social relations, consumption, reputation, and the principles of navigation between two worlds illuminates subject after subject." - James C. Scott, Yale University

"The book contributes in fundamental ways to the historical debate about Russian development before the revolution. . . . It is original, brilliantly researched, and fascinating reading." - Lynne Viola, University of Toronto

"This excellent book . . . makes an important contribution to the fields of peasant studies, Russian history, and historical anthropology in general. Burds' analysis is original, lucid and convincing. . . . A pleasure to read. His main argument is that the village community dealt with the threat of change by anthropomorphizing it. The village community responded to the threat of modernity by anathematizing the most vivid symbols of modernity: agents with contact with the outside world. And the peasant migrant workers embodied this contact in the eyes of villagers. . . . While most historians have long tended to focus on high politics, Burds' work presents a strikingly new view of Russia's `grand failure' from below. . . . Burds analyzes the `culture of denunciation' as a process of constructing the enemy other out of the new forces threatening traditional village relations." - Hiroaki Kuromiya, Indiana University

"Jeffrey Burds' excellent study of the distinctive patterns of entrepreneurial activity, market strategies, and a commodity culture among nineteenth-century Russian peasants can serve as an important `usable past' for post-Communist Russia, as it strives to find historical precedents and native roots for today's market reforms." - Brenda Meehan, University of Rochester

Published Reviews

"The strength of [Burds'] presentation is [his] rich, well-informed description of specific cases, often with long quotations from primary sources new to the literature, together with a complete command of the modern literature in peasant Russia." - James T. Flynne, College of the Holy Cross [Choice, November 1998]

"Using archival and published sources, Jeffrey Burds examines the impact of peasant migratory labor (otkhod) on villages of the Central Industrial Region. As he notes, this study is a "needed corrective" to previous treatments of otkhod which have been focused primarily on the impact of peasant migrations on urban development. Instead, Burds offers an interpretation of how familial and communal institutions incorporated increasing contact with town life and the market into their survival strategies during the onslaught of post-emancipation socioeconomic changes. Analysis begins by examining the threat of increasing otkhod in the village. Given krugovaia poruka (collective guarantee) the departure of entire families resulted in increased fiscal burdens for others. Futhermore, sons frequently found factory work easier and more rewarding than life on a farm. This threatened the ability of fathers to control sons and posed a challenge for communal elders seeking to extract urban earnings by binding migrants to the village. Finally, migrant laborers who returned to the village with changed tastes were potential sources of "moral corruption"--another threat to traditional social structures. Chapters 3, 4, and 7 discuss strategies communes and parents used to meet these challenges. A key strategy involved the control of passports. Otkhodniki remained responsible for assessments on their allotments. The commune ensured that it got some of this money up front as a "departure fee" before issuing of a passport, and often included a contract stipulating additional payments. Occassionally, communes arranged to have employers garnish otkhodnik wages. Communal and parental pressure to marry also served to tie otkhodniki to their rural roots, as did communal involvement in rural hiring. There were also legal options: refusal to issue another passport; threatened auction of property; and forcible recall to the village under police guard. Moral transgressions were checked by a "culture of denunciation"--the practice of labeling as "heretics" those migrants who seemed too attached to urban ways. To avoid any or all of these problems otkhodniki relied on "benefactors" (the maligned kulak) and the preservation of their village reputation. Migration, Burds notes, was a two-way street. Many migrants failed, and most became sensitized to fluctuations in the business cycle. Urban earnings could be just as uncertain as harvests. This helps explain why the majority of those with no allotment sent wages home. Maintaining a place in the village was a prudent hedge against an uncertain market. At the same time, urban contact encouraged a "culture of acquisition" in the village. This discussion constitutes the most original part of the book. The culture of acquisition meant not only new consumer tastes but also the gradual development of a café and shopping culture. As otkhod earnings invaded the village, the increased demand for goods led to the creation of fixed shops and taverns (which, through the sale of franchises, also provided a way for the commune to siphon urban earnings). The most significant consequence of this was not the fact that peasants now had a more convenient source of drink, but that they now interacted in a new way. The saloon became the center of village life, a source of news about a variety of topics, a place to make deals, and a place to show off new acquisitions. This infusion of otkhod earnings and newly acquired tastes created higher consumer expectations--an increase in the "break-even point" peasants used to evaluate their standard of living. Burds suggests that any "rural crisis" at the end of the last century must be assessed against this more dynamic conception of peasant needs. . . . . Burds's book is essential reading for all those with interests in the peasantry and economic development." --David Darrow, University of Dayton [The Russian Review, 1999]

"Jeffrey Burds's _Peasant Dreams and Market Politics_ is an original, insightful interpretive study of the Russian peasantry confronting new challenges and opportunities during the late-19th century. The book focuses on peasant outmigration in the Central Industrial Region (encompassing the 300 kilometers around Moscow) in the period between the abolition of serfdom (1861) and the first significant rebellions against the tsar (1905). This was a period when an expanding commodity economy provided new opportunities for migrant peasant workers to gain supplemental incomes to offset the redemption taxes that their families and villages were collectively obligated to pay in exchange for taking possession of land formerly owned by the gentry. But, peasant outmigration also brought with it new threats for the traditional Russian peasant commune, which had to guard against the permanent resettlement of productive individuals or whole families who could place the remainder of the commune members under greater economic hardship as they endeavored to meet their tax obligations. The commune's efforts to contain these threats, and the manner in which the commune and individual peasants adapted to changing opportunity structures and outside influences, represent the most original and illuminating features of this book. . . . This book is an extremely interesting, informative, and well-researched ideographic work by a skilled historian. It is based on 3 years of archival research and analysis of ethnographic material, ranging from police records and peasant memoirs to written agreements among peasant households and their communes. It is written in a language accessible to specialists as well as nonspecialists. For area specialists familiar with the story of industrialization and peasant outmigration in prerevolutionary Russia, this book will offer a needed corrective for some of the more simplified, conventional characterizations of Russian peasant behavior. Valuable insights also can be gained from Burds's original treatment of the significance of reputational concerns in village life and his analysis of how commune norms and practices were influenced by, and deployed to contain, an expanding commodity economy." - Rudra Sil, University of Pennsylvania

A Primer for Preachers by Ian Pitt-Watson is an excellent tool that would help prepare the "proclaimer" to deliver a foundationally sound sermon. It helps the reader to focus on the aspect of what preaching is all about. What is preaching? Preaching is about what God has done and not about what we ought to do. Watson takes the reader through steps on how to make a sermon grow and how to present correct language and delivery. The deep rooted focus of A Primer for Preachers is the story of Christ. The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. Watson allows the reader to see that if the scripture is correctly interpreted, the scripture will preach itself! It also helps us to see the comparison between the text of the scripture and the text of life. For every concept in preaching, there should be a simile. When Jesus taught, He pointed to some shared commonplace of human experience. A Primer assists the preacher in the same kind of development. It sheds light on the real life experience. This is an excellent training apparatus that is fully loaded and ready to prepare God's preacher to deliver His Word. I highly recommend this book for all preachers and teachers. Kudos!

A Primer for Preachers by Ian Pitt-Watson is an excellent tool that would help prepare the "proclaimer" to deliver a foundationally sound sermon. It helps the reader to focus on the aspect of what preaching is all about. What is preaching? Preaching is about what God has done and not about what we ought to do. Watson takes the reader through steps on how to make a sermon grow and how to present correct language and delivery. The deep rooted focus of A Primer for Preachers is the story of Christ. The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. Watson allows the reader to see that if the scripture is correctly interpreted, the scripture will preach itself! This is an excellent training apparatus that is fully loaded and ready to prepare God's preacher to deliver His Word. I highly recommend this book for all preachers and teachers. Kudos!

I found the Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Heat Transfer, 2nd Ed. a helpful addition to my small collection of radiation heat transfer references. It has a unique worked example of the direct conversion from an Oppenheim radiosity network (RC analogy) to a radiation exchange factor (script-F) network.

I cannot comment on the conduction or convection sections because I have not yet used them.

It is what I expected. Heat Transfer all in one reference.