Powell Books

I read this book first as a Reader' Digest selection, then I found a copy at a local library. Read it several times, and still found it funny. I wish it would be reprinted - I'd like a copy - it would still be as fresh today as it was back when I was a kid.

I'm cheating a little - I've read the Reader's Digest Condensed version of this book, and haven't yet read the full-length version because I can't find it. This was very funny and very clever. The hero thinks he is going into the jungle to covert banana growers to growing Dwarf Cavandish bananas, he is really sent just to get his bumbling out of the way, and ends up through a series of mishaps and misunderstandings to be the leader of the revolutionaries in the jungle. Sort of Inspector Clousseau and the nearsighted character that gets himself in and out of situations with out realizing - Mr. McGoo? This was cleverly done, though, and the hero stayed sympathetic throughout. He is actually pretty resourceful and talented, just clueless as to what is going on. If I remember right, he first thinks the revolutionaries are banana farmers. When he joins the revolution, they are all almost starving and fighting each other. He decides to have them catch fish, and using a net he found, sets up teams to fish and teaches them how to cook. Only the revolution's one airplane gets bombed because he used the camoflage netting. "Before him we had a revolution and no food - now we have food and no revolution." Lighthearted and fun. I would like to read the full version.

Like the reviewer below, I first encountered this book (which concerns a Peace Corps volunteer who inadvertantly ends up leading a revolution in a Caribbean banana republic) as a teenager, in the form of a Reader's Digest condensed book. Finally, after haunting used book stores for many years, I recently found a copy of the complete novel -- and it was absolutely worth all the fuss. Powell's gentle wit and the over-the-top naivete, not to say stupidity, of the main character are delightful. His characterization of the tinhorn dictator (El Toro), his henchman and assorted revolutionaries is priceless. Favorite quote: "They are a specially picked squad from our finest unit, the Regiment of the Thirteenth of September, named for the day on which the Generalisimo freed our groaning land from the yoke of his predecessor. Before that it was the Regiment of the Second of July, the day on which the predecessor of the Generalisimo freed our groaning land from the yoke of HIS predecessor. Before that..."

G.B. Powell's book "Elections as Instruments of Democracy" researches precisely what its title promises: elections as ways for citizens to have their preferences represented in a parliament. Because the procedure through which these preferences at election time get translated into representation is the voting system, Powell analyzes the two main voting 'visions' and their respective performance in actually doing what they promise, namely to represent people's wishes. This means also that he only goes into the way in which voting systems represent people in given countries empirically - he does not go into the "fairness" of certain aspects of the voting systems themselves, such as FPTP's tendency to actually not count around 70% of the vote in common elections.

These two viewpoints on voting systems are the majoritarian one, usually implemented as some form of first-past-the-post voting (or with runoff, like in France), and the proportional one, implemented as proportional representation or a (regionally) mixed system, like in Germany or Italy. Using extensive data from over 150 elections in more than 20 countries, Powell first reviews both the majoritarian and the proportional 'vision' according to their own standards. For the majoritarians, this is that the voters must clearly be able to identify which government they're going to get by voting, and that the will of the majority must be represented over that of the minority. For the proportionalists, this is that the voters must all be represented equitably in accordance with their popular support.

Using a system of (somewhat arbitrary) weighing of various criteria related to each vision's objectives, Powell shows that each is relatively good at doing what it wants to do. Still, the majoritarians come off more poorly than the proportionalists already, since in practice a given party rarely actually achieves a majority of all votes cast, and the distortions created by first-past-the-post voting actually enables the second-most popular party overall to gain majority representation, as happened in New Zealand in 1993: the National Party got 35% of the popular vote and an absolute majority in parliament.

But then Powell has to do the hardest task, and that is to meaningfully compare the voting systems in accordance with a common standard. He does this elegantly by measuring several criteria that are supposedly shared widely by supporters of both visions: effective representation and closeness of government to the median voter's preferences. The former is measured by looking at how the voters' preferences are actually weighed in the government policies, not by going into each policy everywhere individually, but by ranking the government parties or coalitions on a left-right scale. When weighed against various aspects of political rules that allow non-government parties a certain say as well (shared committees, veto powers in Senate, etc.), one can get a sort of 'weighted average' of the country's effective policy stance at a given point, and measure this against the self-identification of the voters.
The latter in turn is measured by looking at the median voters' preferences and then weighing this against the median legislator within the government (coalition).

Now some of the weights may seem somewhat arbitrary, but Powell's enormous data quantity and his neutral stance towards the actual content of policies (he avoids all pitfalls of having to measure the "leftistness" or "rightistness" of individual policies), as well as the way in which his data matches with a lot of prior political science work by Lijphart, Strom and others, lend his conclusions significant weight. In the end, Powell demonstrates that the proportional systems score systematically vastly better on scales of effective representation, closeness to median voter, and even considering that some of the common ways of measuring are themselves already put in majoritarian terms. One can have issues maybe with the left-right dimension's usefulness (Powell discusses this but claims the literature shows it has good predictive power), as well as the odd assumption he seems to make that people supporting a proportional vision tend to be more opposed to direct democracy and to be more "elitist", but the conclusions are clear as can be. The proportional voting system is the better one.

"The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come." - Thomas Jefferson.

Contrary to democracy which is ideally defined in terms of "effective citizen control over policy", the minimalist version of democracy, which Dahl prefers to name as polyarchy, is defined in terms of institutions. Put simply, according to the minimalist approach, democracies systems in which officials are elected through "free and fair" elections. Bingham Powell's book "Elections as Instrument of Democracy" is a powerful study that demonstrates the "insufficiency" of the minimalist version of democracy with respect to responsiveness of the elected representatives to the preferences of the citizens.

The main point of Powell is that "elections, even free, competitive elections with universal suffrage, are the instruments of democracy, not democracy itself" (p. 160). The essence of democracy - rule by the people- means that the preferences of citizens, not their votes, will prevail in policy making. However, the minimalist understanding of democracy and the modern democracies we have in practice pays an exclusively greater attention to the mere existence of electoral institutions than to how far and well these institutions fare with respect to realizing the essence/ideal of democracy.

Powell criticizes the optimistic assumption that elections are sufficient instruments to reflect the exact/highest preferences of voters. There are a number of political and institutional factor that restrain the reflection of preference to their votes. First, election choices are constrained by the alternatives available to the voter. It is very likely that a citizen may not like any of the candidates and this may make his/her voting choosing "the best of several unpalatable alternatives". Second, the existence of `strong' candidates can lead voters to vote `strategically' and prefer to vote for a candidate that is less preferable yet with a high chance of winning the elections. Third, institutional elements such as thresholds prevent the reflection of the primary preferences of a considerable portion of the population to the elections. Thus, we cannot safely believe that by the end of an election we will `learn' the preferences of citizens. Therefore, we need to search for the electoral systems that come closest to the realization of the ideal of democracy on the one hand and establish new institutions that will increase the power of citizens in terms of policy making between the elections.

Another merit of Powell's book is that by analyzing the varying performances of different electoral systems with respect to accountability, responsiveness, and voter preferences, it demonstrates that each system has its own advantages and drawbacks.

The book does a good job of laying out how two models of democracy--majoritarian and proportional--deal with voters' intent and desires. While both political systems have their merits, this book shows how the proportional vision out-performs the majoritarian by better reflecting the populace's needs and better representation of the voter's wishes. This result may give pause to many Americans, who may believe that our majoritarian system is preferable to others, when, in fact, Proportional Representation may actually be the most democratic. One note of caution: the intended audience is clearly the Poly Sci community, so be ready for lots of tables, charts, averages and regressions.

What a powerful and dream-like autobiographical novella! The book tells the story of two kids cut adrift in the suburbs in 1983. Each brief section is a single scene from their lives, written with the care of a poem. By the end you see how perfectly this is crafted to bring the reader to the author's troubling insights about how violence and being "tough" absolutely warp the lives boys.

There are few books that move with such sheer force; such wit and grit; such beauty and pathos. Fight Scenes is a masterpiece, the best book I've read so far this year. It is a wonder to me that Bottoms is not touted as one of America's present literary giants.

Greg Bottoms has once again produced a remarkable accomplishment of a book--spare, poetic, haunting. I don't know who writes about working class boyhood better than Greg Bottoms and I am continually blown away by the power of his prose. A must-read.

When I read this book, I was half way through and had to wait a few days to get back to it. At the half way point I found it a delightful story with insights into a people and place lost in time. When I read the second half, I was mesmerized at the turn of events that turned the delight to despair. I won't spoil it but it is a story of humanity, evilness, perserverance and above all, friendship. A good read.

I have lived in the area for a few years and found it fascinating that such a quiet area could have so much happening.

This is a very good book. The author seems very close to the Navajo people. Anyone interested in the Native Americans should read this book.

Wow. Here's a book that explores a set of 25 stories, poems and essays a variety of ways in which we are intimately bound up with food and our relationship to it. But this is not a collection of pretty recipes. Every story I read offered insights into how food and its rituals impact my life-hunting down food, the rituals for better or worse of the family table, the power of food images, disease and illness related to food. This book is a gold mine for anyone interested in exploring his/her relationship with food, or with becoming sensitive to its impact.

Food and Other Enemies could also have been featured in our health section but is mentioned here for its focus on fiction, poetry and essays which examine food-related issues from dieting and diseases to hunger. An unusual, literary focus on food is the result with a diverse set of exposes and insights packed into each story.

Ravenous readers will sate all sorts of appetites at the bountiful board that is Food and Other Enemies. An uncomplaining minister at a disastrous dinner with his future in-laws; a multi-textured chartreuse Jell-O mold at an international family Christmas; martial misunderstandings; teenage pregnancy in the past times and mores; desperate practices in time of war; super-human intelligent extra terrestrials' amusement by fashionable females' obsession with (not) eating; a cameo appearance by Marilyn Monroe. Gobble down the poems, essays, and stories; savor the lone illustration, which features a dining table mandala of oddities both human and culinary; then return to the buffet for leisurely second servings. Judge the book by the cover and take a big bite of a potpourri of good reading.

Written by former dancer, trapeze artist, and librarian Patricia Hruby Powell, and illustrated by Navajo Nation resident Kendrick Benally, Frog Brings Rain is a bilingual English/Navajo picturebook recounting an ancient Navajo folktale. When a terrible fire threatens the village of the First People, First Woman seeks aid, yet every creature she talks to has an excuse - Mockingbird, Snail, and Beaver all refuse to help. Only frog and crane come to the First People's rescue in their hour of need, and out of gratitude, First Woman promises to leave Frog his waters, and leave the springs and pools on the mountain to Crane. "To this day, Frog summons the rain showers by calling, 'Har-ar-umph. Har-ar-umph.'" The vividly stylized art perfectly complements the ancient legend, in this absorbingly beautiful, highly recommended children's picturebook.

I liked Frog Brings Rain. I use it as one of my story's in story telling. The preschoolers loved it. It has lots of color and is very easy to bring to life.

ahéhee' bá ninaaltsoos (thank you for your book)
As I was reading Frog Brings Rain again this morning I became aware of not just the pictures and the words but, for the first time, of the music that they make together. The easy rhythm of the words came first then the rhythm of the pictures then the whole experience became one of music.
Thanks again (ahéhee' nááná)

all titles on eco of Lake Powell should be noted there are activists seeking to REMOVE the dam! See E Magazine, Sierra Club on Dave Foreman, earth first

I love this book.

It has gorgeous and historical pictures of Glen Canyon on every page.

"Defiance House" is one of the many points mentioned- this is where ancient Anasazi Indians lived once ago. Shown are kivas, dwellings and rockart.

The historic old Lone Star House is fearured in the book.

So is Smith Fork- where there is an extensive panel of beautiful Anasazi petroglyphs.

Also shown are: old miner's cabins, old gravestones, ruins, Rainbow Bridge, Klondike Bar, Dungeon Canyon, Wild Horse Bar. Rock Creek, Last Chance Creek, Gunsight Pass, Indian Trails, The Crossing of the Fathers, Navajo Creek, Wright Bar (a wall filled with TONS of ancient old petroglyphs), Galloway Cave, Sentinel Rock, Wahweap Canyon, Tapestry Wall, Moqui Canyon, The Stanton Gold Dredge, Hall's Crossing, and much, much more!!

66 sites are talked about in great depth and detail. The pictures are just amazing!

Now that Lake Powell is in a severe drought -and its water level is decreasing rapidly-- it would be fascinating to go see and explore the historical and ancient remains that were once completely under water!

For anyone who visits Lake Powell, yet still cares about all the things flooded beneath it, this book is a must-have. The book opens with a large map of the lake, with numbers on various points of its shoreline. Turn to any of these numbers, and you'll find historic photos, great facts, and a good basic overview of what was lost beneath the lake...and what's left.
I took a six-and-half month canoe trip around Lake Powell's entire 1,960-mile shoreline, and this book was my Bible. I used it daily, and it always taught me something.
The book's author was on many of the final fact-gathering explorations that were done in Glen Canyon--before Lake Powell covered it--and he and his crews documented thousands of now-submerged ruins, artifacts, and natural wonders. Many of their finds are in this book.
"Ghosts of Glen Canyon" is not a complete record, but it doesn't profess to be. It's merely a very simple attempt to give visitors to Lake Powell a basic idea of what's beneath them. Use it with Gary Topping's very complete "Glen Canyon and the San Juan Country." Use it as a guide, and use it as a reference--it works well for both...though I've often wished it had a better index.

I really enjoyed reading this book. The very unique but biblical position that the author takes on giving is totally refreshing. So many books just want to press on with tithing or guilt trip stewardship, but this refreshing look at the whole concept made me want to give even more - not just money but time. We all need to consider that everything we have is a gift from God and how we use all of these gifts (not just 10%) is important.

This is a great book on stewardship. It's easy to read and provides good news on the subject from a completely different perspective than I have ever heard before. I am using this book in adult Christian Education classes and it is overwhelmingly positively regarded. Mark Allen Powell is a superb author with keen insight and fresh perspective. I highly recommend this book!

I am a pastor of a congregation and we are using this as a congregational-wide discussion on the theology of stewardship. What I treasure about this book is that it starts with a good theological background before getting into nuts and bolts sorts of issues. Because Powell argues that all of life is about stewardship, this book is an excellent read for those who are tired of seeing people who only associate stewardship with church fundraising.

The history of space activities at Cape Canaveral, Florida, America's spaceport, is as interesting as it is varied. "Go for Launch!" seeks to tell this story--already available in both scholarly and popular as well as in illustrated and textual forms--with an emphasis on photographs. At a fundamental level the "Cape," as it is universally known by those in the space community, may be as much a state of mind as it is a physical place. With high technology enterprises resting side by side with a wetlands refuge it is an eerie place, what Ann Morrow Lindbergh ironically referred to as the abode of both the "heron and the astronaut."

"Go for Launch! An Illustrated History of Cape Canaveral" is a fine attempt to capture the fifty year history of this place as the central space launch site in the United States. There are three central components to the Cape's space access efforts. The one that is best known is the Kennedy Space Center, the NASA installation that serves as the site for the preparation and launch of the nation's human spaceflight effort. The military also has a huge presence at the Cape, with Air Force and Navy facilities engaging in all manner of test and evaluation in the Eastern Test Range into the Atlantic Ocean. In recent years, finally, there has been a major effort to establish commercial space operations in the area and a growing number of non-governmental launches have been flown from the Cape. The first of all of this activity took place with the Bumper program in 1950, and the launch of Bumper 8 on July 24, 1950, established a precedent that has endured more than fifty years.

"Go for Launch!" is divided into three major parts. The first, nearly half of the book, deals with the period from 1950 through the Sputnik crisis of 1957. It relates in words and photographs the history of the military effort to establish a launch capability at the Cape and to undertake research and development on a variety of missiles and research rockets. These ranged from the ballistic missiles so well-known in history--the Atlas, Titan, Minuteman, Polaris, Trident, and Poseidon--as well as cruise missiles such as the Matador, Snark, Bomarc, and Navaho. They also included scientific rocket launches, and the construction and operation of the facilities that supported them. The authors do a good job of locating and printing in this work unique and interesting photos of these activities, many of them not well-known to the public. Indeed, many of the pages are essentially photographs with captions.

A second section relates the story of the orbital space launch era from the flight of the first U.S. orbital spacecraft, Explorer 1, launched from the Cape atop a Juno rocket on January 31, 1958, through the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986, 73 seconds into its flight. Again, the authors found interesting imagery to illustrate the work. The third section deals with the more recent era, focusing on the return to flight after the Challenger accident and the development and flight of the various types of expendable launch vehicles launched from the Cape.

While the imagery is quite adequate overall, the reader should be aware that the vast majority of it is printed in black and white with only a small color section added to the book. Accordingly, while this is an illustrated history, if one approaches it seeking the splashy design of a "coffee table" book disappointment is assured. A better work of that type is David West Reynolds' "Kennedy Space Center: Gateway to Space" (Firefly Books, 2006), even though it does not treat in any detail the military aspects of the story and has several glaring errors of fact. What "Go for Launch!" does well is collect in one place a large number of interesting and helpful photographs of more interest to the specialist, perhaps, than the casual reader. Additionally, if one seeks a complex historical analysis of the history of space launch facilities at the Cape this is not the best book. Instead, a superb analysis may be found in "A History of the Kennedy Space Center" by Kenneth Lipartito and Orville R. Butler (University Press of Florida, 2007). "Go for Launch!" fills a key niche in the effort to understand the history of the Cape. It does not stand alone as the only work on the subject that interested readers will want to consult.

I- like many of you have collected the photo books and histories of Cape Canaveral(or Cape Kennedy). When I first saw this title- I thought "not the same old photos again"

Boy- was I wrong!

This book is great. Joel Powell and Art LeBrun have created an excellent guide to the history of Kennedy Space center. From Bumper V-2 to Delta IV and Atlas V. It shows the early missiles like Bull Goose and even this years Pluto Express launch. There are 17 pages of photos from "incidents and accidents" alone.

Photos of lore - like Gordo Cooper holding up his atlas rocket(page195) and Snark infested waters.The recovery of Gemini-5's Titan rocket from the Atlantic(pg.145)and the strange tale of John Glenn's Atlas rocket(pg.174 and 194)photo tours today of the first launch sites and the latest sites.
I heartily recommend this one!
This is what Apogee does best!

Space became the ultimate frontier and the battleground of the superpowers during the fifties. The fight was hard, but, happily, it was not won or lost by piling up heaps of dead bodies and dispatching hordes of mutilated veterans home from the fields of conflict, but by imaginative brainpower, engineering ingenuity and perseverance, and, of course, organizing all the fiscal and industrial resources available. Not everything happened at Cape Canaveral, but much of the drama happened there and therefrom. Here we are presented with wiews of it all, from the breadboard "bunker" and painter's scaffolding Gantry of the first Bumper-Wac launches in 1950, to the burgeoning Missile Rows and Skid Strip stretching along the shores of the Snark-infested Waters, and further to the giant constructions needed to launch giants like Titan-III and Saturn-I and V, which was the instrument of slamming the door of the Space Race to the Moon shut on the nose of the Russians. Many important battles of the Cold War were fought and won at "the Cape", but sure enough, during that conflict the tools of Space Exploration and Space Utilization were forged. Nowadays many of these installations serve new and exiting launchers with commercially important or scientifically intriguing missions. Joel W Powell is an inspiring guide to the once, now and future Cape. My reaction to his book was: "Did that, too, happened there?" Well, it did.

In a period of a month I have picked up pretty much every Goon trade paperback but I am still waiting for Chinatown, which makes each of the references to what happened there all the more teasing.
This latest chapter has Buzzard discovering a reason to live once again as he attempts to demolish the Zombie Priest while at the same time knowing that it is in the Goon's hands to lay him low in the end. But as he says, ain't nothing over. Ain't nothing over by far. The Zombie Priest will surely have plenty more up his sleeves for the Goon to contend with.
As for the requisite twisted humor, Satan's Sodomy Baby, or the lack thereof, is a great punchline. I think I got far more out of Franky's review of it than I could ever get out of actually reading that story.
Another great Goon volume.

I can't wait to see the next issue. I was feeling the momentum in 4 but 5 really pushed the anticipation and excitement b/t Buzzard and the Zombie Priest. And now I'm really curious about this Satan Sodomy Baby!

I've just recently discovered Eric Powell's riotously wicked, noir-ish horror comic, The Goon and I'm kicking myself for coming on board so late. I guess that's what back issues and trade paperbacks are for. The 5th trade paperback volume, Wicked Inclinations is out, and collects issues 14 - 18 of the regular series. Thankfully, Powell has taken newbies like me into account and provides readers with a brief overview of past events that quickly got me up to speed.

The story opens with Goon's ally The Buzzard, the sentry who stands guard over the cemetery, puts the fear of the Almighty Himself into the zombie priest by revealing the Priest's true name. This immediately freaks the Zombie Priest out as he is now desperate to come up with a plan of action to try and reverse his recent defeats. With nearly all his zombies destroyed, Priest performs a horrific sacrifice to an old hag zombie named Mother Corpse.

The Goon and sidekick Franky have their own problems. It seems a gypsy woman has come to town bent on getting revenge on Jalia who runs the tavern where Goon and Franky kick back for a few tall cold ones. The Gypsy wants an engagement ring that belongs to her family after Jalia's cousin reneged on a planned marriage. Goon can offer no aid as he will be cursed himself if he does. That leaves Goon and Franky forced to improvise a solution to the dilemma.

What isn't too love about this book...zombies, demons, gangsters, union busters, guns blazin', fists flyin', and funny as all get out. Eric Powell does it all as far as the main story arc which makes up about 80% of the book. The rest features several Goon short stories written by the likes of Tom Sniegoski and Mike Hawthorne and art by Neil Vokes, Kyle Hotz, and Michael Avon Oeming.

The Goon is one of the most imaginative and original comic books on the market today and as I proved, it's never too late to start reading this fantastic title by Eric Powell and Dark Horse Comics.

Reviewed by Tim Janson