Washington Books

this will help you over come you past hurts and insecurities;
it will empower you for your seuccess. str8 from the heart will help you over come abuse,a broken heart,and low self-esteem.it is a must read!

This book is most inspiring and practical. Read at your own risk, although the truth is often hard to swallow, this healing medicine IS straight. It captures the heart and passion that life brings. This refreshing book deserves top priority on your reading list--I predict it will be around for a long time. You've got to check out the CD that accompanies the book on Ms. Washington's website too

" I always flow from what my heart feels. It may not be glamorous, but it is always real." Is one of the many proverbial sayings that the author, Kimberly Washington includes in this piece.

This book is an excellent read. It's not too long and not too short. It is actually a collection of poems that really touch one's soul. You can read them over and over again. No symmetries here. These words are coming straight from the author's heart.

The author states that this book provides healing and empowerment especially for women. However; Str8 from the Heart provides healing and empowerment for anyone (male or female) that has been in love, been hurt/damaged in a relationship, or has feelings of insecurity. It is good to have someone that can relate and be transparent about matters of the heart. And be bold enough to share those feelings with others so that we too can be healed!

Str8 from the Heart also has some beautiful artwork and is in full color. It is a great gift idea for anyone.

Its good to see that the rural studios work is not unique but rather part of a movement, with other brilliant examples such as the work documented in this book. Beautifully illustrated. Probably the most in depth discussion I've read on the methods and challenges of work among the poor and underserved.
A great contribution to architectures claim to relevance.

This is a great book for both those people who are interested in learning about or those people who are already familiar with environmentally friendly "green" building pratices used in sustainable architecture. Studio at Large specifically chronicles the achievements of the UW BASIC Initiative program that Sergio Palleroni and his colleagues created in 1995. It is fascinating and moving to see the impact this work has on the local and global levels in society.

Prof. Sergio Palleroni teaches the "art-and-science" of "architecture" the old fashion way--with leadership and passion! He's not affraid of rolling up his sleeves, soiling his boot and spending his summer vacations whith his students (the future leaders): teachong design, scheduling and building sustainable communities in the "developing countries."

You have to buy this one, even if it's only for the cover picture of Richard, circa 1970 (aka Richard Cobain). Dark and kooky - let's hope we get more of these longer works from Papa Peabody.

Sugar Mountain captures the existential spirit of modern America. Its main characters are lost souls, reaching out frenetically to connect. They are aware of their existence only in relation to things, and reverberate against each other like bumper cars endlessly hitting and spinning around.

Peabody writes with a keen eye and a casual cynicism. Sugar Mountain offers an interesting look at the odd relationships that occur in life and the shadows that they cast on the people in and around them. Highly recommended.

Excellent source of information. As a survival instructor, I recommend it to all my classes.

This is the best book that I have ever read on survival. It tells eveything from how to build lean to's to log cabins to igloos. Also it tells how to build traps to catch animals and fish which is a must if lost in the woods. As well it tells every way imaginable to navigate and tell what your long and lat. are. It tells plants that youcan and cannot eat, how to clean your water, how to make bread, bows and arrows, bolas, survival strategies for the weather, and much much more. I would reconmen this book to any one who loves camping hunting hiking or any one who is interested in these sort of things

Mr. Angier presents fascinating and practical information on the very basics of survival-shelter, water, food and warmth. Conventional travellers would do well to carry the few items that he recommends-just in case. Hunters hikers and campers have a bible in this book. I have tested his methods of starting a fire, and finding potable water-He's right on target. Adventure writers will find this book an excellent resource-too bad it's out of print! I was hoping to find an updated version. Mine was published in 1974!

Good technical stuff on marquetry, salvage diving, professional wrestling, German lieder and history of the NorthWest. I shall order the Adventures of John Jewitt from Amazon. I couldn't figure why someone raised by the Nootka could speak Chinook though. (Amazon has Greenberg's Language in the Americas but Campbell's Languages of Native America is out of print) Plot believability was a problem. A hidden map leading to buried treasure and an amateur sleuth who takes over from the bumbling police. Great descriptions of Vancouver Island. Two pairs of sisters - sub-plot about two sisters with one recalling a horrible childhood and the other not- maybe s literary novel waiting to get out. Some cliches "the room was a shambles" "surveying the scene." People grimace, squint and shrug a lot.

I've been in a reading slump for quite some time...I swear all the series I was reading ended. One day I came home and my mom gave me this book. I didn't really want to read it, but I sat down and started. I was so into it I couldn't put it down! About a month after I had read it I had to read it agian. I can't wait for the next one to come out! If anyone knows when it does, I'd appreciate if you'd email me and let me know.

I can't wait for the next adventure. Especially enjoyed the story around Tabor...some of it had me in stitches. I hope to see more of her. I have never been to the Northwest, but French's descripitons were so vivid, I could just "feel" the area.

I picked up the novel at a garage sale a few years ago and read it only this summer on a whim. From the opening paragraph I was hooked. Set in the summer of 1939, the book portrays a privileged Midwestern family in the minutia of daily living. The storyteller, eight-year-old Tommy MacAllister, is surrounded by such an array of well-drawn characters, readers will want to jot notes as they meet each one. The book is strong for its depiction of everyday events and the subtle interactions within the boy's mind as he contemplates the grownups who comprise his world.

Reading reviews of Seamus Deane's new novel about growing up in Derry reminds me of how I haven't yet gotten over the disappearance of this brilliant book from the publisher's active list. Tommy McAllister, the main character, reads his upper midwestern world and people in it. He uses both heart and mind to probe each word he hears and gesture he sees to map out his world of loving, dangerous, sensible, and eccentric people, most of whom try to keep him safely in the dark

I bought this book a long time ago but it's still on my bookshelf (I don't save many books when I'm done with them) and I am pushing it for my book group (if we can find enough copies). I've read it many times and it never fails to grip me. The story is pretty simple -- a boy growing up in a small midwestern city right before WWII -- but what's great about this gentle book are a)the characters -- each one a believable, fully-developed, eccentric (but not cutely so) HUMAN, even the minor characters, and b) the wonderful sense of time & place. It's not a lovely place -- it's rife with class, race and other perennial American problems -- but it's full of life, humor, love, hate -- and it has fantastic women characters. Another plus for the book is that it takes place in (I think) someplace like Duluth MN, not the usual East, South or West coast location. The novel also features Native Americans in contemporary roles (circa 1936) -- how often do we get to read about regular old people who happen to be Indians?

This book is one of those rare gems that, if you're really fortunate, you come across from time to time. I received it as a gift from one of my mentors, Charlie Jones, who had, for some time now, been speaking of Booker T. Washington as one of his heroes. Having only a very surface knowledge of Mr. Washington - knowing that he was born a slave and went on to become founder of the famed Tuskegee Institute - he was a hero of mine, as well. After all, one could only imagine what he had to overcome to have achieved all he did.

However, after reading this book by Pastor Stephen Mansfield, the greatness of Mr. Washington simply came alive for me. He was a man of character, a man of faith, a dreamer and a doer; a man who moved mountains and moved hearts.

He had a plan - he had a dream - for taking his people from a horrible situation and helping them to move up and become successful in every way.

Unfortunately, as the author points out, he was fought every step along the way - often most by those he was trying to help and, in time, and long after he died in 1915, was disparaged by many as simply naïve, foolish, a misguided optimist, betrayer to his people.

Of course, none of this is true. Reading the story of Booker T. Washington in 2007 we can look back in hindsight and see that everything he taught - regarding the importance of character, thrift, knowledge, wisdom, forgiveness, love, persistence, delayed gratification, humility, etc. - is the way to build oneself, one's people and one's nation.

Only now is this man's wisdom and greatness beginning to once again be recognized and embraced. This book should be read by anyone and everyone looking to achieve greatness in their life. Read this book and you'll have the roadmap for doing so.

Booker T. Washington was a wonderful man; a hero. And the author, Pastor Mansfield, did a superb job in telling the story.

P.S. By the way, if you get an opportunity to read the booklet, "Character Building" by Booker T. Washington it will also be WELL worth your time. It's a reprinting of a number of his "Sunday Evening Talks" to his students and faculty members. The advice and wisdom that Mr. Washington shared is simply amazing.

Then Darkness Fled is a celebration of the life of Booker T. Washinghton and tells of a man who dined with heads of state and became the first Afro-American to receive honorary degrees from Harvard and Dartmouth. Chapters survey both his achievements and his life in this lively coverage.

In another sterling volume of the Leaders in Action series, Stephen Mansfield here outlines the life and character of Booker T. Washington. In vivacious voice and moving magniloquence, Mansfield traces Washington's path from slavery to his founding of Tuskegee Institute. He shows the difficulties Washington surpassed in reaching his goals, and the principles that helped him make it. In the words of Washington, "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succed." By this standard, Booker T. Washington was an astonishingly successful man.

Washington wrote his own autobiography, _Up From Slavery_, which must certainly not be neglected. But Mansfield's biography is also a criticial read because he includes facts that the autobiographer was too modest to mention, and he highlights wonderful aspects of Washington's character that humility prevented him from including. This biography doesn't contain the wonderful self-analysis and insight of Booker himself - but it does contain all the benefits of a third person account.

One thing I really appreciated about this book was its terrific analysis of slavery and inter-race reconciliation. Expounding Booker's opinion, Mansfield blames both whites and blacks for the problems that cropped up after the Civil War. Whites needed to repent of their brutal treatment of slaves and actually begin considering blacks more than mere animals; and blacks needed to repent of their spirit of bitterness toward their white enslavers, and begin working hard and leaving no excuse for disrespect of blacks. Too many books on reconciliation have practically advocated bitterness, hatred, and laziness when what is really needed is Washington's outlook of forgiveness and hard work. This book offers relief from such pride.

To wrap up, this is a great biography. Good history, good style, and good content. Buy it.

I live on the east coast, but am originally from the Pacific Northwest. This book is a great, fun way for my daughter to learn about my hometown. I hope that the authors will do more children's books from other regions of the country (and even international). It is a great idea, well-executed.

Both my children loved this book, they are 5 and 8. I bought the book to give them an idea about where we are going to move this summer. They are excited to visit the places in the book, especially to see the shrunken heads at "ye olde curiosity shoppe." It was a perfect start for my 5 yr old to practice reading since it came with a downloadable audio file, helping him sound out the words and keep pace. Overall it was entertianing and a good buy!

We just visited Seattle and Mt Rainier with our children for vacation and found this wonderful book. Not only is it a great learning for our kids, but also an awesome souvineer from our trip. Our kids were so excited that "Tony" vists some of the same places we did. This book keeps on giving every time we read it and teaches us all about the neat things in the great state of Washington. Go Seahawks!

We use this book whenever we are thinking about planting a tree in our yard. For some reason, everything seems to grow far bigger than the nursery tags indicate, and many species look far different when young than as more mature trees. It's great to be able to see not only pictures, but to be able to drive to specific locations to see the tree in a mature state, as it may look in our own yard in many years. That's prevented a few "mistakes" in selection.

This book is great. We use it at least a couple of times a week for ecological restoration.

When this book was published in 1990, it virtually created a new genre: the local tree guide. By combining clear, simple descriptions of hundreds of local area species (about 30 native, and the rest ornamental) and providing information on where you could go see the tree, it became possible for people to both learn a wide variety of trees and to learn more about the natural heritage of a place - in this case, Seattle. A second edition of this book has just (February 2006) been published; it contains almost twice as many species, many more color photographs, and a far longer list of specimen trees.

Earl J. Hess's new "Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign" is as good a piece of Civil War scholarship as I have read in years. It is at the most fundamental level a narrative history of military operations in the Overland Campaign of May and June, 1864: the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, and Cold Harbor, but it is a narrative history that focuses particularly on how field fortifications evolved over the course of those six weeks of heavy combat and it details how the use of field fortifications influenced the course of that campaign. In his earlier volume, "Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War," Hess dispelled the old myths that such entrenchments were a direct consequence of the power of rifled-muskets or that their use suddenly sprang into being in the spring of 1864 (he documented three years of field fortifications, although not on such a scale as became standard by the end of the Overland Campaign) and that these entrenchments were somehow merely the fruit of the teaching of Dennis Hart Mahan at West Point. Or to quote the author: "The use of field fortifications evolved during the Civil War not due to some irrational fear, but due to a real and potent threat: the continued presence of an enemy army within striking distance. Their use was a rational and logical response to that threat."

Hess reserves most of the technical details of entrenchment and breastwork design for an appendix, leaving his main narrative fast-moving and compelling. "Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee" is an important contribution to Civil War literature and should find a ready spot on the bookshelves of any serious student of the era. I look forward to his planned third volume, to examine field fortifications during the Petersburg campaign.

Inevitably, it must be asked how Hess views the Overland Campaign in balance. Was it a Union or a Confederate success? Although Hess does not absolve Grant of errors in too hastily ordering attacks or in failing to recognize the power of impromptu fieldworks, Hess concludes: "Grant's most significant achievement in the Overland campaign was not in capturing territory, or in positioning his army close to Richmond, or in reducing the fighting strength of the Army of Northern Virginia by 50 percent; rather it lay in robbing Lee of the opportunity to launch large-scale offensives against the Army of the Potomac. In laying claim to the strategic initiative, Grant won an important physical and emotional victory over Lee, and he did it with fewer losses than his predecessors had suffered in attempting the same goal ... Most important, he did not give up the strategic initiative and thereby brought the war to an end. The Overland campaign was as much a watershed in the strategic course of the Civil War as the Seven Days."

By the time of the Overland Campaign, the star of Earl Hess's second volume on Civil War fortifications, the idea of bravery that most soldiers had when hostilities began had just about fizzled out. In that more innocent time, soldiers and officers thought it cowardly to hide behiind entrenchments, or anything else for that matter. Battles were about sticking out your chest and, in plain view of the enemy, marching and shooting. (For a good account of this transition, see Linderman's Embattled Courage.)

Three years of the harsh reality of war changed all that, and by the time of the Overland Campaign, troops on both sides were digging in fast and furiously whenever they got the chance. Aside from the Vicksburg and Petersburg campaigns, nowhere was the entrenchment so obvious as in the Overland one. Most Civil War buffs know about the entrenchments at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. But many will probably be surprised (as was I) that entrenchments were also dug in The Wilderness and at the Bermuda Hundred.

Hess' account of the evolution of fortifications in this stage of the war is well-written and entirely accessible to the nonspecialist. He tends to protect Grant from the general's worst critics, arguing (much as does James McPherson) that the huge cost of federal lives in the Overland in fact did succeed in strategically defeating Lee.

The photographs are priceless. I've actually never seen most of them before. Moreover, the line drawings of fortifications and entrenchments are brilliant. All in all, highly recommended.

This is the second book in a series on fortifications in the eastern theater during the Civil War. The first book covers the war up to this point, while reading the first book is not required; it is worth taking the time to do so. 1864 produced a major revision in how digging in and fighting behind entrenchments is viewed by both armies. Open field battle gives way to fighting from behind entrenchments as both sides maintain close contact for months. The war is no longer open fields with a mile between the armies. Both sides dug into the earth often closer than skirmish lines were in 1862. The book details this change and the impact on the commanders and men.

The author continues working fortifications into the overall campaign giving the reader an excellent history of the Overland Campaign in the process. This presentation keeps the subject fresh while presenting the nuanced tactical differences in a logical sequential manner. This is very much a battle history but the emphasis is on how fortifications changed the campaign even as the campaign changed fortifications.

Earl Hess is one of our best authors. In this series and this book, he manages to give the reader a rich learning experience coupled with an enjoyable read. This is not a beginner's book but can be enjoyed by anyone with some knowledge of the Civil War.