Liberal Arts Colleges Books

I wandered through the kid's section of a book store and stumbled upon this book. It was the beautiful imagery on the cover that first caught my eye. I flipped through to see that these wonderful images are carried throughout as well. I turned back to the beginning and read the tale of Ignis as he tries to find himself and his flame and fell in love with this little dragon. His journey to find his flame is fun to read and fitting for the age this book targets (4-8). Simply put, I found the tale endearing and the artwork captivating to explore. Very enjoyable indeed!

I have read this book and really enjoyed it. I have also read this book to a grade 1 class and they really enjoyed it. I feel that this book is great for all ages. I love the story-line and the fabulous illustrations. This will be a great addition to any collection.

One of the most delightful books I have ever come across!

No other book I have ever seen has illustrations that bring dragons to life like this one. As an artist, I had searched everywhere to find examples of expresive, interesting dragons that had a benevolent and inquisitive nature, and at the same time retained their reptilian appearance. The fact that the drawings are accompanied by such a well written story is a bonus!

This is my daughter's most-requested book, and it is so enjoyable I truly don't mind reading it five days in a row. I can't say that for any other book we own. The illustrations are beautiful, the text is very inspired, and I like the theme of perseverance. Ignis's personality seems so real, as does the little girl Cara's. With two children, I've bought or borrowed countless children's books, and this goes at the top of my favorites list. I wish Gina Wilson and P.J. Lynch would team up for another story.

"Ignis" is fabulous dragon book. The inspirational story is all the better due to the enchanting, beautifully drawn illustrations on each page. I love reading this book to my 5-year old son as much as he loves to hear it. This is a must read and must have book for all dragon lovers: both young and old. I highly recommend the purchase.

Much in the same way that the apostles probably wouldn't have bothered to read the Bible, having heard the good word straight from the horse's (Jesus's) mouth I have yet to read this book. That said, I am at this moment taking Professor Seery's Classical Political Theory class at Pomona College, and find it scintillating. The class, not the man...i mean...ughhh...must not succumb to metrosexuality...

I think I'm going to check this book out of the library, now that I've got all worked up about it. But I recommend that you--yeah, YOU--buy it off Amazon!

America Goes to College is a strong collection of essays -- not all of which are pertain specifically to the liberal arts college life -- whose varying subject matter is a delight to read. Above all, they aim to convince us that in a world that is becoming evermore specialized and technical, liberal arts educations should not be phased out, but rather they should be encouraged. Specialization breeds separation, and in turn society is losing its common ground. Be it engineers and English profs or Democrats and Republicans or even Western capitalists and Islamic fundamentalists, the current trend pits those with different perspectives against each other and unwilling to relate. Liberal arts educations work against this problem, for they encourage dabbling in non-career related pursuits--from the physics major in the studio art class to the political theory prof playing sax in the band--and thus help to create a common forum of interaction and experience. Writes Seery:

"I want you to evangelize, I want you to spread the word. If you can't find passion and conviction about what went on here, you will never awaken to the rest of life. So hereby, starting today with you, I pronounce the next century to be the Pomona Century. You've got to make it happen. If you must, make Pomona College and liberal arts education into a religion. Let only the eager, thoughtful, and reverent leave here. This is a community of faith" (Seery 152).

More to the point, Prof. (or should it be Rev.?) Seery wants to evangelize the gospel of the Liberal Arts. In a world that is becoming more and more specialized, Seery believes in the necessity of developing well-rounded individuals who are just as capable of advancing a discussion on cell biology as they are of advancing one on Islamic fundamentalists. As Seery sees it, why not take tangents in our education? America Goes to College opts to celebrate the non-specialist rather than sneer at them, as he accuses many university scholars of doing.
As a professor of political science (and in such capacity, a self-proclaimed guardian of the liberal arts tradition), he notes that he nevertheless finds himself teaching classic texts in order institute an awareness of precedence and develop a more rounded agreement of thought. Students, explains Seery, benefit from an education that attempts to offer a more comprehensive view of the life, rather than to focus on a narrow track and ignore everything else as "not what I'm majoring in."

Particularly important, writes Seery, is the small classroom, in which student-professor dialogues, as well as student-students ones, are more apt to occur and develop. University-style lectures promote order-taking; the liberal arts education promotes the self-directing graduate, the one who is capable of taking his education, and then his life, into his own hands. The goal is of a liberal arts education is to learn the ability and understand the value of seeing the full panorama, not just the point straight ahead. In a world in which too many people increasingly carry themselves like horses with blinders over their eyes, Seery's America Goes to College is a welcome vision.

How I wish this book had been around when I was getting ready to go to college, and then many years later when my three children were looking at their own options post-high school. This book is a welcome validation of the merits of a liberal arts education in a world where too many young adults feel pressured to choose careers based solely on their earnings potential after graduation. Tom Gerety writes eloquently in defense of a liberal arts education although his tone is never holier-than-thou. Rather, his style is refreshingly candid and personal, and his observations are often thought-provoking. This book would make a perfect gift for a high-school graduate!

As president of Amherst, Tom Gerety's commencement and convocation speeches were available on the College's web site and were true joys to read.

This 5-star collection goes beyond those addresses and each is a gem. The Freshman Who Hated Socrates immediately takes one back to the college years including the years immediately preceeding college as we filled out applications, waited for those envelopes, and then sat in college orientation.

College is so full of experiences that only later, after some living, can we appreciate those times of freedom that Tom Gerety writes about so elegantly and poignantly. As a reader, I am immediately struck by his use of language. It feels as if one is listening in on an intimate story which resonates in the reader's life as much as it did in the author's.

Remember college "bull" sessions? Remember a favorite, often surprising, teacher? Remember friends, disappointments, successes? Gerety's book not only takes us back to those times, more importantly, it rekindkles the desire for learning. The book is a celebration of the humanities in all of their richness. Even today, we can go back to Socrates or Shakespeare, or dip into poetry or music with the same fresh enthusiasm that we did as new students. My bet is that today the humantities mean so much more to us.

Gerety's love for learning and his devotion to the humanities are infectious and his book is an open invitation to go the nearest bookstore or even pick up an old school book from the shelf and dive in. Better yet, start with The Freshman Who Hated Socrates. Thanks Tom

I received this book aooner than expected. It came packaged well, and I am very happy with this seller.

Distinctively America: The Residential Liberal Arts Colleges is a collection of critical and informative essays examining the American liberal arts college as an institution, from its role in the lives of students, to its value as a form of education. The contributors also explore the threats faced by liberal arts colleges, their transformative role (both positive and negative), as well as the impact of information technology. Highly recommended reading for students of the sociology of American education, the relationship of liberal arts colleges to the humanities, as well as American education history and the future of the liberal arts college as an educational institution, Distinctively America is a superb educational history of the American liberal arts colleges from their early disdained reputations in comparison to European schools, to their slow rise to becoming accepted as "world-class" universities.

This is certainly the most comprehensive analysis on a hot-button issue in grade inflation. The framework presented in this monograph clarifies the distinctions yet interrelations of various commonly-misunderstood problems in college grading. It also presents how grading problems could distort student educational decisions such as choice of course work and even major fields. This is more alarming in a policy environment that good grades are rewarded with merit aid.

For over 20 years I have actively examined "why candidates get hired and who does the hiring" from both sides of the college recruiting process. The most commonly asked question heard over the past two decades remains "What can I do with a major in...?" Liberal Arts Jobs answers this query and many, many more. This, the most recent edition, was a blending of previous works and contains "state of the art" advice for recent and soon to be liberal arts graduates. As a job search coach I teach and reinforces skills required for successful search, including resume writing, correspondence, and interviewing. For those I coach and, I hope, those who read my publicatons, "job search is simple, not necessarily easy," because the process is broken down into easy to follow (yet challenging) behavioral steps and easy to accept motivational attitudes. To date, he I have critiqued over 9,500 resumes (I do count) and worked with over 12,000 job seekers (I guess, but don't exaggerate). Reflected in my writings, presentations, and counseling style, I beleive that job search doesn't have to be taken too seriously and that it is best undertaken with humor and positive affect. You, your son or daughter, or a family friend can be successful, even if they majored in English or Art History. Read the book. Be inspired to take action. Set goals. Establish job search and internship strategies. Create resumes and other job search tools. Go for it! Let me know what you think of the book. I continue to learn through your experiences and comments.

Is war justifiable for a Christian? This is one of several "hard questions" John Calvin answers from the Bible in this book. John McNeill has edited the works of Calvin to indicate what he has to say on the various aspects of government. Calvin wrote at a time when he was exiled from his native France due to religious persecution. He discusses the role government has in carrying forth God's will in human society. Magistrates have a high calling from God he maintains. He says anyone going against a legitimate authority is opposing God because scripturally all authorities have been placed by God. However, those in authority have an obligation to serve as unto God and are accountable to Him for this stewardship. In answer to the question of war, Calvin says it is the responsibility of those in authority to declare war at certain times. He uses a logical inference from the Scriptures to back up his claim. This book provides helpful insight into the mind of one of the great Reformers. While his writings were done during an era of monarchy, they have application still.

Even though the characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin are "fictional", the story is realistic about American slavery during the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin met a great deal of resistance in the south, because it exposed the skeleton in America's closet. Abraham Lincoln said to the Stowe...."so you're the little lady who started the great war". Stowe is not an impressive novelist; her writing lacks literary style. But that doesn't matter. Stowe is recognized for her courage to confront the world with a frank and uninhibited portrayal of American slavery.

I jumped into this book mainly to work on reading lists that i had seen it appear on. I did have the vague idea that most people do of what it is about, but would of been hard pressed to really give any serious detail of the story before hand. So after a little research i jumped in, and this was my experience.
While the novel overall was good, i must admit that I was very glad when it was finally finished. The tale follows several different characters and the different fates that they have according to the choices they have made. The characters are very well drawn out, although today many would be considered somewhat stock. I think it will be a long time before I forget Tom, Eva, or St.Clare for instance. The tale does set up a brillant bit of emotional drama, and brings forth a moral tale in such a way i'm almost shocked that it was so popular. In today's society I can't imagine that a story with such strong overtone's would be successful. The writing today is still clear and fairly easy to read. The quality of the prose and the sentances to have their moments as well. Sometimes the religion and the moralizing does come on very strongly, but along with the sentimentalness one can forgive the author when realizing the massive evil insitution she was facing.
This is probably not a book that the average reader will read for kicks. However, from a literary and historical perspective it is quite great. It is slightly scary to imagine where the world would have been without it as well.

1. SLAVERY WASN'T SO BAD AFTER ALL. I was surprised to find out that this book supported slavery. Of course, you have to wade through the melodrama and Christian speechifying -- about 95% of the book -- to get at Ms Stowe's thesis, but once you do it becomes clear. To Ms Stowe, slavery and capitalism are just different manifestations of evil human greed (St. Claire's speech, pp 239-241 in my edition). Old slavers who whipped their charges to death must be smiling now, knowing that they're being compared to the Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Bill Gates.

Ms Stowe deems many factors that separate capitalism and slavery to be irrelevant. The fact that under capitalism families weren't separated is irrelevant. The fact that people could emigrate freely is also irrelevant. The fact that people were not forced off their farms and into the cities is irrelevant. The fact that proletariat, even in Ms Stowe's day, were protected by labor laws is irrelevant. The fact that life expectancy for the proletariat increased vis à vis farmers is irrelevant. The fact that the proletariat were not chosen for racist reasons is irrelevant. The fact that a worker could become an entrepreneur and eventually a capitalist is also irrelevant.

2. CHRISTIANITY DOESN'T CONDEMN SLAVERY. Ms Stowe does a fine job (inadvertently) of showing that Christianity contains doctrine that supports slavery, and no doctrine that outright condemns it.

3. AMERICA IS FOR AMERICAN INDIANS. Ms Stowe states at the end of chapter 43 that Topsy, after receiving a decent Christian upbringing, became a teacher in "her own country" -- Africa. Ms Stowe believes that Africa is Topsy's country because she is descended from Africans, and conversely that the United States is not Topsy's country. Of course, if one were to apply the same logic to everyone in the U.S., only native Americans would pass the test. Pack your bags everyone!

This novel delivers the truth of the horrifying effects of slavery on both the slave and the master; delivering the message that slavery is damaging to society as a whole. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' is a historic classic but it is also very relevant for today. I believe this novel should be read by everyone so that slavery will always be understood as a terrible and frightening condition that affects entire societies. Also, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' is not a difficult read; the writing feels fresh and it is truly a page-turner.

For whatever reasons, I'm one of those who, over the years, never gave "Uncle Tom's Cabin" much thought. I'm afraid I dismissed the book based on the derogatory cliche of describing a complacent black man as an Uncle Tom. What a pleasure to find how wrong I was.

Although the style of narration, the punctuation style of the day and the evolution of contractions, compound words and other bits of syntax show this book to be from the mid 1800s, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is a modern novel. It is largely without the stifling level of detail offered in other books of the time, and it pushes the concept of omniscient narrator (perhaps along the lines of Vonnegut in "Breakfast of Champions") to a level that would likely be absurd in another story and purpose.

And Harriet Beecher Stowe did have a purpose - a daring, countervailing, completely forward-thinking challenge to the complacency of the day. The action of the story concludes in the second-to-last chapter. In the last chapter, called simply "Concluding Remarks," Stowe, referring to herself in third person, explains how she came to write the book, and in so doing pulls the reader beyond the realm of fiction in order to cap off her sermon. And a 500-page sermon is exactly what "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was and is.

To quote Stowe from the last chapter, "For many years of her life, the author avoided all reading upon or allusion to the subject of slavery, considering it as too painful to be inquired into, and one which advancing light and civilization would certainly live down. But, since the legislative act of 1850, when she heard, with perfect surprise and consternation, Christian and humane people actually recommending the remanding escaped fugitives into slavery, as a duty binding on good citizens,- when she heard, on all hands, from kind compassionate and estimable people, in the free states of the North, deliberation and discussions as to what Christian duty could be on his head,- she could only think, These men and Christians cannot know what slavery is; if they did, such a question could never be open for discussion. And from this arose a desire to exhibit it in a LIVING DRAMATIC REALITY [emphasis the author's]. She has endeavored to show it fairly, in the best and worst phases. In its BEST [emphasis the author's] aspect, she has, perhaps, been successful; but, oh! Who shall say what yet remains untold in that valley and shadow of death, that lies the other side?"


Within the narrative arts can be found a gray area between complete fiction and straightforwrad documenting. Within this area itself is a fine line of storytelling that sheds the fluff factor of fiction and the yawn factor of documentation. A story told along this line is not only compelling but offers to the receiver of the story a glimpse of what a life in the world depicted by the story must have been like. Or at the very least might have been like. This glimpse, whatever else it is, will be visceral, allowing the reader an actual emotional link. Finding this line is hard, staying on it harder and pulling off a finished work while remaining true to the line harder still. This is what Stowe did, a century before such a point of view emerged again in Americam media.

As such, Stowe explains that many of the characters are based on real people - yes, there really was a man as horrible as Simon Legree - and that most of the events in the book were based on true events known to her personally or through trusted reporting. This novelizing of reality was so compelling the book would be translated into twenty-two languages.


It would be relatively easy to take sentences and paragraphs out of context and reach the conclusion that Stowe decried slavery while holding the black race paternalistically. It's very possible to find any number of passages and label them as apologetic and paternalistic. There is, in fact, paternalism throughout the story, but this is a reflection of America ten years before the Civil War; and by the end of Stowe's "Concluding Remarks" this paternalism is gone.

I would describe the main apologist, St. Clare, who is keenly aware of the state of his own culture, as more of a rationalist. By making this character so, Stowe is able to open our eyes, as she opened many eyes of the day, to the subtler forms of defacto slavry - not at all to excuse slavery in general as some kind of natural order, but to bear witness to those toiling in other forms of captured work.

In 1851 the scullery maid of an English country home was not a slave, of course. Her employment was voluntary, after all, and at the end of a year she would have a few schillings to her name. But economically, perhaps even geographically, her freedom was largely unavailable to her, and so while not a slave under the law, the other side of her employment was the delivery of herself to twelve- or fifteen-hour days of scrubbing pots and pans. The delivery of herself to, at the end of any of those days, climbing three or four flights of a rear stairs to a garret; to a social life limited to the kitchen staff, which itself was a hierarchy that lorded over her; to little hope of marriage, if that's what she wanted, or to any sort of a life she might call her own. Why? To keep from starving to death.

And think about this today. Are you watching a 27" color TV with full remote that cost $199? Do you honestly think that set could have been made, boxed, shipped to a port in Asia, shipped by boat to the US, shipped by train and truck to your local StuffMart and sold to you profitably for one or two day's wages while every worker along the way was treated fairly? Do you care?


For the vast majority of those reading this review slavery is an abstracted and distant topic. It is a practice from a long ago past that might be given two meetings in a high school American History class, a cursory survey from which students might understand the concept of the economics of buying, selling and breeding human beings, from which they might be encouraged to imagine the suffering implicit to such practices.

Stowe's great achievment in writing "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was to belie the nuts and bolts, the mere logistics and schematics of slavery. She established for the reader the point of view of the slave, of a human life set against the legally sanctioned bureaucracy of slavery. She successfully depicted a person - an individual, a human being - sold as a product, warehoused as a product, transported as a product, and then set to use as an organic machine that was discarded and replaced when it broke. More to the point, she allows us glimpses into the inner lives, thoughts and prayers of those sold, warehoused, transported and used up while their ties to family and place, while their smallest hopes, are given credence only as an afterthought that may never coalesce. Only if, after having purchased a brother or a mother, there should be enough money remaining to buy the sister or the child. Only if it should be convenient and expedient for the planter to do so, only if it should strike that planter's fancy one particular afternoon but
not another.

This book is as meaningful today, in new ways, as it was in 1851, and that is wholly remarkable.