Publications and Media Books

Reviewed by Stephanie Rollins for Reader Views (7/06)

"The Venture Project Manager" is by Dennis Cohen. Cohen is a consultant with the Strategic Management Group. He assists leaders in implementing strategy into action.

Throughout the lecture, he emphasizes the importance of maximizing shareholder's wealth. Often that has a negative connotation, but Cohen explains that without the shareholders, there would be no projects. Without projects, there would be no project leaders. He explains and describes the importance of economic value added. He explains that project managers must view their work within the scope of the entire business and market place.

Cohen explains that project managers do not view their project in the "long haul". They finish their project, and they pass the implementation to other departments. Venture project managers see the project through the life cycle. Cohen discusses how each project should be seen as an investment; therefore, it should be in align with the company's vision and mission.

"Venture Project Manager" was a pleasure to listen to. Make your commute more worthwhile by listening to "Venture Project Manager".

this selection of essays offer a wide understanding of all the arenas in which visual analysis can take place. it has an introduction about what is visual culture and essays from academics such as j. clifford, m. de certeau, g. pollock, etc. it is a review on the history of visuality and the implications of visual culture in the arenas of the representation of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, etc. You wont regret buying this book if you are interested in the study of visual culture.

I was looking for a book that would energize journalism students and would help them to see in journalism the potential for making a contribution to positive social change. This book was terrific in the classroom for those purposes. The students loved the narrative writing style and the book opened great questions on the role of advocacy in relation to social movements and the institutions of journalism. A truly important work as we in journalism education look for ways to encourage our students to consider alternatives to corporate-owned media!

If you're interested in learning about watermedia, a term used to include watercolors, gouache (opaque watercolors), casein (a paint based on milk protein), and acrylics, I highly recommend this excellent book. No, it's not the newest book on the subject, and yes, a lot of the illustrations are in black and white, but the graphics are basically very good and the information supplied even better. This is especially true for qouache and casein, which never seem to get much attention in books.

Quiller gives good, in-depth information about each of these media, as well as a series of exercises to develop one's skills in working with them, and plenty of illustrations of his own work, including works in progress, which showcase the versatility of these paints.

This definitely is a book you should have if you're interested in watermedia. Also recommended are Quiller's other books on color theory and acrylics...these are newer and have all-color images, and will get you thinking in different ways about color. The art is colorful, vibrant, and creative, and certain to inspire you.

AN INCIDENT GAUSSIAN BEAM IMPINGING ON A BIG DIELECRIC MEDIUM.

This book provided us with new insights on the quality of the daily news. The review of Women's magazines was excellent. The tables were informative and well-organised. A very useful edition for media research

Very well written collection on that status of women in the media. This is a collection of essays about gender values in mass communication. The editor, Pamela J. Creedon, has identified a wide range of issues for discussion. Inspite of the huge scope of the book, the essays remain cohesive and well-knit.

The book looks at the increased number of women scholars in this area and its effects. ("gender switch"). A key message of the book is that a significant change in status quo will occur, not when women try to change the system, but when they improve their position within the system and change the internal dynamics therein. A second message is that the gender roles defined by white male counterparts serve as the basis of gender inequity. The collection ends on an optimistic note and the last few essays talk about how to challenge current gender values.

This is an excellent resource for anyone interested in how young people are utilizing the Internet. A wide array of scholars tackle some of the many issues facing the changing media landscape. They provide much needed insights while also raising questions for further research.

In The Things They Carried, Vietnam veteran Tim O'Brien called upon his own wartime experiences, labeled them as fiction, and wrote one of the most emotionally potent books I've ever read.

It's irrelevant to me how much of O'Brien's book "really happened" because O'Brien's words and stories in The Things They Carried deeply touched me. O'Brien wrote simply, but effectively. He tapped into real emotion and conveyed those emotions skillfully. With each and every short that made up a larger story with The Things They Carried, I could picture myself clear as day in those very same situations.

That's one benefit of calling this book fiction. Had O'Brien designated it nonfiction, I think each tale would have filtered through my knowledge this happened to O'Brien and registered as a "past event." But with it being called fiction, I could lose myself in the story and meld with it, become one with it, and see myself in it. It allowed me ownership that nonfiction does not.

While O'Brien offers authentic knowledge on weaponry, tactics, and all things associated with being a wartime soldier, he focuses more deeply upon the human element. The Things They Carried perfectly captures what it is to be human in times of chaos, fear, and horror. He doesn't glorify or lionize the characters in his stories. He treats them as "real" (and perhaps they were), and he offers only the emotional truth.

There are things in this book that chilled me to the bone. Not because it's overtly gory, but because O'Brien cuts to the core of our fragile lives. For instance, in one story a man dies after being sucked under mud during a mortar attack. But he doesn't write it from the dead man's perspective, he writes it first from the perspective of the man next to him, then from the perspective of the man pulling the body out of the mud the next day. Can you imagine? I assure you, you'll be able to imagine such a thing after reading The Things They Carried. And that's what makes this book so utterly effective. O'Brien forces you to put yourself in it, to experience it through his straightforward, transparent, and evocative words.

I honestly only read this book because Tim O'Brien was coming to a local university and I was invited to attend a private reception for him. I'd never heard of the man and had to ask a few friends for suggestions before one knew O'Brien's work and told me to read The Things They Carried. So expertly rendered were O'Brien's words and so powerful was the raw emotional honesty in his book that O'Brien has secured me as a life-long reader.

I strongly recommend you read The Things They Carried.

~Scott William Foley, author of Souls Triumphant

Tim O'Brien is one of the greatest writers alive today. I think that his prestige and legacy will only grow as the genius of his works find a wider audience.

The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato make up the twin pillars of Vietnam literature. If you haven't read Going After Cacciato, please check it out.

The Things They Carried is as much a mediation on the nature of truth as it is a war story. The major themes of the novel are the ways stories shift meaning with continuous retelling, and the ways in which our own lives are at the mercy of memory. A haunting, moving masterpiece.

Not growing up during this era it was interesting to read the accounts... I found a great blog article on this book as well:

http://www.petermanseye.com/anthologies/perseverance/343-the-things-they-carried

Great read. Highly recommend the book.

Cheers.

The book was shipped early and it was in excellent condition. I woulld recommend a transaction and would purchase again from this supplier. I am a college student and I needed to review this book for a literature honors class. Thank you for your prompt and professional transaction.

... is a quote from O'Brien's daughter, Kathleen, in the story "Field Trip." Kathleen had just turned 10, and O'Brien had taken her back to Vietnam, to show her where her dad had been. He was trying to convey what it was like to have been a soldier in that war. As the story is written, clearly he had not been very successful. Going back to the sadness and failure of Vietnam is so totally different from strolling along the high cliffs of Normandy, where purpose and success reigned.

"The Things They Carried" is widely recognized as the classic soldier's account of the Vietnam War. It now has 702 reviews on Amazon. What more can be said? Hopefully a number of things, including a few personal parallels. When the Second World War commenced, Norman Mailer, the author of that war's classic account, "The Naked and the Dead," asked himself one thing: From which theater of the war could he write a better book? He consciously chose the Pacific. You never get that sense of ambition from O'Brien's stories; rather you feel that he was haplessly swept along with the events, and his eclectic montage of images reflect the experiences he is still trying to understand.

O'Brien was a "grunt" in the ill-starred Americal Division, in Quang Ngai province, mostly in 1969. I was in the next province south, in Binh Dinh, at the end of 1968, as a medic in a tank unit. Like O'Brien I would stare at the hills to the west of the coastal plain, and dream of waking up one morning, and walking through them, away from the war, a fantasy that he turned into another moving book, "Going After Cacciato." O'Brien was certainly right in taking his daughter back to the `Nam, in the hopes of transmitting to the next generation our experiences. I did the same thing; my first of three trips back was in 1994. This is probably the same year O'Brien took Kathleen, since I saw his signature in the ledger at the memorial at My Lai. "Ill-starred" became the most common adjective for the Americal, due in part to the massacre of what was official determined as 504 civilians in this hamlet. This event was only revealed to the wider American public thanks to the courageous actions of a couple soldiers, Ron Ridenhour who wrote numerous American leaders, and Ronald Haeberle, whose photographs were published in Life magazine. Others in the military hierarchy, including Colin Powell, tried to cover up the massacre.

A few of O'Brien's stories did not resonate. I remain puzzled as to the significance of "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" which truly had to be a stoned-out fantasy. But most of the stories overwhelmingly hit resonance, including the suicide of Norman Bowker in "Notes," the hauntingly tragic portrait of a young Vietnamese school teacher in "The Man I Killed," and the philosophical underpinnings of "How to Tell a True War Story." O'Brien shifts in his story-telling, so that it is hard to tell what really happened, and what was imagined, and if there was a difference. Oh memory, speak truly.

It was only on my third trip back to Vietnam, in 1996, that I thought it was "safe" enough to take my wife and two children. At the time, my daughter was 12, my son 11, and I experienced some of the similar problems that O'Brien had in trying to convey what had happened in this now peaceful country. I insisted on climbing the hills surrounding the Mang Yang pass, site of ambushes for both French, and later American forces. Climbing in the heat, and through tough "elephant grass," my daughter turned around and said: "Dad, I think you are just a little bit crazy." Yes, the obsession.

Our post-war actions were not sufficient to stop a repeat of the same stupidities in Iraq, though I at least was successful in ensuring that my own children would not participate.

Perhaps O'Brien's most haunting story is the one which describes his mindset before he went to the Nam - "On the Rainy River." He concludes with: "... and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and home again. I survived, but it is not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war."

This book is our own "All Quiet on the Western Front," deserves more than 5 stars, and should be read in every American school.

John thinks he's a cynic. He takes a bit of pride in the fact that he claims not to feel emotion, and blames it on his father who always seems glad to get rid of him after every weekend, and his mother hasn't touched him since he was ten years old. John's escape is zines, his own and one called Escape Velocity, written by Marisol, known as a "Puerto Rican Cuban Yankee lesbian". When they finally get a chance to meet, Marisol makes John swear never to lie to her. But even as he makes that oath, John already has, and as his little lies (both to Marisol and himself) get bigger and he and Marisol get closer, both of them will have to learn to stop lying and tell the truth, no matter what the consequences.

From the moment you meet John, you're hooked on his very distinguishable voice and cavalier attitude, even if his behavior does seem despicable at times. Readers will have no problem summing up sympathy for him and in the same moment exasperation as he continues to lie his way throughout the story. But as John is continually exposed to Marisol and truly explores his feelings, the reader will find surprising depth and character. It's the complex, three dimensional characters that make this novel so indelible and irresistible, and their imperfections that give it life. Hard Love leaves off without a clear, positive ending, but instead with hope for the future, which is a million times better.

I got this book from a library, but I love it so much that I feel the need to own it. I have had similar experiences with my own 'hard love', so it hits pretty close to home. After I read it, I just felt like it was something that I had needed to read. It taught me something. Sure, it isn't a perfect novel or even a classic like The Great Gatsby, but it gave me something that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

I really don't understand the complaints of other reviewers who say that these are not 'real' or 'normal' teenagers. These kinds of problems are real and I see them reflected in my friends all the time. "Hard Love" just seems like a book that needed to be written. I'm lucky that I read it (I picked it up on a whim) and I think that anyone who has struggled with unrequited love needs to read it, too.

i cant begin to tell you how amazing this book is. i read this book when i was in tenth grade and ive now been out of school for 3 years and still re-read it and love it.. it was so inspiring and touching and you felt as the author got inside of your emotions and took control..i was beyond inspired by this book to create my own zine and join communitys of people who write zines and made some amazing friends that way..this book i highly highly reccomend to anyone

While shopping at the Colorado teen lit conference a fellow writer suggested Hard Love to me. I thought, after the first couple of pages, that I would not like it. John is a tough character to get to know and love. I keep reading it and boy was I wrong! I LOVED the book. The characters stepped off the pages and really came alive! The innovate use of zine was a neat twist and and I truly loved the pathos, the absolute agony, of the unrequited love story. The back story and ultimate growth of the main character was convincing and a joy to read. Hard Love is very well written. I will definitely recommend it to everyone, and am looking forward to reading more Wittlinger books!

From the first paragraph you can tell HARD LOVE is a different kind of book. It opens with a teenage boy named John, struggling between his divorced parents and the teenage romantic values his parents don't seem to have. None of which bothers him in he least, as he has been raised with no feeling or sense of emotion.

Day to day, John coasts through life, trying to forget about his father who doesn't talk to him and his mother who doesn't touch him. He occasionally reads zines from time to time, and was infatuated with "Escape Velocity" so he is determined to meet the writer.

Marisol is the character who changes this story around. John spends time with her and falls in love, but there's a problem, Marisol is gay. He starts hurting inside, hoping and wishing for her affection. Ms. Wittlinger tenderly shows how she takes over his heart and I really like the way this is shown from John's point of view.

This is a fine story with characters so well drawn you start to think you know them. I highly recommend this book to teens and even adults, who want to show what goes on in a mind of an adolescent. Also, I'm sure anyone who has had a difficult love would appreciate this novel, after all it's dedicated to those whose first love, was a hard love.