Columbia Books

Well, Mr. Criscuolo has proven me wrong. Having growing up skiing other places like Idaho, Utah, and California I thought all skiing up in the Washington area was wet and marginal. I had no idea that there were all these different places to ski in the Seattle area (2 hour drive or less).

There are even more if you want to do some traveling but not make the hike all the way to Sun Valley or get on a plane to make it to Utah, Colorado, or California.

Thanks Mr. Criscuolo This is a resource that I needed to make my winters fun in Seattle!

Santo has done extensive research and this book is excellent! Santo writes very clearly and provides and all the pertinent information you'll need to enjoy any of these Northwest resorts to the fullest. Having grown up in the Northwest and skied many of these mountains, I found myself agreeing completely with what Santo wrote. His descriptions brought the resorts back to life in my memory. I especially like that he chose some out-of-the-way places that haven't been covered in other guide books. Santo gives press to some of the best-kept Northwest secrets, for which I suppose I can forgive him, and I applaud his honest enthusiasm for snow riding. This book makes me excited about the upcoming season and want to ride every single mountain he's reviewed! Get this book. Then get out there and make some turns!

Finally, a book about Pacific NW skiing that nails it!

Criscuolo obviously did his research, because the information is dead-on. While the book is meticulously detailed, it is easy to navigate and well-written.

Anyone who's serious about NW skiing & boarding needs to have this book.

Other's have said much about this book so I will keep my review short. I've given this book to many friends of mine and explained that it is the first book I've read on writing that merits a reread. It is without catagory or direct instruction. It speaks on the art of writing, as well as the craft. Most importantly, it speaks of sacrifice. Frankly, I am tired of reading about or reading books from authors who give nothing of themselves in their art. Lispector, Kafka - where have all the dusty and tattered souls gone.

I knew of Cixous, had a general idea of her doing work toward a kind of ecriture feminine (feminine writing), but hadn't actually read her writing until I read this book while tanning in Southern New Jersey this past June. This book was on a recommended reading list for a writing class I was taking, though I think I'm the only one who read it; it's not at all your usual writer's-help book, but that's good. It is dense, genre-breaking academic-poetic writing that I ended up having to get out of the sun to read. This book is comprised of a set of essays originally given as lectures, separated into "The School of the Dead," "The School of Dreams," and "The School of Roots." The writers that resonate with Cixous are "descenders, explorers of the lowest and the deepest," (a concept introduced in "The School of the Dead") and include some I knew -- Kafka, Dostoevsky, Genet, and Ingeborg Bachmann, and others I hadn't -- Clarice Lispector and Marina Tsvetaeva. I see there's a Derrida "endorsement" both here on the Amazon website and on the cover of the book, and so, as you would expect, this book's meditation on the connection between language and desire, between writing and the body, some wordplay and deconstruction of the very shape of letters or the names of writers is what you might expect from a French poststructuralist. What set this book apart for me was its attitude toward the works cited. Cixous doesn't use literature to promote flashy ideas; it's seriously personal work, a "Schooling" on thinking about one's own writing, she's actually interested in defining "truth." The first part of "The Dead," especially the kind of cataloguing of "deaths-as-beginnings" was fascinating. I found the "School of Roots" section absolutely packed with virtuoso readings and ideas. Her closing, "Toward a book without an author" is the perfect payoff culmination of her/our hard work from the pages that preceded it. You'll have to read it yourself to see if you "get it" / agree with it. Now I'm inspired to read more Cixous.

I knew of Cixous, had a general idea of her doing work toward a kind of ecriture feminine (feminine writing), but hadn't actually read her writing until I read this book while tanning in Southern New Jersey this past June. This book was on a recommended reading list for a writing class I was taking, though I think I'm the only one who read it; it's not at all your usual writer's-help book, but that's good. It is dense, genre-breaking academic-poetic writing that I ended up having to get out of the sun to read. This book is comprised of a set of essays originally given as lectures, separated into "The School of the Dead," "The School of Dreams," and "The School of Roots." The writers that resonate with Cixous are "descenders, explorers of the lowest and the deepest," (a concept introduced in "The School of the Dead") and include some I knew -- Kafka, Dostoevsky, Genet, and Ingeborg Bachmann, and others I hadn't -- Clarice Lispector and Marina Tsvetaeva. I see there's a Derrida "endorsement" both here on the Amazon website and on the cover of the book, and so, as you would expect, this book's meditation on the connection between language and desire, between writing and the body, some wordplay and deconstruction of the very shape of letters or the names of writers is what you might expect from a French poststructuralist. What set this book apart for me was its attitude toward the works cited. Cixous doesn't use literature to promote flashy ideas; it's seriously personal work, a "Schooling" on thinking about one's own writing, she's actually interested in defining "truth." The first part of "The Dead," especially the kind of cataloguing of "deaths-as-beginnings" was fascinating. I found the "School of Roots" section absolutely packed with virtuoso readings and ideas. Her closing, "Toward a book without an author" is the perfect payoff culmination of her/our hard work from the pages that preceded it. You'll have to read it yourself to see if you "get it" / agree with it.

Al was my mentor in the 1970's and this is an honest and true representation of the man I knew. There will never be another like him.

Albert Shanker had always been one of my heroes . . . yet until
I read TOUGH LIBERAL by Richard D. Kahlenberg, I had not known
too much about him.

That's no longer the case . . . in fact, this excellent biography even
increased my appreciation of Shanker who once told an interviewer:
* "If I didn't have to make a living, I would have done this as a volunteer."

What he did was head the American Federation of Teachers for
well over 20-25 years . . . by doing so, he helped change the
perception of teachers by having them recognized as professionals:

* A professional receives a liberal-arts education, then specialized
training, and then must pass a rigorous exam before beginning
to practice. She participates in an internship, is guided by mentors,
and participates in reviewing the performance of colleagues. Once these
professional responsibilities are met come the reciprocal set of rights:
greater autonomy and higher compensation. In Shanker's vision,
policies like a rigorous national test, peer review, and career
ladders were not just defensive moves against critics
of public-school teachers, they were prerequisites
to the professionalization of teaching.

TOUGH LIBERAL summarized Shanker's contributions to
education in one of the finest concluding paragraphs that I've
ever read:

* In one lifespan, Albert Shanker helped to create the institution
of collective bargaining for teachers, giving them greater dignity
and voice in how they would be treated. He then used that power
to engage in a series of critical education reforms that proved
instrumental in improving and preserving the institution of public
education. Both accomplishments served the larger goal he cherished
above all others: strengthening American democracy. His failure
to convince fellow liberals to extend their support of democracy more
broadly--to racial policy, international affairs, and their views of the labor
movement--leaves open the question: what might society look like
if we tried?

If you want to learn about Albert Shanker and the labor movement in
this country, read this book . . . it will also make a great gift for any
teacher.

In his film, Sleeper, Woody Allen immortalized Albert Shanker as the madman responsible for blowing up the world. That helped to get Shanker known outside of NY, but clearly it wasn't the real Shanker. In this highly readable and often exhilarating biography of Shanker, Richard Kahlenberg shows that while Shanker, the architect of the modern teacher union movement (and, it turns out, so much more) surely understood power and accumulated it, his only "madness" was to seek to empower the powerless and to hold this nation to the democratic ideals it espoused and he so cherished. Indeed, far from being "mad," Shanker was both intellectually and politically brilliant -- a rare combination -- an idealist with both a shrewd and compassionate understanding of human nature and a pragmatist who nonetheless stood firm on principles, a stance that sometimes incurred the enmity of allies as much as enemies. This was also a man who dealt with the high and mighty, but who in his writing and speaking could take the most complicated ideas and make them accessible to ordinary people without ever dumbing anything down. Had Kahlenberg just written a biography of this complex and far-ranging man, that probably would have been interesting enough. But Kahlenberg goes further and roots Shanker in the major political and cultural struggles over the soul of the Democratic party and the direction of this country. Regardless of one's view of those struggles and their outcomes, Kahlenberg's recounting of them cannot help but make you think of missed opportunities and "what ifs" to this day. Politics, race, education, the meaning and practice of democracy -- a heady and vitally critical brew. And Kahlenberg stirs and blends this pot well through Shanker, his meaty main ingredient.

This book is a good source to balance the word and image of Islam and Muslim in the western world. Muslim is not only in Arabian peninsula or Gulf contries, in fact Indonesia is the largest muslim population in the world. Many pictures on the book can give the different side of Islam in Southeast asia. They don't speak arabic, they don't have big nose,they are short, skiny etc. I recommend this book for the people who wants to know Muslim in Southeast asia without reading a long history book.

But there is unbalance information in the book I noticed, specially information about Indonesian muslim in the introduction. Steve Raymer seems doesn't have a good source that he can get the information about Indonesian muslim. Might be because they are so many and he tries to put it in the same ammount as Malaysian which is only about 1/6 or 1/8 of Indonesian in comparison. It is best if he can consult or clarify his information with the Indonesian sociologists, historians, or scholars in order to validate the information. One of the examples is on second page, the picture doesn't not macth the note (citation). The picture is showing the people who are suplicating, is not always in arabic, but he says those people are reciting the koran. This is just small example.
I recommend people who have this book to check with the Southeast Asian people to clarify the information.
More than that, good work and well done.

As one who's lived in Southeast Asia off and on for the past seven years, the thing that strikes me about the book by Raymer are the brilliant photos, yes. But the way they are put together gives a human face to Southeast Asia's Muslim peoples. A fair and realistic look at them is refreshing in light of many Western reports that tout them all as gun-toting extremists.

Steve Raymer has done an exceptional job at capturing the humanity of Southeast Asian Muslims through the lenses of the faithful camera. The pictures are breathtakingly beautiful, while the accompanying caption and text serve as an easy-to-read commentary especially for those expecting only an excursion into the subject. His attempt at a sympathetic understanding of a culture that is relatively obscure to the average Westerner is commendable; the journalistic objectivity being a salient feature of the book.

Raymer, in my opinion, succeeded in shattering the perpetuated myth surrounding the perception of Muslims. Not only does he cogently disprove the notion of a monolithic Muslim culture across the Muslim world, but he also demonstrates the existence of diversity with which Islam is practiced in this forgotten region. The cognitive image of either a rich Middle-Easterner or a terrorist brandishing an AK-47 so often associated with Islam must now be relegated to the domain of stereotypes. The book is probably a silent apologist for the peace of Islam.

Caveat emptor for those expecting their stereotypes confirmed and prejudices accomodated; the book is sure to frustrate them.

The maxim that a picture is worth a thousand words had never been truer. The picture is now worth millions of humans.

Replying to the previous (first) reviewer: The author of UNTOLD LIVES is indeed a different Elizabeth Scarborough, whose first name, Pauline, is never used professionally. She is a historian of psychology and this book is a collective biography of the earliest women psychologists. It deals with science and psychologists as scientists, but is neither fiction nor fantasy! The "other" ES, I believe, is Elizabeth ANN Scarborough, who has published both with and without the middle name. The ACE edition of her THE GODMOTHER identifies her as a resident of Port Townsend, Washington.

This no-doubt excellent biographical book is written by a DIFFERENT Elizabeth Scarborough than the science fiction/fantasy author whose books appear on the rest of this page. Please do not confuse this serious non-fiction work with the fictional titles by the other author with the same name.

This no-doubt excellent biographical book is written by a DIFFERENT Elizabeth Scarborough than the science fiction/fantasy author whose books appear on the rest of this page. Please do not confuse this serious non-fiction work with the fictional titles by the other author with the same name.

This book details the Columbia University student revolt in 1968. It provides a very detailed, readable, amazingly inside view by the then editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator.

It's been nearly 40(!) years since I read this book.

I was in New York at another university when the revolt occurred. It was a shocker! But, when I first read the book in 1969 I was now a graduate student in a university undergoing its own student rebellion. In addition, the graduate students in the world-esteemed department I was in revolted against the department.

We used this book as our textbook! Really. There was some terrific advice of how to deal with those in power when you had no institutional or other supposedly 'legitimate' claim to power. Knowledge, of course, gleaned from the on-the-job training at Columbia.

For example, I'll never forget its advice of never allowing them to get you to sit down. (Because once you do you've been co-opted back into the usual power/control relationship. You know, "Sit down in your seats, boys and girls, and we'll discuss this calmly.")

This book comprises an essential document of the event, and anyone interested in it, or those times more generally, would do well to read it.

I checked out this undeservedly out-of-print book from the library while living in the Columbia University area in the late 1990s. I come from a journalistic family, and "Up Against the Ivy Wall" struck me as the single best piece of at-the-moment journalism I had ever read. The scope of the reporting of such a contentious time is amazing; it has little of the tunnelvision you normally expect from even the best journalists in such circumstances. I had to keep reminding myself that....the authors were college kids, too--only a few awkward references to sexual antics reminded me of that. What an achievement! Please, somebody, bring it back into print.

This is the definitive account of how a small group of radical students at Columbia University convinced hundreds of undergraduates that class struggle, the Vietnam war, and racial divides could all be addressed by taking over several campus buildings and dumping Grayson Kirk. That many students today look longingly at the 1968 episode and try to emulate it suggests they haven't read this book and learned its lessons.

What is truly fascinating about "Up Against the Ivy Wall," is how it captures the division within the radical ranks, specifically between the SDS and SAS. That black students took over their own building and barred white participation surprised the white radicals who had started it all, and illustrated how the radical message had splintered into a dozen causes--from opposing the construction of a gymnasium in Morningside Park, to scoring the administration for supporting a Defense Department arms initiative, to criticizing the University structure as necessarily oppressive to students, staff, and community. The resulting confusion doomed the movement. Administrators who didn't want to listen to the students' pointed to the changing message as another reason to ignore them or just to call in the police (whose brutality on this occasion is graphically detailed in the book) and end the uprising. Faculty who sought to work out a compromise saw the confusion in the student ranks and the intransigence of the administrators and simply threw up their hands in frustration.

Today's student radicals ought to read this book to learn how not to conduct a massive campaign, for any cause. Because if you look at Columbia today, you will find a University with all the institutional arrogance of its predecessors, and not the least bit in fear of students who look to failed methods of change for guidance.

This book is very helpful. It provides a world of information that will help anyone be able to get around and get involved in their community.

This is one of the greatest resource books I've ever used! It is so comprehensive, in that it provides resource information for everything from professional associations to book clubs. I'm a Guidance Counselor for the US Army, and I've used it on several occassions in counseling women on career matters. What was really astounding was that all of the phone numbers I called were correct! Many of the organizations are National and therefore are not only helpful to women in the Washington area, but for women throughout the country as well. The only other thing that I could say is thankyou , to the author for providing such a valuable tool for women. It has enriched and enhanced my life in many ways.

This book relenquishes a wealth of information and services that are available in the Washington D.C. area.

This map is great. I have a wedding coming up and I intend to purchase a map for every person coming in from out of town. This map is easy to navigate, small and easy to carry, contains metro information, streets, hotels, points of interest, shopping, and restaurants. It is so handy! I recommend this for anyone planning a trip to DC.

Used this map for our vacation to Washington DC this summer. The fold out maps are detail and informative and on 2 scales so you both see the area map as well as the large city. I liked that the Metro stops were on the maps and that there was a separate Metro map on the backside. Fits easily into a shirt pocket or pants pocket.

All of the Monuments and Tourist sites were well marked and shown with a walking distance scale.

I moved to DC two weeks ago and went a week without this map and now a week with it. What a difference! At first, I was using a hodge-podge of metro foldouts, museum maps, and visitor guides. It was do-able, but messy and confusing and all the folding and unfolding was annoying and quickly dog-eared any maps I had.

I saw this pop up map in a store and got it because I thought it looked cute, but its dang useful and I take it everywhere, which it is small enough to do.

This is why its awesome:

- its sturdy and made with a cardboard cover that protects the inner maps
- its small and folds up to fit in a back pocket or purse, but expands to a nice size
- it has a full metro map on the back cover (exactly like the ones found on the trains)
- no folding! It pops out and pops back in, takes 1 second
- makes great use of space, a map on every surface except the front
- detailed with great information on the Mall area only on one map
- detail of old town Alexandra w/ bus routs and detail of Georgetown
- index of streets and places of interest with map coordinates on back of fold out maps (which makes them a little awkward to read)
- $6.95, how could you go wrong?
- dang it if it aint cute


Some things it might be lacking:

- it does not cover all that big of an area, but it gets 95% of what a tourist will visit
- no info on city buses at all, just metro trains
- the street maps shows the metro stops but not the lines of the routs
- it does not show where the outlets of the metro stations are, for example some metro stations are very large and have two or more outlets on different streets. This is small thing, but I had a map with this info on it and it was surprisingly very very useful

Even with these things "missing" I still gave it 5 stars because its super useful, nice looking, easy to read and use, and all for only 7 bucks! Also, they made great use of space on the map and if they added all of those things it would be a confusing mess or wayyy bigger. I just mention them to make you aware of its limitations.

This is probably the best organized and informative kayaking/travel book I own. The large area maps are coupled with more detailed local maps to provide enough context and continuity. I am travelling to the Clayoqot area for several days of solo paddling, and this book provided ample helpful information.

A very useful book, and I'll consider the others in the series, now.

One minor quibble is that the book is color coded (which is good), but the matching "breakout" trip descriptions are printed in colors to match the section. Yellow-on-white is nearly impossible to read.

While I haven't yet used this book in the field, I have found it to be really good for planning my upcoming trip. It has lots of the right kind of information to help better anticipate what to expect and how to be prepared. The organization is great as are the illustrations/graphics, and I can say this having written a guidebook of my own (Paddling Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks). I look forward to the east coast edition coming out this summer.

this book is well written and researched and really made me want to change my up coming plan for day trips on the west coastof VI by kayak and instead spend a week doing so..camping along the way -

oh well next trip -

very handy book for planning such an excursion

Five stars are not enough. This work is quite thorough and entertaining. I now fancy myself somewhat of a military film guru thanks to the education from Jeremy Arnold and Jeanine Basinger.

Knowledgeably written by Jeanine Basinger (Corwin-Fuller Professor of Film Studies, Wesleyan University), The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy Of A Genre is a close and detailed study of an entire class of movies (over 1,000 films in total), pertaining to World War II. Originally published in 1986, The World War II Combat Film has now been completely updated and significantly expanded. Enhanced with a thorough filmography, The World War II Combat Film is especially recommended for military movie buffs and an invaluable addition to academic Cinematic Studies and Film History reference collections.

This is a very good, readable book that not only traces the development of the WWII combat film, but also discusses how genres change over time.

Basinger takes the WWII combat film to see how genres work. She did this because, obviously, there were none made before December 7th 1941, so there are no "lost films" in this genre. Thus she sees how genre elements come together gradually (the prototype phase), snap into place as a perfect model (the archetype), are used by skillful directors for powerful films that transcend the norm (masterpiece) and then lose their effectiveness and are inverted or combined with other genres to try to attract an audience (decadence.)

She looks at combat films from the 1940s to the 1980s, so she doesn't talk about all films made in Hollywood in 1941-5. If a film doesn't have a lot of combat, she ignores it. However, she does discuss many films and besides showing how genres develop, she shows how the combat film changed. The focus on a platoon of average Joes (Guadacanal Diary) eventually gives way to a focus on an elite force (Where Eagles Dare, for instance).

A very informative and thought producing book, perhaps the best by Basinger.