Columbia Books

This is the best guide to native (and nonnative) plants growing in the Pacific Northwest that I have found. Photographs are excellent and are accompanied by detailed descriptions of leaves, flowers and fruits and a location map showing the range of each plant. The book is over 500 pages with two plants described on each page. It is very comprehensive.

The "plants of....." series is the best most comprehensive botanical reference materials for the Northwest and southern BC as well as the interior, I highly reccomend these books to anyone who has interest in the indigenous species of these areas. As a proffessional Forester I have foujnd myself constantly referring to these books to identify, shrubs, herbs and trees, as well as mosses and lichens. And if your memory is as bad as mine this book will become a mainstay and welcome addition to your reference collection.

Unlike many histories of the New Left, which emphasize its exceptionalism and separatism, this one emphasizes the Left's continuing conversations with other traditions of American reform-Christian evangelicalism, the Social Gospel, the lyrical Left, mainstream feminism--even liberalism. For example, Rossinow stresses the importance of the populist liberalism of the Lone Star State to the social construction of the Texas New Left. Early leftists were encouraged by liberals like Ronnie Dugger, and later leftists found that they could form some constructive coalitions with liberals. While Rossinow acknowledges the general hostility of the Left to liberalism, he also shows that leftists could be creatively eclectic and inconsistent in forming coalitions.
Like other Sixties analysts, Rossinow shows how, as Kurt Vonnegut said, "America radicalizes Americans." Indeed, non-leftists shaped the late Sixties Left by their intransigence and their attacks. University repression, Black Power, and the Vietnam War also drew leftists away from the optimistic assumptions of the early years. Still, this backlash also led to the richness of "new working class" analysis, which Rossinow explains extraordinarily well. The idea that "alienation isn't restricted to the poor" (p. 194) allowed leftists a wider range for radicalism, interrogating most of the institutions of American society. When the Vietnam War ended, and the national Left disintegrated, this wide-ranging cultural activism was what was left.

By the end of the decade, the emphasis on authenticity, coupled with the intransigence of the political "System" and the factionalism of the Left, led activists to an emphasis on cultural change through counter-cultural living. Instead of overthrowing American government, they would undermine American society by creating a new society in the shell of the old. Like the New Left, the counter-culture emphasized authenticity. Indeed, Rossinow suggests that "starting in 1966, counter-cultural activity became "the new left's most important strategy for fomenting social change in America" (p. 251). Like the lyrical Left of the early twentieth century, this prefigurative politics had its own (usually small, usually local) successes, but it also succeeded in bringing cultural issues into mainstream American politics, most often in the Democratic Party. And as Rossinow points out, it complemented the cultural modernism of the American middle classes. In either case, cultural radicalism became cultural meliorism, and reinforced the liberal individualism of the mainstream culture.

This book is valuable, not just for its own original and nuanced interpretation of Sixties politics, but for its historiographical insights. Rossinow knows virtually all of the literature on Sixties politics, and, both in the text and in the footnotes, he sets his interpretation in conversation with other Sixties analysts. The result is not just a first-rate monograph that complexifies the Sixties, but a guided tour of important scholarly thinking about that decisive decade.

Rossinow paints a detailed picture at the activist life of the University of Texas during the days of the SDS and SNCC. It is amazing that someone like himself, who wasn't there and is much younger than the participants, can create such a tale. I'm too young to have been there also, but I've had the opportunity to meet some of these incredible people in my time here at UT-Austin. The activist blood still runs warm here, and will for years to come, and it is because of the people Rossinow has chronicled in this book. Want to know how things happened? Here it is. Want to be inspired toward change? Here it is.

Lurking deep within the Hollywood films of the WWII era lay the hidden truths of American history, secrets so awe inspiring that may find yourself trying to run for cover as Professor Polan takes you on a guided tour through the astonishing sights of America's psyche as revealed by his intricate analyses of the films that the Dream Factory produced to keep the Allies focused on victory and the costs that this focus incurred. After reading this book you will never look at America or Hollywood the same way again. Definitely worth whatever time and effort it may take to acquire.

Lurking deep within the Hollywood films of the WWII era lay the hidden truths of American history, secrets so awe inspiring that may find yourself trying to run for cover as Professor Polan takes you on a guided tour through the astonishing sights of America's psyche as revealed by his intricate analyses of the films that the Dream Factory produced to keep the Allies focused on victory and the costs that this focus incurred. After reading this book you will never look at America or Hollywood the same way again. Definitely worth whatever time and effort it may take to acquire.

This is a solid resource for anyone beginning or stuck in the middle of a dissertation. I wish I had this one from the start. There are several chapters spent on narrowing the thesis, focus, organization, writing, editing, and defending the dissertation.

This book has served as an invaluable guide as I write my qualitative dissertation. Qualitative research is not the "norm" in my university program, and my professors (much as I love them) were providing little guidance on how to approach writing up my research. Recommended books on completing the quantitative dissertation did not seem useful, and I was feeling lost and confused. Biklen and Casella's book is a road map that provides both the big picture and specific signposts. Examples of the authors' suggestions that I have found useful include writing the data analysis chapters first and separating the methods chapter into methodology and procedures. This powerful little book has served as my Bible or perhaps my Strunk & White as I plan and write the chapters of my qualitative dissertation. Thank you!

Then take a look at Mike Kukral's account of the 1989 events in Prague. This is the ONLY, day-to-day, non-media, non-government writing of an America who was present from start to finish. Chapter 3, which covers about 70 well-written pages, is a diary of the historic events leading up to, during, and after the "Velvet Revolution". Kukral's voice is deep and full of detail, yet can be easily understood by most anyone. As the events proceed, the excitement leaps off the pages and makes you feel as though you were standing alongside the author in Wenceslas Square on a chilly November evening. The social aspect of an Ohio University education played a crucial role in the accessability of this work - how often does the Smiths album "Strangeways" get mentioned alongside Havel and humanistic political geography? This is a very worthwhile read for anyone traveling to Prague or peace-loving revolutionaries who haven't yet broadened past Ghandi and MLK.

This book is a stunning account of Kukral's day to day adventures as an American caught in the middle of the Velvet Revolution in Prague. His writing is brilliant as he captures the mood and atmosphere of the time and city. Kukral's view from the streets in Chapter 3 is a wonderfully written personal journal in which his observations on Czech culture, Prague history and architecture, and the last days of communism shine brilliantly from the pages. Other chapters deal with Prague history and culture in a somewhat unique 'humanistic' method. If you want to experience the city of Prague during a revolution read this book. The Prague Post gave this book a very high rating in its review and I recommend it above the works of T.G. Ash and other writers on the Velvet Revolution.

For those who feel the call to preach God's word to others, it is important to not allow ourselves to be pigeonholed into delivering the same message each week because we "know" our congregation. One of the tasks of the preacher is to force the listeners to stretch a bit. Just as a successful workout is enhanced by stretching, so is a deepening spiritual experience.

Christine Marie Smith has brought together eight diverse voices that each provide their own distinct perspective and allow the reader to learn some ways to "stretch." She provided the theologians with six guided questions, and allowed them to share thoughts from their perspective of persons with disabilities, Native Americans, African American women, Filipinos, Hispanics, Korean Americans, Jewish, and lesbians.

There may be some preachers who say, "I don't have any of the cultural/ethnic folks in my congregation or in my community" and it is those who may most need to read this book. In her introduction, Smith offers that "Euro-American voices still dominate every aspect of the field of homiletcs...[and] when one cultural perspective completely dominates an entire pastoral and theological field, radical change is needed."

Professor and United Methodist minister Kathy Black helps to stretch the readers' minds regarding persons with disabilities. As the minister of a Deaf congregation, Black recognizes that historically it was "difficult for people to encounter the face of God in persons who were perceived to be less than whole." She affirms that it incurable disabilities are not a part of God's will and it is the responsibility of the preacher to help people to "encounter the face of God in someone maneuvering a wheelchair...or giving a lecture in sign language."

As an African American woman minister, Teresa Fry Brown recognizes that African American women have encountered "racism, sexism, classism, materialism, deonominationalism, ageism, and other forms of oppression and rejection." In trying to discover their own faith voices they have had to "chart their own paths to live out their faith in God." Brown submits that through God's "Affirmative Action Program," all voices are welcomed into God's realm.

Christine Marie Smith has done a beautiful job providing the voices that all should hear, the voices that affirm God's never-ending love and grace for all of God's children. Let the reader carry that knowledge to the congregation and let the congregation carry it out into the world. In doing so, justice for all will indeed prevail.

PREACHING JUSTICE: EHTHNIC AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES
Edited by Christine Marie Smith

We are all culturally myopic. We see through the lens of the culture we were born into, we love through the lens of our sexual orientation, we travel through the prejudice in the world covered in the skin of our particular race. It's just a fact of life that we react from these basics. It's also a fact that anyone who is planning on ministry as his or her path in the world can't be satisfied to see only through that personal lens. That is not what Christ is asking of us. And this is one reason to be grateful for Christine Smith's book, Preaching Justice. This work is a collection of eight essays, which focus on entirely different points of view. Whether reading Kathy Black's essay, A Perspective of the Disabled, or Justo Gonzalez's A Hispanic Perspective, or Smith's essay, A Lesbian Perspective you are stretched beyond your natural perspective to understand God, theology and preaching from someone else's reality.
The theme running through the work is the reality of justice as preached from these different points of view. Stacy Offner, in her essay A Jewish Perspective, reminds us that the Hebrew word tzedek is translated as "justice" but also as "righteousness", "virtue" and "equity" and that that word really distills the whole Torah's prescription for the social order of society. So reading these essays helps us remember that though there has never been total social order, never been full justice in the world, justice remains our goal. The Word of God is justice and our preaching is delivering the Word of God. These theologians and preachers have wonderful words to share in helping us do just that.

My compliments to the authors of this book. It is quite a useful and readable overview of our presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush. My compliments as well to the previous reviewer, Solomon. He has thoroughly and skillfully described the authors' style and structure used to profile each president. Please give this reviewer a "helpful" vote as I have done.

I'll add just one comment. This book is a great companion volume to a presidential biography. Some time spent with the John Adams chapter, for example, will provide you with a preview--an "advance organizer," if you will--to structure your understanding of a complex work like David McCullough's John Adams. You will enjoy any president's biography more with one of this book's chapters at hand.

Readers who enjoy these profiles may also like the perspective on presidential parents in Doug Wead's The Raising of a President: The Mothers and Fathers of Our Nation's Leaders. Those interested in the personalities of our nation's leaders may enjoy Rubenzer and Faschingbauer's Personality, Character, and Leadership In The White House: Psychologists Assess the Presidents.

This is a good overview of the Presidents of the US. It would make a good gift for a student; from high school through college and for anyone interested in American history.

Each president is covered in from four to ten pages, depending upon the number of terms that he served. Each president is covered using the same format. The review begins with a half page summary of his term or terms and biographical facts, including: birth and death data, ancestry, information about his mother, father, wife or wives, children, military service, religious affiliation, age at inauguration, profession before and after the presidency, place of burial, nickname and writings. Opposite to this first page is a full-page painting or photograph of the president. Information about their elections is provided as well as the members of their administrations. There is a section about their wives or social hostess (for the widowers and the one bachelor). Information about scandals is provided, as are political cartoons and additional photographs of the president or significant events that occurred during his presidency. There is a list of a few quotes by the president and about him (about evenly divided between complementary and derogatory). The bulk of each section is occupied with a chronology of the events that occurred during their presidency and a time line of events in their life and events in US and European history. All is all, a tremendous amount of information is provided, but given the limitation of the space allotted and the space given over to pictures the information is just an outline of the presidency.

The outline format, while suffering from not being an in-depth study has the advantage of bring out many comparisons that would be buried in a more detailed book. For instance, there is a common thread regarding the development of a national bank and regarding the issue of slavery.

This is a great reference book if you want to know the most important details of the life and term in office of each president. It is also a quick and entertaining read and one, which I am sure, will provide at least a few new facts for most every reader.

The author had experience in working as officer of ILO, which crystallized into The Anatomy of Influence (co-author : Harold Jacobson). He has restructured his epistemology as well as ontology of IRs by focusing on historical materialism, especially on the idea of Gramsci, so that it would criticised not only realism but positivism as a whole. His theory tries to grasp historical transformations of production=social forces, states and world order comprehensively.

Robert Cox has done a brillant job of taking Political Economy to the next level. Whereas, other political theorists have concentrated on the International Political Economy. Cox focuses upon the Global and the forces which go into the making of forms of production, state and world order. Any student interested in the dynamic historical interplay of these structures is well advised to pick up a copy of this book. Although, Cox is a Historical Materialist, he is a Gramscian thus allowing for a greater theoretical openness then some operating in the same paradigm.

How can a newly networked social structure lead to changes in social, economic and political structures which take into account past non-networked knowledge? In Prometheus Wired Barney examines the history and nature of digital networks with an eye to exploring modern issues of privacy, telecommuting, and economics.

Prometheus Wired is so well researched and written, and its thesis so well argued, that it caused me seriously to review my own feelings about technology and its relationships to democracy. Dr. Barney takes to task folks who, like me, believe that technology is fundamentally ungovernable. In the end, I was not persuaded to change my own views, but I was much enlightened by his explication of arguments against my own position, and that earns my greatest respect and thanks.

As one unschooled in philosophy, I found myself initially chafing at the philosophical groundlaying of chapter one, though by the end of the book one understands the necessity of it. For the opposite reason, as a techie from way back I chafed also at the computing/networking primer that constitutes chapters 2 and 3, but I must tell you that the primer (1) is expertly written and (2) is also essential background for the rest of the book, so don't skip it unless you are already an expert yourself. In any case, don't skip the part of chapter 3 dealing with networks as control utilities, which is where he really starts to weave the philosophy and technology together.

The culmination of the weaving process - the "whole cloth" of his thesis was (to me) represented in chapter 6, the penultimate chapter. And it was in this chapter that he really had me re-examining my own knowledge and beliefs. But in the end, while I very much respect his arguments and his positions on the issues, in general I was not persuaded that technology is tamable, or that society is necessarily worse off for it, or that the un-effing of the ineffable would ruin our very Being (as he seems to argue.)

I base my own views partly on my own study of the accelerating, exponential change in technologies and in a belief that it's "turtles all the way down" - that one mystery revealed will only present us with two more, and that we're in no danger of losing our Being through technology's machinations (pun intended!) Rather, in my own research I see reason to hope (thanks, Prometheus!) that through technology we will arrive at an enhanced stage of Being.

Being one myself, I confess to feeling a bit miffed with his assertion (on p. 250) that "those who promote the belief that digital networks are technically immune to legal authority of any kind express a normative preference rather than a fact." I like to think I am expressing a belief premised on the facts of technology - especially the accelerating change in technology, and not at all a normative preference. And I most strongly - but respectfully - disagree with his statement (also p. 250) that "the operative question is not whether network-mediated activity CAN be subject to the limitations of laws and rules, but rather whether it SHOULD be and, if so, by whom." It is true his statement is based upon strong argument presented earlier in the chapter, but if (like me) one disagrees with those arguments, then the statement seems very wrong.

In the spirit of his own call for more thought and deliberation on the subject, I would urge Dr. Barney (and others) to consider the following questions: CAN the net be governed, and if so, HOW; and if NOT, what is the prognosis for society and based on that prognosis what, if anything, must we do?

I would also urge everyone interested in the topic enough to have read my review to this point, to read Dr. Barney's book. It is an excellent starting point for answering the question as I have just posed it.

This book documents efforts in American academe and the media to suppress research into the important role played by race and heredity in determining intelligence and other vital human qualities. It presents scientific evidence of the significance of heredity, and details how well-known scholars have been intimidated from speaking the truth. It provides concrete evidence of media distortion and reveals the Marxist orientation of scholars who have persistently attempted to deny the importance of genetic differences in Humankind.

Contents include: Hans J. Eysenck: "Science and Racism"; Science and Heredity from Francis Galton and Karl Pearson to World War II); The Legacy of Marx, Mannheim and Lysenko; Scientific Luddites and Neo-Lysenkoists; The Anti-science Views of Gould, Lewontin, Kamin and Marxist Student Organizations; The Persecution of Scholars who Investigate Race Differences - Arthur Jensen of Berkeley, Nobel Laureate and co-inventor of the transistor, William Shockley, Guggenheim Fellow, J. Philippe Rushton, E. O Wilson, R. J. Herrnstein, M. Levin, L. Gottfredson and Seymour Itzkoff; The Bell Curve - Activist Lysenkoism in Academe, the Media and Public Policy; Conclusion - The Influence of Heredity on Human Personality as Confirmed by the findings of the Minnesota Twin and Adoption Research, and the Human Genome Project.

an objective and eloquently written book that spotlights the double standard in society today. where reverse prejudice is hidden behind a facade of good intentions. and how scientific fact has been deemed fascist opinion. society's views are shown for what they truly are when combated by fact and an insightful study into communism. genetics and its consequences are fighting a losing battle with emotionally fueled doctrines of what "should be". the belief that environment is the only influence upon someones IQ is pointedly related to the doctrine of communism. in fact that belief IS communism. the book shows that intelligence is directly related to a persons gene pool. and that gene pool is decided by that person's race. but emotions do not allow the proper study of the subject due to the fact that certatins races are genetically inferior to another. the book also follows certain people and their lives in the pursuit to better society through scientific and objectionable study of IQ and genetics. and the long term effects upon society. namely one william shockley. who won a nobel prize for the transitor. then due to an article where a teenager threw acid on a lady he devoted the rest of his life on the subject of "dysgenics". which is basically the lower half of the IQ population outgrowing the upper IQ population and the effects over generations. he also submitted examples to combat these long term effects.