Research Books

If you're a fan of Ballard, this is definitely worth reading. If think you may be a fan, it may be even more useful. It may seem pricey for only 176 pages, but don't be fooled: the book is 8.5" x 11" and contains a lot of material.

The book has 8 sections. Most importantly, they include Interviews, Fiction, Non-Fiction, Criticism, and a Reference section that includes a two page piece by Ballard entitled "What I believe."

The fiction section includes some things readers may have already read (Ch.1 of Crash, and a portion of the Atrocity Exhibition.) But there are other interesting short pieces that may be more difficult to find (Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown and Sixty Minute Zoom). The same can be said about the Non-Fiction section.

I think the book really shines in the first 54 pages which contain three interviews with Ballard. These early interviews (early 1980s), along with "What I believe," really give the reader a sense of what Ballard is getting at as he weaves his re-occuring theme of psychopathology throughout his novels. You get a great sense of the man and his beliefs. They give the novice Ballard fan much more insight into what exactly Ballard is getting at throughout his works, and will likely make his novels much easier to grasp.

In sum, I am very satisfied with this book. I have other Ballard products from RE Search (J.G. Ballard: Quotes and J.G. Ballard: Conversations) and have consistently been impressed with the quality of product that RE Search puts out.

RE/SEARCH PUBLICATIONS #8/9 is devoted to the work and thought and thoughtful work of one jg ballard. it is a collection of excerpts from his novels, film reviews, interviews and assorted ephemera from the science fiction meister.
if you are at all interested in the mind of a space age prophet, #8/9 is a wonderful primer.
if you are at all sympathetic to the esoteric and fabulous you should also check out RE/SEARCH PUBLICATIONS themselves for a goldmine of interesting reading.

Buy this book and read a few pages every morning. Your days will be better because if it. The man has vision, and reading his words can help you focus your own. Great book.

This book is an amazing introduction to the works of a man with great thoughts. The introductory interview contains almost too much information and opinions; it is hard to wrap your mind around. But for those of you up to the challenge, it is great reading. Ballard's fiction and non-fiction excerpts are all enticing and the biography is very interesting, giving justice to the very exciting life Ballard has lived. An excellent read for anyone interested in finding a new author, or for those who simply want to read more of Ballard's works.

This Re/Search volume includes a comprehensive bibliography and numerous interviews with Ballard, most done during the 80's. I was amazed to see an 80's interview with ballard by Grahme Ravell, who has come into fame in his own right since then. Re/Search Ballard also has numerous excerpts as well as The Atrocity Exibition in full. The volume is filled with intriguing Ballard quotes, photos and other Ballard miscellany that would surely be difficult or impossible to find anywhere else. Well packaged, informative and useful. For the Ballard fan, not the new reader.

"The issue comes down to ...competing paradigms. One is the myth that the Americas had been isolated from the historical world until Columbus broke the barrier in 1492. The other charts world patterns of trade, easily accommodating a Scandinavian expedition west from Vinland in 1362." ~ pg. 86

Alice Beck Kehoe's research sheds new light on the Kensington Runestone found in 1898. Was this stone really inscribed in 1362 or was it a hoax? All the evidence presented by Alice Beck Kehoe leads me to believe that it was real, although she presents both sides of the story.

It seems few of the experts who were consulted were willing to rock the boat and called it a hoax. Still the evidence in favor of it being valid is overwhelming. Page after page presents perfectly good reasons for an expedition in 1362. The story gets even more interesting when Alice Beck Kehoe uncovers evidence (1960 discovery by Helge Ingstad) of a Vinland in a fishing village called L'Anse aux Meadows.

"The site fit the landscape selected by Norse in Greenland and Iceland, and the low mounds resembled Norse ruins there." ~ pg. 24

While this book covers a wide range of topics one of the most interesting notes is about Cinderella's slippers that were made of "vair" (fur) not "verre" (glass). This book is easy to read in one sitting and I think you will find it to be quite entertaining.

~The Rebecca Review

I have to admit that Alice B. Kehoe is my mom. Be that as it may, her new book, "The Kensington Runestone," is one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in years. I also liked that the book is short - 80 pages - and readable in one evening.

Ask anyone the question, "Who discovered America?" and you'll be told that Columbus discovered America, in 1492. Then the English settled Jamestown in 1607, followed by the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in 1620. Right? Don't bet on it.

In 1898 a Minnesota farmer found a rock carved with Norse runes. Translated, it said that a party of 30 Swedes and Norwegians were on a trading journey. Ten men were murdered near the spot, apparently by hostile natives. Ten more of their party were waiting with their ships fourteen days away, on the sea. The inscription ended with "Hail Mary, deliver us from evil" and the year: 1362.

The stone was dismissed as a hoax for several reasons. First, no other archeological evidence existed showing that Norse had explored west of Greenland. Second, scholars said that the runes had grammatical errors, words not seen on other runes, and letters not seen on other runes or carved differently. Third, the farmer was Norwegian, suggesting that he'd faked the stone to promote Norwegians.

Geologists, however, found the weathering in the engraving to be hundreds of years old. And the geologists who interviewed the farmer agreed that he was an honest, intelligent, and respectable man. The farmer never sought money or publicity for his discovery.

The Kensington Runestone passed into obscurity, for nearly 100 years. Kehoe, professor emeritus of anthropology at Marquette University and the author of textbooks on North American Indians and four-field anthropology, has brought together recent research that sheds new light on the Kensington Runestone. One of her goals was to show that using all four fields of anthropology - linguistics, archaeology, physical anthropology, and cultural anthropology - can solve problems that examining only a single field can't.

Linguists now say that the "grammatical errors" in the Kensington Runestone are a dialect from a certain area of Sweden. The unknown runes and words have been found in previously unknown Old Swedish inscriptions.

In the 1960s, archeologists excavated a Norse village in Newfoundland, dated to around A.D. 1000. Kehoe describes the dedicated work over twenty years leading to this discovery. She also notes that archeologists excavate villages where people lived for generations. A party of 30 or 40 men traveling through a region would likely leave little or no evidence obvious hundreds of years later.

Kehoe also describes 14th-century Scandinavian politics. Let's see, the Black Death killed half the population, Norway and Sweden merged, along with a couple of Danish provinces, then Germans took over, a three-year-old boy became king, who later married a ten-year-old girl...OK, I can't keep it all straight. But a lot happened. The Norse lost their lucrative Russian fur trading routes. Kehoe suggests that the Norse may have remembered trading furs with the natives of "Vinland" (North America), and sent a party to explore reopening this area. She shows on a map that Minnesota is as far west of Norway as the Norse traded in Russia to the east. To men familiar with Russian rivers and forests, traveling in northeastern North America wouldn't have been difficult.

She then shows that Kensington, Minnesota, which is a poor area to farm, was an abundant area for hunter-gatherers. The site is a junction between three ecosystems, enabling inhabitants to enjoy a wide variety of food sources year round. More importantly for fur traders, a wide variety of fur-bearing animals are found nearby.

Kensington is also fourteen days journey from not one but two "seas": Duluth, on Lake Superior (easily reached from Newfoundland via the St. Lawrence River), and Hudson's Bay, via Winnipeg and Canadian rivers.

Kehoe then considers what was going on in North America in the 14th century. Cahokia (now St. Louis), then one of the largest cities in the world, collapsed, changing the political geography of the Midwest. And lots of other stuff happened, too much to list here.

All together, "The Kensington Runestone" convinced me that a party of Swedes and Norwegians traveled through Minnesota in 1362. The book also showed how narrow-minded "experts" can be when an anomaly challenges their conventional wisdom. Reading "The Kensington Runestone" is a thought-provoking way to spend an evening.

As an amateur historian who has been researching the Kensington Runestone (or KRS), a runic inscription that is an account of a Norse exploration to Minnesota 130 years before Columbus, I have been looking forward to reading Alice Kehoe's new book, The Kensington Runestone: Approaching a Research Question Holistically (Waveland Press). Kehoe is an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and it is from this field of science that she approaches the question of the Kensington Runestone.
As an anthropologist, Kehoe notes that she is "accustomed to taking a holistic view, encompassing data from archaeology, natural sciences, history and human behavior" (p1). Later she contineues in a similar vein: "[fellow anthropologist Guy] Gibbon and I, looking on as anthropologists familiar with the philosophy of science... see, on one hand, the intertia of mainstream science - the Runestone is a hoax 'everybody knows that' - and on the other hand, anomalies that press upon the accepted position. The range of data and interpetations, from geophysics to world history, calls for the anthropological perspective, weaving together hard science and humanities." (p15).

This book is liable to be a dissapointment for those seeking in depth analysis of specific contentious points regarding the Stone. Rather than focusing intently on the smallest detail, Kehoe steps back, looking at the case from a broader perspective. It is from this persepective that Kehoe finds the weight of evidence supports the claim that the Kensington Runestone is authentic.

Much of the book is spent in summary of the history and agruments regarding the Runestone. In this endeavor, Kehoe is both factual and objective. What she adds to the discussion is an examination of the reasoning behind the arguments. For instance, Kehoe notes that the pro-authenticty philologist Robert Hall was a student of the linguist Leonard Bloomfield, whose work concentrated on the phonetic aspects of the science. Hall used this backround to present the KRS as a document whose abberitions could be explained as a phonetic rendering of the dialect used by the expedition, as opposed to the more formal renderings of the literary record.

Kehoe also examines the historical record, and suggests that during the mid-14th century, Sweden might be looking to establish fur trading on the North American continent, beyond the control of the Hanse. The KRS inscription may have been the result of a failed mission to establish a base for such trade.

Kehoe also believes that the reason it is difficult for so many to accept the KRS as an authentic artifact, is that such acceptance requires a major paradigm shift. "Dropping the pardigm of a pristine New World outside of history until Columbus sailed to the world's edge jolts the structure of beliefs taught to Americans." (p86).
The Ingstad's discovery of the Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows has begun such a shift, and there is now an acceptance of early Norse in the Canadian arctic. However, the KRS goes far beyond that acceptable level in regards to the paradigm of non-contact between Europeans and North America.

Kehoe finds the Kensington Runestone an interesting study of science vs popular myth, and suggests that it presents a hypothesis which could produce interesting new research and discoveries. This well written and well researched book provides insight into the thought processes behind the opinions. It is highly reccomended for anyone with an intrest in the Runestone, but I would also reccomd it for those with an intrest in the scientific process and the conflict that arises when pardigms are assaulted.

This is a deeply persuasive and thought-provoking account of recent issues surrounding the controversial Kensington Runestone, including some fascinating new contributions from the world of linguistics and biology. This is no work of hokum, but a well argued document likely to lead to much classroom discussion over scientific method. Unexpectedly excellent!

The Kensington Runestone's tale is fantastic: a farmer unearths this headstone-sized artifact in a Minnesota farm field in 1898, and discovers mysterious runes carved into it with the date A.D. 1362, implying that Norse travelers journeyed an unbelievable distance inland from Newfoundland & planted the stone, 130 years before Columbus made landfall in the West Indies. Prior to this book, much of the writing on the Kensington Runestone has been dated, unscientific, and has treated the stone variously as a hoax, UFO-ish mystery, or object for advocacy. But Ms. Kehoe's 87 well-written pages treat the Kensington Runestone as a case study in critical thinking. An anthropologist noted for her North American Indian ethnographies, Ms. Kehoe presents the runestone's facts in the context of pre-Columbian European-North American history and trade economics. Once you read her broad, clear-eyed view -- incorporating archeology, anthropology, geology, Indian history, and economics -- the stone's authenticity suddenly becomes plausible, even likely, even to scientific skeptics like myself. Its authenticity rests not only on a recent geological examination of the stone and on newer learnings about early Swedish runes, but on the surprising economics and geographic scope of fur trading in the mid-14th century. If you want an intelligent eye-opener on the Kensington Runestone's story, I highly recommend this little book. And a good companion is the exhaustive scientific analysis of the stone and its runes, "The Kensington Rune Stone: Compelling New Evidence" (2005) available from its publisher.

This is a professionally written text with excellent information about learning disabilities. It is appropriate for professionals in the field, as well as parents with a background knowledge of learning disabilities.

Having taught reading disabled children and subscribing to the MSL and VAKT methodology as well as Linda Mood Bell I LOVE being able to refer to a succinct well written resource.
The book to own ...if you are just starting out or have been in Reading a long time. Great resource!!

Written by the expert team of Jack M. Fletcher, G. Reid Lyon, Lynn S. Fuchs & Marcia A. Barnes, Learning Disabilities: From Identification to Intervention is an evidence-based presentation of cutting-edge information about assessing and dealing with learning disabilities, with especial focus upon reading disabilities (word recognition, fluency, or comprehension-related), mathematics disabilities, and written expression disabilites. Though more of a scholarly assessment and description of the latest findings than a "how-to" manual per se, Learning Disabilities is sure to prove an invaluable, up-to-date resource especially for educators with responsibility for learning disabled-children, as well as anyone recognizing the "unexpected underachievement" that often signifies LDs and staging an appropriate intervention. A logical-minded, information-packed compendium.

This is an excellent book for the professional, researcher or serious student of learning disabilities. It is chock full of relevant research and gives divergent views fully and fairly. It nevertheless takes a stand on the assessment of and treatment for learning disabilities that differs markedly from the traditional approach commonly found in school districts and private clinician's offices. It provides a very good way to understand this perplexing and challenging field with up to date research. Most importantly, this book provides a refreshing willingness to challenge dogma and to give specific guidelines for future research and, most importantly, to guide remediation.

Excellent read. This book is informative, balanced, and will be uniquely valuable to health and education professionals, and the public in general. Fletcher and his colleagues offer an expert analysis as to where the field of Learning Disabilities has been, and where it must go, if we are to help the many children who struggle each day, trying to learn. Fletcher and his colleagues are clear; the IQ-Achievement Discrepancy Model is invalid and should be laid to rest once and for all, before more children are excluded from the educational intervention they need. They offer instead a thoroughly 'common sense' model of 'Response to Intervention (RTI), a model that, if adopted, will substantially increase the number of children getting help, sooner, and at a lower cost. The authors clearly understand the complex dynamic of science, clinical practice, educational instruction, and public policy. All must be aligned to move the field of LD ahead, and Fletcher and his colleagues are positioned to foster that needed change with this impressive contribution.

Enjoyed the book... good information and humerous. The last chapter should be required reading for all high school seniors.

It is rare to find something that provides an "ah-ha" experience. These ideas are that for me. Drawing on years of work, John's book chronicles his intellectual journey to his current understanding of capital markets using a thermodynamics framework rather than with complicated and confusing macroeconomics theories. In spite of the depth of his thinking, the explanations are clear, understandable and framed by his own experiences. I love the stories about growing corn as a boy and the lessons he learned. This is a book about humanity and life as much as it is about capital flows and investing. It changed not only how I think about investing and the economy but also about how people process and react to social change.

LESSONS FROM A ROAD WARRIOR is more than an insightful, profitable read: it is an important, timely book for our day.

Dr. John Rutledge is a really smart guy. He has advised Presidents (including the economic architects of the Reagan Revolution), consulted with governments and led businesses across the world. He sits at the tables of foreign leaders and industry captains who eagerly seek his counsel. He is one of the thoughtful, practical, insightful economists and business leaders of our generation.

I also love his heart for kids and the needy. Something special has touched Dr. Rutledge and he has a desire to give and make a difference in people's lives; especially desperate people in remote areas of the world.

Storm systems
Dr. Rutledge believes that capital markets can be understood using the laws and principles of physics; esp. thermodynamics. Volatility and market disruptions are akin to storms, changes in high and low pressure, and other powerful weather patterns. When certain markets are being adversely affected (oil, commodities, financials), it creates changes in capital flows, arbitrage opportunities and investor behavior which are understandable and predictable.

Investing
Like many other successful investors, Rutledge traces his investing disposition to Graham, the grandfather of value investors. This school of thought says, in short, investors want to own assets which create cash. Value investors want to own companies who produce cash (dividends) now. Growth investors are willing to wait. Value investors are from Missouri. John Rutledge is a value investor with a global perspective.

He recommends large, U.S. companies which are profitable. He also mentions small sector allocations; particularly in China. Stock investments should be made for the long term. He should know, he has managed hundreds of millions in funds.

Competing for Capital
Competition today in the global marketplace has been mischaracterized and misunderstood in the media. Protectionism and tariffs are the stuff of political demagoguery, not sound economics. "Countries are not competing for jobs today; they are competing for capital." For several years, capital has been flowing out of the United States and into places like India and China. This trend is a direct result of taxation policies which penalize risk and investment of capital. The U.S. is in need of reversal of these policies which punish job creators and innovators. Time is not our friend.

Fear
The current financial crisis is not a consumer spending problem - it is an informational short-circuit - investors are not able to properly value the securities in the current market (mortgage bonds, for example). The government is treating the wrong ailment (spending) instead of providing clarity and visibility and assurances of the value and pricing of these asset-backed securities.

There is danger, however, in the power of self-fulfilling prophecies (See Daniel Boorstin, The Image) which can lead to very, very disruptive market conditions.

The Future
An excerpt for the chapter of the same name: "The 20th century was the century of dinosaur energy; the 21st century will be dominated by human capital." The consequences of this are enormous; especially in the distribution and demands on natural resources, including oil.

Advice to live by
"If you want to be successful, do something you love, learn something new every day, find the smartest, mot decent people you can and stay as close to them as possible so you can learn how they think."

Dr Rutledge is a combination of "Renaisance Man" and Will Rogers. By use of personal experiences he skillfully, and often times humorously, provides a useful explanation of past economic and financial market events. More importantly, his sensible and well reasoned hypothesis surrounding the connection between the principles of thermodynamics and financial market behavior provides a rational approach as to how investors can navigate current and prospective finacial tidal waves. A must read.

Wondering what's happening out there in the capital markets? Trying to decide what you should do? Hey, are you just trying to understand what is going on and how you can keep your head down? Then I recommend that you read this new book by Dr. John Rutledge. Dr. Rutledge one of the architects of the greatest expansion in the history of the planet and if you read this you will understand more about economics than just about anyone else. You might even be tempted to get back in touch with your Econ professors.

First of all, the book is really fun to read. Let me restate that - it's fun to read. John Rutledge has a certain way about his writing that draws you in and you are sure to enjoy it. Your last Econ book is probably sitting on your floor being used as a door stop. This one will be by your nightstand. The reason you'll enjoy it is because Dr. Rutledge writes this book like, well, a writer, not an economist. For example, the chapter on budget deficits uses easy examples (Aunt Tilly) and simple pie charts to explain what they are all about. Another chapter is called Thermo-Economics and is based on some of Dr. Rutledge's theories on thermodynamics. Interesting, and you know, you'll "get it" after reading it.

One final reason to read this book is that I believe that it will make you money. You will finish the book with a much better understanding of capital, investments, and how to face these uncertain times. I found his first book Rust to Riches, published in the mid 80's, a few years ago, and it was really interesting to read with the hindsight of what has transpired since then. Guess what? Just about everything that Dr. Rutledge predicted happened did. I'm excited about being able to read this book now - and using it to make money - rather than waiting and reading it five years from now telling myself, "Jeez I should have read this a few years ago..."

This is the finest book on macro economics in a generation. Save the latte for a few weeks and Invest in it for you and your family's future.

I feel like can not speak highly enough about this book and I'm really sorry about! It is one of the best books on how to connect learning with business performance I ever seen.

Starts explaining how to conect learning objectives with business' performance objectives. Explains how to develope learning objectives, design learning measures, check measures reliability and validity. Makes a clear, nice and easy to understand transition to how to analyze learning data, presenting several techniques to collect and process data. Designs job performance measures, and explains how to collect and analyze it. The whole book contains detailed examples, and from the beginning to the end are presented three case studies: 1. technical training program, 2. sales/customer service training program, 3. leadership development program. In each chapter, after presenting new concepts, the three case studies are developed based on the new concepts introduced.

This book is not only for HR specialists.

A project manager have a lot of useful information and tools to include in every project and ideas on how to make her/his projects more succesful by connecting them with implementing the new skills. This can create projects' sustainability and synergies inside the organization.

A manager will have a better idea on how the big picture looks like, what have to plan, implement, manage and improve in order to be sure all business actions are aligned with business objectives.

Any reader should have a better understaning on how to maximize resources impact by being focused on implementing the new aquired skills, and not only on acquring new skills.

Toni has captured the critical conceptual and theoretical elements for effectively implementing practical training and employee performance improvement evaluation strategies. Her book should be required reading by all training evaluation specialists. It provides the fundamentals for designing, developing, and implementing valid and reliable learning assessment and performance measurement tools and methodologies. She provides easy to understand templates that can be tailored to any industry. It's comprehensive, well-thought out, and will be the standard textbook for my organization's program instruction on evaluation.

Toni Hodges brings a wealth of practical, easy to follow guidelines to the performance improvement practitioner, on how to approach, measure, and communicate about learning outcomes in organizational settings. She brings the reader step by step through the development, implementation, analysis, and communication processes to establish a credible and useful set of evaluation tools. Always linked to the day-to-day realities of organizational goals and pressures, she provides a handbook to move the practitioner into an effective and valued role as on-the-job evaluator of performance improvement interventions.

This book is full of tips, tools and examples that practitioners will find very useful. The tools and examples are easy to find in the book and provide a great basis for customizing to your own requirements. Toni speaks with experience and authority.

Linking learning and performance is filled with the kind of rigor that all of us Hodges-junkies have come to expect and look forward to. What Hodges maps out is not easy. It requires soul searching and a lot of work. But standing up in front of a CFO with a bullet-proof case for corporate learning makes it all worthwhile.

Well written, informative and spectacular reproductions of his excellent drawings from his travels in Central America. Well worth the price.

A very well done, review of the life of Frederick Catherwood, as well as an excellent description of the mid 19th centuries London, Paris, and New York. The efforts of the first archeological efforts, and how were the must important archeological discoveries at that time. With the beautyful work and potraits of Catherwood

Excellent

Fans of Stephens and Catherwood should very much enjoy this volume. Catherwood is neither featured - nor ignored - in Stephens' "Incidents of Travel in Yucatan" set - their travels together being the source of most of the included drawings. This book, however, focuses not only on Catherwood's intriguing artwork, but reveals a good deal about the life of the man himself. Especially considering the price, this book is not only a must for those interested in the Mayan civilization, but also for the story of one of the first white men to discover and document this great culture for the rest of the world.

In reading the The Lost Cities of the Mayas : The Life, Art, and Discoveries of Frederick Catherwood by Fabio Bourbon, one must first take in and enjoy the full folio size color reproductions of Catherwood's engravings and drawings. The vast aray of sumptous images and the clear and concise text that takes you on an adventure through the life of Frederick Catherwood, the first real Indiana Jones is a joy to read and imagine! Oh to have lived in the 19th c. and been on the first real archaeological journey through mexico and central america, documenting the opening up of an ancient civilization to the world. A must for the adventure reader and explorer.

I have read all of John Loyd Stevens books and this is an excellent addition to my library. I would say this book is a must for all you amature Mayanists. Many times I have wished I could tag along with the great adventurers, Stevens and Catherwood, this is the next best thing! I also recomend all of John Loyd Stevens work. You might also check out "A Tourist in the Yucatan" A fun thriller, adventure set in the Yucatan.

Allen Schoen and Pam Proctor bring us a rich, detailed spectrum of ways in which love, intuition and complementary/ alternative therapies can help animals small and large. This book is rich in anecdotes and reports of healings on physical, psychological and spiritual levels for animals with these approaches after conventional veterinary care had exhausted its potentials to help. Schoen integrates acupuncture, homeopathy and herbal remedies in his practice.

This is a truly wholistic book, addressing body, emotions, mind, relationships and spirit - both of the animals who were helped and of their owners.

Schoen illustrates his work with many heartwarming stories of his challenges and adventures with animals and their owners.

A typical example is Schoen's description of how he nursed a wild hawk who was paralyzed from the neck down following injuries from a power line. Schoen found ways to tame and heal this wary creature so that it could recover, eventually returning to his wilderness home. As with many of his animal patients, Schoen found himself learning and growing in the process of his ministrations.

" ...no creature can remain forever closed to the healing power of love. I knew that if I could establish an intimate relationship with a bird of prey, I could communicate with any animal, no matter how distant or fearsome it might appear to be. All I would need was a sensitivity of spirit, a willingness to open myself nonjudgmentally to a dimension of reality where feathers, fur, skin, scales, or hair are stripped away - and where the only language is love.

"Hawkeye had his freedom, and now I had mine. He had given me my wings, and I was ready to soar." (p. 71)

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in learning about ways of healing that extend beyond conventional veterinary care.

I am twelve years old, and have great dreams of being a vet some day. I always like to read vet books, and when I found this one at the library I was amazed, it look awsome. I read it, and thought it was even better. I am now looking to purchase a copy, one for me, and one for Nina,(a friend of mine) and one for Kendra(another friend). I think that this is an awsome book, and if you haven't read it you should.
Allan tells wonderful tales of his life as a vet, and the absured treatments that he used. Nothing was too absured, he even untwisted the cow when he couldn't untwist the uterous! He also uses acupuncture and Chinese medicine.
I don't have a pet:(, but if I did I would want a vet like Allan to take care of it for me.

Dr. Schoen has once again succesfully captured the attention of his readers with a warm yet informative account on the veterinary experience. His years of medical expertise and devotion to his field add to the composition of his book. Flavored with plenty of heart-felt emotions, his tales of his animal companions really remind Us, as humans, what it is to care for another living creature. Dr. Schoen effectively conveys his numerous veterinary experiences, and even manages to shed some Western thought on the ancient, Eastern art of acupuncture.

A mixture of tender stories and practical advice. I've read the book many times and with each reading, I'm always moved to try a little harder to communicate with my pets. Great book. Wish I had a vet like this.

DR. SCHOEN IS AN INCREDIBLE INDIVIDUAL. IT WAS AMAZING TO READ MY OWN BELIEFS IN PRINT. THE FEELINGS I HAVE ABOUT ANIMALS AND THEIR ABILITIES ARE THE EXACT PRINCIPLES BY WHICH DR. SCHOEN PRACTICES. I WOULD RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO ANY ANIMAL LOVER. I RECEIVED IT FOR CHRISTMAS AND FINISHED IT CHRISTMAS NIGHT. IT IS TRULY A TREASURE

If one wants to understand the debacle or "quagmire" know as the Vietnam War, look no further than this riveting account! In "The Making of a Quagmire," David Halberstam pin points all of the failures of the system years before the first official U.S. troops splash ashore at Danang, Vietnam. His account, a collection of observations about Vietnam under the Diem presidency, is refreshing while at the same time shocking in its findings. While many observers insisted that efforts in Vietnam were progressing so well from 1961-63, Halberstam sees the light. His expose of all the failings of the system includes candid words about the inept south Vietnamese leadership and the American advisors who grow increasingly frustrated with their mission. Most importantly though, Halberstam offers a glimpse into the life of a journalist caught in his own war of censorship.

Before reading this book, my knowledge of the Vietnam war was limited to the movies I had seen on the subject, until recently when a friend recommended this book to me after a brief discussion of the war, its political agenda and its intrigue. Making of a quagmire is an extensive and thourough account of the events in 1961 and 1962 that lead to the eventual full american involvemnt in Vietnam. Halberstam provides an unbeleivable and at times jaw-dropping first hand account of the political and military events of the period, and translates with remarkable skill the frustration of the vicious circle that was the american policy in Vietnam. A must read for any one with even a slight interest in the subject

Halberstam's work is a classic, outlining the dilemma that Vietnam posed to American policymakers in the early 1960s, and written in lucid, newspaper-reporting style. The author's perceptiveness is particularly striking when one considers that he wasn't even 30 years old when he covered Vietnam.

Unfortunately, this McGraw-Hill edition abridges Halberstam's masterpiece. Most of the essential pieces of the story remain, but much of the rich, colorful narrative, which makes this such a fascinating book, is lost. Hopefully, a complete version will return to print soon.

In the early 1960s, David Halberstam was a New York Times correspondent who initially viewed the U.S. political and military-advisory roles in South Viet Nam as a necessary stance against the Communist menace (as defined by Dwight Eisenhower's "domino theory" in Southeast Asia).

But his pessimism grew during tours of the nation, interviews with American military advisors and his concerns surrounding the corrupt South Vietnamese government of President Ngo Dinh Diem. His criticism became so much of a problem to the Kennedy Administration that the president himself lobbied NYT editors to have Halberstam yanked out of South Viet Nam if his reporting continued to run contrary to the government's optimistic pronoucements.

The abridged edition - to make the text more accessible to those not familiar with this history - is a classic retrospective on how Halberstam grew to question the policies of Diem and Kennedy. It also importantly takes the reader through a journey on how he had to walk gingerly through the web of censorship that is played out between the government & the news media.

I read this book when I was a Cadet at West Point. It changed the way I looked at U.S. policy.

A MANUAL OF SUMERIAN GRAMMAR AND TEXTS. Aids and Research Tools in Ancient Near Eastern Studies No.5. Second Revised and Expanded Edition. By John L. Hayes. 471pp. Malibu : Undena Publications, 2000. ISBN 0-89003-508-1 (pbk.)

This is an introductory grammar, designed for readers with no previous knowledge of Sumerian or its writing system, and can be used either with or without a teacher. It contains a general description of Sumerian and its writing system, and a series of 22 lessons.

Each lesson includes a sign list and a vocabulary, cuneiform text/s, transliteration, transcription, and translation, and full grammatical commentary. Since emphasis has been placed on transliteration and transcription, the Manual can be used without learning the cuneiform signs. The texts used are royal inscriptions of the Ur III period, presented in photograph or autograph. A certain amount of historical, archaeological, and cultural background is also presented.

Also included are 80 pages of Appendices - History of Sumerian; Mesopotamian Sources; Glossary; General Structure and Alternate Explanations; Further Work; Bibliography; Concordances; Topical Index.

The Manual is in full quarto size (8.5 by 11 inches), is superbly printed in a large clear font on excellent paper, and is in fact one of the most beautifully printed books I've ever seen. It is richly illustrated with numerous large black-and-white photographs and drawings, and also with a large number of cuneiform texts. These have been specially drawn by John Carnahan, in a variety of styles and in large, bold and magnificent cuneiform that is a joy to behold.

Not only is the Manual visually and physically impressive, but the text itself is also of the highest quality. Hayes' lucid and engaging style, his attention to detail, his concern to include just about everything that might conceivably be of use or interest to the student, and his knack of making the grammar both intelligible and interesting, make this the most outstanding Manual of its kind that I've ever seen.

Anyone who is interested in beginning Sumerian would be very unwise to miss this book. Hayes' Manual strikes me as a true labor of love, and personally I can think of no way in which it could possibly have been made better. It's that good!

While I agree with other reviewers that this is a fantastic book with a learning-friendly layout and good explanations for the texts, I think that those considering purchasing the book should realize a few points:

1. Controversy in the field over pronunciation, grammatical structure and syntax are at a high level. Even in comparison with other dead languages, such as Akkadian or Egyptian, there is less consensus among experts. Hayes, to his great credit, presents these viewpoints. However, the reader is left with issues to sort out for himself/herself.

2. I would recommend at least a modicum of linguistic understanding before tackling Sumerian. Hayes (again, to his great credit) does an excellent job of explaining topics such as ergativity, but at the same time, I think that some readers might become very confused and lose interest.

Personally, I am waiting for Hayes' second book, which is promised at the end of the first as having more advanced texts, including some of the principal literary texts which were written in Sumerian.

Note: this review is for the updated, revised edition (Undena, 2000). Admission #1 - I'm not an Assyriologist, nor an academic, so I have no professional qualifications to judge this work. But I enjoy learning languages, and I know what works for me. Admission #2 - I've just begun studying it, and I'm only on lesson 2.

If I could have designed the ideal learning grammar for a "dead" language, it would look something like this. There are 26 lessons - each one starts with a vocabulary of 10 to 15 words, given in cuneiform and transliteration. These are followed by a short reading (mostly royal inscriptions from the Ur III period). All reading selections are given in cuneiform, transliteration, transcription, and English translation. No guessing about whether you've understood the text, or not! The grammatical explanations are complete and clear; no special linguistic knowledge is presupposed. When there is scholarly disagreement about grammar or syntax, this is noted as well. The grammar is presented inductively; a reading is presented, and the grammar necessary to understand it is explained. Each lesson builds on the previous ones, and there is a wealth of cultural and historical information provided.

In summary, whether you're learning with a teacher or on your own, it's hard to imagine a text better than this one.

I owe a lot to this book. This is a key to the world of Sumerian writing and grammar. I eagerly await the promised sequel to this.

I bought this book under inspiration of Sitchin writings, to get an additional dimension to his ideas.
The manual is a very interesting one, with good, quite formal and precise grammar descriptions (not amauterish and simplified), with texts, translations etc.
However, since the Sumerian language is a dead one, there are several caveats:
- there is no phonetics,
- all the cunieform texts are ancient clay tables with very narrow range of contents,
- a cuneiform character may have a variety of forms in different texts, which makes the recognition sometimes a difficult task, and there is no systematic theory/description of charactes structure,
- there are too few cuneiform texts to get a good practice at reading and translation and the texts are very short,
- there is no vocabulary with cuneform characters sorted by some criteria, so each character you forget must be seeked through the entire book,
- there are about 600 characters (not too much), but the manual contains only a couple of hundreds of them,
- there are no excerieses, as a language manual is expected to have, it's more of a reference book.

Nevertheless, the book was a very interesting lingustic and historical reading, though I must admit that after diligently going through 3/4 of the lessons, I still had a feeling of being as novice as I was during the lesson #1.

From CHOICE

As political, social, and economic factors cause the world to shrink, people of many diverse cultures find themselves interacting with each other. Americans no longer view the world with "ethnocentric" glasses, but are learning to value diversity. This new book comes at just the right time, showing through a compilation of works from authors around the world that sign languages from various nations, while different, can be a significantly unifying factor to the worldwide Deaf community. Not only does this work present surprisingly parallel stories of the different struggles and successes of the Deaf community throughout the world, it suggests that in compiling the material for their work, the researchers may have inadvertently set the stage for a more general understanding of world cultures and for valuing diversity. If the Deaf communities of the world can value each other, perhaps we all can. Recommended. All levels and collections.

-- J. A. LeClair, SUNY Oswego

An article from the Deaf Base website (www.deafbase.com/article473.html)

"The challenges faced by deaf people in Sweden are quite different from those in Nicaragua and are set on a common global stage," explain Leila Monaghan and Constanze Schmaling, two of the contributors of Many Ways to Be Deaf: International Variation in Deaf Communities edited by Monaghan, Schmaling, Karen Nakamura, and Graham H. Turner. In this volume, twenty-four international scholars have contributed their findings from studying Deaf communities in Japan, Thailand, Viet Nam, Taiwan, Russia, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Great Britain, Ireland, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, and the United States. Sixteen chapters consider the various antecedents of each country's native signed language, taking into account the historical background for their development and also the effects of foreign influences and changes in philosophies by the larger, dominant hearing societies.

"Key themes of this volume include how Deaf communities have survived despite opposition by those who thought and think that Deaf people should not be allowed to have their own separate communities outside of hearing cultures, how forms of education interact with and are reflections of larger sociocultural processes, and how signed languages are crucial parts of Deaf communities everywhere." The diversity of background and training among the contributors to Many Ways to Be Deaf distinguishes it as a genuine and unique multicultural examination of the myriad manifestations of being Deaf in a diverse world.

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
New Scholarly Books
9/13/2003, A17
COMMUNICATION
Many Ways to be Deaf: International Variation in Deaf Communities, edited by Leila Monaghan and others (Gallaudet University Press; 326 pages; $69.95) Research on sign language in Austria, Brazil, Britain, Ireland, Japan, Nicaragua, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and the United States.

A book notice from the Foundation for Endangered Languages:
OGMIOS Newsletter 2.9 (#21): Summer - 31 July 2003 (www.ogmios.org/2111.htm).

Many Ways to Be Deaf: International Variation in Deaf Communities: Leila Monaghan, Constanze Schmaling, Karen Nakamura, and Graham H. Turner, Editors

The recent explosion of sociocultural, linguistic, and historical research on signed languages throughout the world has culminated in Many Ways to Be Deaf, an unmatched collection of in-depth articles about linguistic diversity in Deaf communities on five continents. Twenty-four international scholars have contributed their findings from studying Deaf communities in Japan, Thailand, Viet Nam, Taiwan, Russia, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Great Britain, Ireland, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, and the United States. Sixteen chapters consider the various antecedents of each country's native signed language, taking into account the historical background for their development and also the effects of foreign influences and changes in philosophies by the larger, dominant hearing societies.

The topics covered include, inter alia: the evolution of British finger-spelling traced back to the 17th century; the comparison of Swiss German Sign Language with Rhaeto-Romansch, another Swiss minority language; the analysis of seven signed languages described in Thailand and how they differ in relation to their distance from isolated Deaf communities to Bangkok and other urban centers; and the vaulting development of a nascent sign language in Nicaragua. ISBN 1-56368-135-8, 7 x 10 casebound, 288 pages, glossary, references, index, $69.95s

Collaboratively compiled and edited by Leila Monaghan (Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Cultural at Indiana University, Bloomington); Constanze Schmaling (Linguist at the Institute of German Sign Language at Hamburg University, Germany); Karen Nakamura (Professor of Anthropology at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota); and Graham H. Turner (Senior Lecturer in the Deaf Studies Program at the University of Central Lancashire, Great Britain), Many Ways To Be Deaf: Internal Variation In Deaf Communities is a compendium of scholarly assessments of deaf communities and sign languages worldwide, ranging from Swiss German Sign Language; to the developing sign language of Nicaragua; the conflicts of hearing culture and deaf culture in various nations; some national tendencies to view the hearing improvements of cochlear implants as motive sufficient to dismiss the importance of sign language, and much, much more. An exhaustively researched and critically insightful resource, Many Ways To Be Deaf is an impressive work of scholarship and a ground breaking contribution to Deaf Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.