York College Books

Pamela Wolfberg is an expert on playgroups for Autism. She offers a deeper window into the world of Autism as well as practical ideas and strategies for playgroups. Her research is well respected in the industry and her work certainly has earned my respect as well. This is a 'must have' guide for practitioners and professionals in the sphere of social skills and Autism.

An interesting book about the author's experience with integrated play groups, but I was hoping for more of a how-to about setting up such playdates/groups myself with my mildly autistic son and typically developing kids around the neighborhood, etc...

There are only three case studies too, making this book more valuable to teachers than parents, because if your child isn't similar to one of the three cases, then the book won't be as relevant.

...It is very thorough and gives insights to help betterunderstand how and why children with autism play the way they tend to, and, how to break them out of unproductive/unhealthy play habits. A very good book!

This book is interesting and has useful information about one teacher's experience with integrated playgroups in an academic setting, but it is written like an academic thesis or research paper rather than a layman's book. It will not teach you how to set up playdates in your home or how to structure a playdate so your child will play with other children.

For those hoping for a how-to book with guidelines for setting up playdates and teaching playskills to autistic children, I recommend you look at Melinda Smith's website and/or book, "Teaching Playskills to Children with ASD" which has lots of advice and ideas for teaching basic playskills.

For another book which emphasizes the importance of play and how to use play to improve a child's cognitive and emotional skills, I recommend you peruse "The Child With Special Needs" by Stanley Greenspan. This book gives parents lots of practical ideas for trying to engage an unresponsive child, establishing 2-way communication, helping a child understanding feelings and ideas, and helping a child to think logically.

This novel has its charms. It's certainly distinctive in its literary references combined with a so-called murder mystery. The account of the narrator's work life as a professor is satisfingly grounded in detail (although I was astonished that the narrator reports that in one afternoon, also filled with other tasks, he finished off eleven letters of recommendation. It made me wonder how fast the author wrote this book. Maybe a little more time would have helped.) I was initially intrigued by the unusual nature of the book, but gradually got worn down by the incoherent plot and the proliferation of minor characters who were hard to keep straight.

But here's my biggest problem with this novel: It is never explained what Julie sees in the narrator. He's a middle-aged professor, overweight, with a sexual problem, and is set in his ways. She is young, delightful, playful, confident, beautiful, and wise. She literally appears on his doorstep, moves in with him, and cures him of his problems. Sexual dysfunction over! Smoking almost extinguished. The portly narrator even gets himself to marathon sessions in the gym. He finds he can commit after all. And meanwhile, what of Julie? Well, her highest ambition seems to be to cook dinner for his professor friends. Sure. She loves hanging out with these aging academics. And she couldn't be more touched and delighted when her beau buys matching jackets and sweaters for her and him. Right, the average young woman yearns for a mail-order parka matching that of her oversized and less-than-fashion conscious partner. What is Julie getting out of this relationship? We never enter into her mind enough to know. This is fantasy, guys. We don't meet Julie's friends, except in passing. Evidently she has little need of people her own age when she can be rejuvenating her boyfriend. It's like every man's dream: no matter how out of shape, how sexually dysfunctional, how obsessed with his own routines and his own academic arcana he might be, a young woman is waiting to bring him back to life--and even to cook for him!

This isn't a murder mystery, in any coherent sense. It's a male fantasy. As such, it has a certain appeal. But boy, does it need some pruning. This author needs an editor. And on his next outing, he might consider how he could create not only one appealingly imperfect character (his narrator), but also believable people with whom his central figure could interact. A love story requires nothing less.

Fans of academic novels are more or less like Trekkies, doting on a genre that demands inside knowledge of all sorts of trivial matters to which most of the public is, for good reason, indifferent. The jokes--almost all examples are comical--often seem strained and a bit limp to those outside the charmed circle and the characters invite the disdain owed to folks whose lives are in some sense perpetually adolescent, since they have never really left school. The best such books--Kingsley Amis's classic "Lucky Jim," for instance--are usually tales of escape into the real world, where deans, tenure committees, and the singular banality of academic shop-talk fade into triviality.

George Stade's new novel "Sex and Violence" is an exception in that it affirms, in its own quirky way, the value and signicance of the academic life honestly lived, without losing its caustic and sometimes savage satiric bite. It is, in basic outline, a whodunit--three professors get whacked in the course of the action--though, more importantly, it is a tale of redemption and renewal.

As in Bellow's "Herzog," the story is told through the eyes and mind of its protagonist, Wynn O'Leary, in a series of letters that will be read only by their writer (they are nominally written to his long-dead brother, a jazz musician destroyed by drugs). O'Leary is a Professor of English in an alternate-universe version of Columbia (the author's home turf). An expert on Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Yeats and the like, the fortyish O'Leary has pretty much gone to seed, joining the undead legions who never publish but, being tenured, never perish either. O'Leary's intellectual stagnation is echoed by his physical decline--a one-time linebacker good enough to have spent some time in the NFL, he is, as the story begins, long-divorced, overweight and, worse, sexually impotent. His life is a stale routine built around cooking, eating and exchanging quips with his cronies in the campus cafeteria.

The first of the murders--the victim is the department's medievalist--stirs things up a bit, but not too vehemently. The chief result is to vault O'Leary, if that's the word, into the unwanted job of vice-chairman. More important, however, is the arrival of his anima and redemptress, in the form of a distant relative, Julie, who shows up out of nowhere and moves in with him. The core of the novel is the interaction between these two, which in time cures Wynn of his sloth, his overeating, and his sexual difficulties. In the interim, there are a couple of additional murders--not particularly regrettable--a pathetic suicide, and a kind of cat-and-mouse game with the character whom the reader, if not O'Leary, soon realizes must be the killer. Simultaneously, we see various strivers and poseurs jockeying for power and prestige within the department, a contest as silly and meaningless as it is intense.

But this bare outline little hints at the real charm of the book, which lies in its linguistic fizz and its playful invocation of all sorts of cultural references, the culture oscillating wildly between high and low. O'Leary's letters constitute an inadvertant X-ray of his soul, revealing to the reader what he hides from himself. He tells us repeatedly that he lacks "killer instinct" (which deficiency cut short his football career) but we see several episodes of ungovernable rage expressed physically. O'Leary's closest friend is openly gay, yet O'Leary can't contain his fury when someone implies that he himself is gay. No sooner does he regain his sexual self-confidence than he goes tom-catting after a departmental colleague without pausing to reflect on the damage he might be inflicting on his relations with his beautiful savior, Julile. All this, of course, is interlarded with the buffoonery of clashing academic egos, academic fads, and the absurd and sometimes cruel arbitrariness of the academic reward system. As a bonus, we have a continuing commentary, sometimes quite extended, on the glories of Bird and Diz and the heroics of the Bebop era.

Perhaps the novel can be faulted for allowing grace to descend too easily upon its once-fallen hero. Julie sometimes seems too perfect for credibility, a diva ex machina one might like to be able to buy on-line. O'Leary's luck is just a little too good to ring true. And one would like to spend a little more time with the murderer, quite a likeable guy and, in his own way, an ethical paragon. But all in all, it's a great read, even if those who pick it up hoping for a roman a clef about the actually-existing Columbia English Department will be disappointed.

Mcgrath and Spear do a decent job of summarizing what they feel are the problems of the community college. Although they argue their point in a concise manner and do an excellent jo at it, they sometimes seem to expect you to take them at their word. The problems they cite are very real. People who study community colleges will have little trouble seeing their points, it would still be refreshing to place the problems in community colleges in some sort of historical context. I would advise, however, that anyone who studies community colleges or works in one have this volume in their personal library.

As a New York City educational consultant who specializes in private school admission, I keep up with books and articles about schools. You'd think I'd have a lot to read, but actually, there's not that much information. Private schools are indeed private, many, particularly the schools that are most sought after, like to keep their facts to themselves. For obvious reasons prospective families want to know, which is why I congratulate Princeton Review for pulling off this guide. The writers offer some useful information about admission and a nice listing of high schools, which helpfully includes private as well as selective public. The book would be even better if some well-known schools had provided facts the writers sought, such as more information about admissions, curriculum, student body, and environment.

A great treatise on the relationship between America's love of sports and America's conflicted attitudes about race. But I can't imagine how the knowledgable authors could have written a book that is harder to read. They never use a simple word when a complex one will do; never go for short when long will do.

Don't read this book when you're sleepy, you'll never finish it. But if you are in a scholarly mode, you will learn a lot. I did.

The usual perplexities of how to survive as a smart girl from a west-coast working class family in the late 50s/early 60s who wants to go to college in the East is complicated by our heroine's realization during college that, well, she likes girls. No, I mean, Really Likes Girls. A well drawn portrait of coming out as a "gay girl" in New York City, pre-Stonewall... maybe semi-autobiographical? At any rate, it's well written. The author is better known for her writing as Catherine Stimpson, a literature professor and feminist scholar.

Quite a few errors were found.
However, the book appears to give a thorough review of NY State Regents material for Chemistry: The Physical Setting.

The Nuremberg Mind gives detailed accounts of a series of Rorschach tests given to the imprisoned Nazi leaders while they awaited trial at Nuremberg. The ink blot tests were administered by Dr. G. M. Gilbert (author of the excellent book Nuremberg Diary) and Florence Miale. All comments given by each defendant while he was examining the cards (including a running talley of the time that had past between each comment) is included in the study. The book also includes color images of the 10 ink blot cards used (I was surprised to find out that several of the ink blots included designs in red, blue, green, yellow, and orange).

I admit that I am skeptical about such psychological studies, and I did find certain weakness in this book. First, previous knowledge of the grim deeds of the Nazi leaders can certainly have an influence on the final analyses of their Rorschach tests. Gilbert was a Jewish American and, understandably, may have had some biases when conducting the examinations. After obtaining responses to Card X from Reichsbank President Walther Funk, for example, Gilbert suggested "that last picture might have been a concentration camp" (p. 79). Another example is exhibited in Miale's analysis of Hermann Goering's interpretation of Card VI as a bedroom rug: "[Goering's] capacity for warmth and understanding is used by him for obtaining sensuous pleasure rather than for developing real human relationships" (p. 92). In another case, Hans Fritzsche (a radio propagandist and hardly a big-time Nazi who would later denounce the regime) was labeled a "blind, torn psychopath" by Miale because the radio broadcaster saw a torn map in Card VII. Preconceived notions about the personalities they were analyzing probably had some influence on such responses.

More revealing are the patterns of responses by the subjects Hans Frank, Funk, Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Frank (the "Butcher of Poland") made several references to alcohol in his responses. Funk made startling sexual references during his tests. Goering made quick and confident responses to the cards and became impatient when certain areas of the cards did not fit his designs "snapping his forefinger at the three red spots [on Card III] as though to brush them off" (p. 87). Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner gave the least number of responses to the cards. The former quickly gave one response to each card or would simply reject them, the latter took a very long time on each card and, in some cases, would contradict his own responses (quite understandable from a man conditioned to follow orders). Such patterns revealed a great deal about the subjects' personalities, much more than did Miale's or Gilbert's isolated comments.

I believe that the Rorschach test can be useful in an analysis on one's personality. The test, however, is useless if the impartiality of the examiner is in question. It is possible for the Rorschach analysis to reveal more about the person conducting the test than about the subject himself. There are no universal guidelines for interpreting a subject's response and thus an examiner may--however unintentionally--introduce his own thoughts and preconceptions to the study. What saves the usefulness of this study is that the defendant's comments are printed verbatim which allows the reader to do his own analysis and come to his own conclusions about the top personalities in the Third Reich.

I couldn't resist reading this book, captured by its wonderful title. Hats off, and three cheers, to the publisher for agreeing to issue this title.

Professor Amenta is a bi-coastal university sociologist, trained at the University of Chicago. And this book is framed -- to his great credit with some subtlety -- in the century-plus scholarship of the so-called "Chicago School." Scratch beneath the surface and you'll surely discover that many a professor -- sociologist or otherwise -- enthralled with baseball aspired to write such a book.

This is an ethnography, written in the tradition of the participant-observer (e.g., Herbert J. Gans, or more recently, Mitchell Dunier), associated with Chicago sociology).

Professor Amenta, a failed Little League player from suburban Chicago, pursued redemption by playing in organized recreational soft-ball leagues in Manhattan. I won't reveal the outcome. Read it for yourself!

We learn a great deal about the author's softball career ("Eddy ball"), academic career, and private life (the latter including a considerable amount of detail about infertility). Perhaps some will deem this overboiled, although mostly I found the whole thing tasteful, insightful, and even inspired.

I especially appreciated the author's concluding observations about the real meaning of life -- professional as well as personal -- as well as his rich experiences on the field of softball dreams. Professor Amenta provides readers with a great deal to contemplate about what happens when culture and society reach an intersection.

Professor Baseball may not be for every armchair baseball reader. But I certainly found it memorable and suspect that many others will subscribe to this sentiment.

Bias warning! My son is one of the authors.
Some years ago David Eggers founded "826 Valencia" to help students ages 8-18 with their writing skills, in the realm of creative writing, expository writing, or English as a second language. The publisher of Sonny Paine is 826NYC one of 5 national chapters of the 826 group. As noted by the editor, authors were not only from NYC but other cities and several were already in college at the time of publication.
The book has 8 short stories varying in style from prose/poem to English ghost story to gritty urban angst. The stories are of remarkably quality and entertaining and I was never thinking "pretty good for a high schooler". Amazon's "Reading level: Ages 9-12" is not correct. These are adult stories with adult themes. Strewn in-between the stories are some tongue-in-cheek college application essays (thus the "Sonny Applies to College" in the title).
Certainly worth 8 bucks (or free if you buy 3 other items on Amazons promo list)