Independent Books

Anyone trying to figure out the seismic shifts in the media landscape with a dizzying plethora of new technologies, forms and practices should immediately buy this book and memorize it.

It's mandatory reading for everyone in the public media field. It opens up questions rather than supplying answers--and that's the kind of conversation a vigorous, engaged public media is going to need in the 21st century.

Deep Focus is a groundbreaking field guide to the new media ecology that has baffled, enthralled, seduced, overwhelmed, and engulfed everyone from film studies professors, to communications schools, to the entertainment industry, to the FCC, to indymedia activists, to anti copyright samplers and file sharers, to media reformers, to long form documentarians, to avant garde filmmakers, to film and media festival directors.

In this swift-as-Class-V-rapids new environment, old ways of thinking leftover from the 1970s and 1980s about corrupt capitalist media and urgent, earnest, uncontaminated independent media are no longer productive. They are worn out and threadbare. They are also insufficient if the goal of public media is to argue with the universe, rewire the world, and reconnect all that has been isolated and fragmented by global capital.

As the report compellingly argues, the lines between commercial and indy media are blurred. There is no longer one platform of 16mm film for work, but many different platforms, ranging from film, to DV, to the internet, to gaming, to flash animation. The lines between professional and amateur are smudged. Radical documentaries are popular in commercial theaters and on DVD. The indie music business of disseminating work to niche audiences and narrowcasting may be a better model than mass distribution to mass audiences. Gaming presents a new frontier for activist media.

Moving images will migrate increasingly to the internet as broadband becomes pervasive. A proliferation of content and cheap gear has shifted debates from access to tools to catching audiences in new ways with new forms, new places and new passions An endless hybrdity of technologies, audiences, forms, and formats suggests that the entire public media field needs to rethink its navigational systems in order to develop a new, robust, kick-it-out future for independent media. This new future needs to connect media practices and alternative visions with new kinds of audiences and markets--which can no longer be found but must be created and imagined.

If you want to connect all the dots in this sprawling, variegated, complex media landscape, know the difference between broadband and broadcatch, figure out why gaming matters, and rethink distribution and exhibition, read this book.

Deep Focus points to a series of possible futures rather than one direction--a liberation from the dogmatism that has sometimes plagued and immobilized public media. It unsettles any vestigial, old ways of thinking about public media as simply an antidote to commercial systems and asks the reader to think about creating new systems and rewiring them in new ways--a provocative and much needed conceptual model. Once you read Deep Focus, you will begin to see how P2P connects to filmmaking, how gaming connects to new audiences, and how new platforms open up new distribution possibilities. Suddenly, all of these disparate technologies and media worlds get plugged into each other. And they make sense. And give all of us in the public media movement hope and energy.

Deep Focus lights a fire under the reader to go out and invent new navigational systems and paths through this complex media ecology. It emboldens us to rewire technologies and social formations to crack open places for new visions, new debates, and new practices yet to be imagined.

This book is part of ISA's (formerly "The Instrument Society of America", later "The International Society for Measurement and Control" and now known as "The Instrument, Systems and Automation Society") Independent Learning Modules on Control Principles and Techniques.

This book is designed as a self-study guide for both beginners and experienced practitioner who want to learn more about Process Control Applications. As self-study guide there no specific prerequisites for using this book, other than a general understanding of high school physics and a working knowledge of the principles and hardware of industrial instrumentation and control systems, whether acquired through field experience or academic study. The author has left out most of the equations and derivations which one usually could find in the majority of process control books, but for the benefit of the reader had been replaced with word descriptions of the process relationships that make control systems work. The intend is to keep mathematics from becoming a barrier to the reader understanding of the principles of automatic control.

Since the table of contents is not included in the book description provided by the good fellows of Amazon, next I have included how the book is organized:

- Introduction and overview.
- Review of process control strategies.
- Material balances.
- Energy balances.
- Liquid flow systems.
- Compressible flow systems.
- Heat transfer systems.
- Distillation operations.
- Other separation processes.
- Chemical reactors.
- Suggestions for further reading
- Answer to all questions.
- Solutions to all exercises.

I am an Industrial Practitioner of Process Control. I have been working for more than 16 years as an Instrumentation, Automation, and Process Safety and Control Engineer for the Oil & Gas Industry. I have made extensive use of this book to prepare tutorial and training material for technician and operators. I have also found it useful in my day to day work as a refresher on the Fundamentals of Industrial Process Control Applications.

Absolutely a most have for any one working in the process industries and who need to understand how real world industrial process control applications (as the one you may find in your company's facilities) work.

This book is a guide to begin the investigation of a subject or simply to know to the meaning of a word or concept. It has numerous terms that cover all the subjects relative to the computation and information technologies. Each word is explained in brief form, some include notes or commentaries, in addition it includes the meaning of abbreviations.

The Diplomacy Of War: The Case Of Korea by historian and academician Graeme S. Mount (with the assistance of Andre laferriere who teaches history at the William G. Davis Sr. Public School in Brampton, Ontario, Canada) is a case study critique of multinational national leadership concerning the Korean War. For two of the three years during which the war raged, both sides were trying to negotiate a peace. The Diplomacy Of War looks at how the multinational Commonwealth, five whose eight members (the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zeland, and South Africa) had combat forces in Korea, strived to use their combined influence to affect American policy during the war. But how successful was this effort, what repercussions did it have, and what lessons can be drawn from this history and applied to the future? The Diplomacy Of War argues strongly that even though the Commonwealth might have had some influence on American-controlled politics and wartime decisions, there was so much division within the Commonwealth as to undermine its own power. An astutely critical, meticulous, carefully researched and insightful examination of power structures and negotiated results or lack thereof.

I borrowed this edition from someone and forgot to return it. These truly are the best inns in North America. I can't and won't stay in a hotel every again; spending the extra money is well worth it. The food, comfort, ambience and hospitality make the experience at a select registry inn like a vacation within a vacation.

This book is really good. It traces the beginnings of independent cinema in Hollywood from the '50's on up to the present day. The author is strongly opinionated about which movies are bad and which are good. I didn't always agree with his opinions, but by reading the entire book, I felt I learned a lot about how film studios work, and just what directors have to go through to get their work onto the screen, without the interference of studios and corporate interests. Interspersed throughout the book are entertaining ancedotes about various directors, from Alfred Hitchcock, to Francis Ford Coppola, to Quentin Tarantino. I have taken some film classes, and felt I learned more from this book than from the classes. For example, in one class I took, we watched "Mean Streets" by Martin Scorcese. The professor told us that it was an innovative film, because of the camera techniques used. However, this book explained in greater detail just what the importance of the movie "Mean Streets" was; the thought behind the film, the dynamics of the '70's that affected the film, and the studio/director climate in which the film was made.

Compiled, organized and edited by Vincent LoBrutto (School of Visual Arts), The Encyclopedia Of American Independent Filmmaking consists of alphabetical entries covering everything from respected independent filmmakers, to notable independent films, and showcases critical views, basic information about the industry, various working methods, and more. Extensively researched and with an index for easy cross-referencing, The Encyclopedia Of American Independent Filmmaking is an excellent scholarly resource and a definitive professional reference recommended for anyone interested in making independent films as a career, or simply viewing them as a personal hobby.

I worked for the Independent Electoral Commission as a Senior Mediator in the Eastern Cape, and remember these events. Reading through this book ten years on, it is a wonderful reminder of those heady days, and very accurate in its capturing of the mood of the time. The major players are all there, and wonderfully evocative pictures of places with names like Committee's Drift, dustbowls in the middle of nowhere, polling stations flapping in the wind.

A remarkable book testament to a remarkable period in South Africa's history.

The English Libertarian Heritage is a compilation of some of the best writings of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon also known as "Cato's Letters". These two libertarian thinkers break all the rules of their time. No tyrant is safe from their prose. The clergy, kings, religious fanatics, the Pope, corporations, etc are all under assault by this duo as they expound on the ideals of liberty. They frequently warn their fellow citizens not to put too much trust in their magistrates, king and other politicians. They continually warn that men who are entrusted with power always seek accumulate more and eventually rule over the people.

The clergy are especially assaulted for their support of tyrants, corruption and worldly power. Although there is anti-Catholic bias, the Protestant clergy does not escape their quill.
They point out that priests of all religions are usually the biggest supporters of worldly tyrants who allow the priests a preeminent place in the government.

It is obvious why Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson had these writing in their libraries, and why they were read frequently during the American Revolution.

If you love freedom, freethought, and liberty you will not be disappointed in The English Libertarian Heritage.

Very strongly recommended reader for both students and practitioners, Ethical Practice In Small Communities by psychology authors Janet A. Schank (independent psychologist, and Chair Member of the Minnesota Psychological Association Ethics Committee) and Thomas M. Skovholt (Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota and part-time practitioner) is a knowledgeable and informative study of the psycho-therapeutical ethics in practice of a smaller community practices. Ethical Practice In Small Communities analysis the practical and proper dimensions of the dilemmas and advantages to setting up a practice in a small town for prevention of intrinsic or intrusive acceptance of clientele as well as productive and constructive practice through the learning of individuals and collective communal acquaintances without ethical degradation. Ethical Practice In Small Communities is an excellent and very encouraged read for the dedicated psychologist, psychotherapist, psychiatrist, and counselor as an introduction to small-town ethical practices and issues.