Tracks Books

I wrote this book for two reasons.

First, many books about leadership in recent years, especially those about Christian leadership, have focused on leadership character. While character is essential, it must be linked to solid skills. In this short book, I hoped to provide a leadership skills primer, something that would help a new or developing leader know what to do first or next. Leadership is challenging but it is not rocket science. The parts of a leader's work can be understood, learned, and, yes, even mastered. This is not the last book someone will want to read on leadership; I hope it may be helpful as the first book for many new leaders. I know I would have done better in my early years of ministry and corporate leadership if I had focused clearly on the essential leadership skills I describe in OnTrack Leadership.

The second reason I wrote this book was to raise money for the building campaign for my church, Grace Community Church in Brentwood, TN. My wife and I attend a fairly new, young church. As a couple in our 50s, we are the "senior adults" of this wonderful church. Our pastor challenged the congregation to fast and pray and ask God to show us how we could give more to the building campaign than would otherwise be possible. For my wife and I, OnTrack Leadership was the answer to that prayer. Without going into the details, I was able to complete the book and assign the contract for the book to my church. My wife and I gave it as part of our gift to the building campaign. So if you buy the book, check out the front matter and you'll see that the copyright is held by Grace Community Church. I have no financial stake in the book and all royalties, past, present and future, go to our church. So if you buy the book, I hope you'll enjoy knowing that you are helping a young church pay for a new building.

I appreciate you taking a look at OnTrack Leadership. I hope you will find it helpful as you continue as a leader in business, in ministry, or in whatever arena you are privileged to lead.

This book provides a weekly homework page for your Pre-K students. Each week the child has an oral language, gross motor, fine motor, and read a book activity. The only materials families needs are pencil, crayons, scissors, glue, and time. It is perfect for busy families because they can do one activity a night, and it encourages parents to talk to their children.

Salt and pepper; a common spice used to spice food. However, in abstract practice, salt and pepper may suggest human color, white and black or brown. Salt and pepper, as an ingredient, is much needed to spice food. Similarly, prejudice, narrow-mindedness, and bigotry are ingredients widely used to spice hatred, discrimination and injustice against race, religious beliefs, ethnicity and even sexual preference.

Author Tony Cano tells a horrible, hideous and vile story to say the least, of discrimination and bigotry in the town he was born in and raised. A Mexican American, he and the rest of the Mexican kids his age as well as their parents was discriminated against. They were discriminated against in such a vile way that makes one think if such atrocious, brutal, and vicious behavior against a race is possible. Much to the consternation, and dismay of the reader of "The Other Side Of The Tracks," it is!

"...Behold men, as it were, in an underground cave-like dwelling, having its entrance towards the light, which extends through the whole cave. Within it, persons, who from childhood on, have had chains on their legs and their necks; so they can look forward only, but not turn their heads around because of the chains, their light coming from a fire that burns above, far off and behind them."

Plato: THE REPUBLIC, BOOK VII, 2
(Italics mine.)

And, so it was with the Mexican American kids in Marfa, Texas. A small farming town which made sure Mexican Americans were kept from being human beings, and where cattle was treated much better than any Mexican American human being. Marfa, Texas, a small town who made certain that Mexican American kids stayed in the jailhouse instead of a hotel or motel when they competed in sports in other small towns as Alpine, and Abeline, Texas. Those towns too, were filled with hatred and discrimination. They proudly displayed signs in their business establishments, which said, "No Dogs or Mexicans Allowed." Marfa, Texas a small town so dead-set in discrimination and bigotry the Mexican American population had to live on "The Other Side Of The Tracks."

Read Tony Cano's story and get your heart and soul turned inside out!

This package of book and software presents three fundamental puzzles that can be solved using permutations. The first is called the "Oval Tracks" puzzles and consists of an oval-shaped track that contains numbered disks. There are two fundamental operations that can be performed on the disks:

*) All can be rotated around the track a certain number of positions in either direction. This movement will maintain the fundamental order of the disks.
*) A certain set of permutations can be performed on a small number of the disks.

The second category of puzzle is the "slide puzzles." In this case there is a rectangular grid where each cell of the grid contains a single disk. There is an empty cell and the disks are moved one at a time into the unoccupied cell, creating a different unoccupied cell. Variations of this puzzle have cells marked with an X that are rigid and cannot be moved.
The third category of puzzles is called the "Hungarian Rings." In this case, the puzzle is constructed from two interlocking rings of disks that are either numbered or colored. The disks share two locations and are separately movable so the only operations are rotating the disks.
In all cases, the player is given start and final configurations and the goal is to move from the start to the final state. The software can be used to execute a random rearrangement of the disks at the start of the game. Undo buttons and the ability to create complex macro operations are available.
Using the fundamentals of group theory as it is applied to permutation groups, you can solve all of these games. Therefore, after the initial descriptions of the games, there is an introduction to group theory and permutations. The fundamental notation and operations are given, which is a lead in to the construction of more complex macros of the combination of permutations. While the exposition is quite clear, it will be difficult for anyone lacking knowledge of group theory to understand some of the abstract operations.
Given that software is used and the large number of possible permutations of the disks, it is not possible for anyone to work through all of the challenges these games can present. Like the best puzzles, you can spend hours working through them, even with the help of the group theory. Hence the fun, as there is always another challenge to be faced and overcome.

Readers interested in the relationship between railroad and cinema should not look beyond Parallel Tracks, Lynne Kirby's extremely entertaining and insightful historical coverage of the how the train can be seen as a precursor to cinema. Conceptions of spectatorship, travel and suggestibililty normally associated with cinematic viewing practices are forcefully argued as inherent properties of how a passenger experiences rail travel. Perhaps a fault of the book is that it ends with the birth of sound cinema, when the whistle of the incoming train signified a new stage in cinematic representations of rail journeys, gender and identity. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in classic American silent film, westerns and rail thrillers, as well as those interested in how the railroad continues to impact on the triad of cinema, identity and modernity.

Elton Glaser's new work presents a rich gumbo of precise observation and down-home longing. Having known Mr. Glaser and his writing for 35 years, I find these poems to be among his finest to date. His potent blend of erudition and Louisiana vernacular creates humor, perception, and profound connection with ourselves. I recommend his work highly to readers who appreciate a master of language, intellect, and emotion in verse.

This book complements the other biographical and (semiauto)biographical works on Richard Feynman. In many ways we see him more intimately than ever before.

I once read a book describing the Roman Catholic Church as a struggle between saints and cardinals. (I would love to refind this book.) The cardinals were the guardians of orthodoxy, the saints broke new ground. The cardinals often burned the saints for heresy, then the saint's ideas became accepted and the next generation of cardinals beatified the ex-heretic (while burning the next future saint). Saint Joan is the best-known example of this habit.

Whether it is Einstein (who was described as a lazy dog by his professors at graduate school) or Feynman (whose paper that ultimately recieved the nobel prize was originally excoriated by his seniors) events move faster now, and original minds can now be canonized within their lifetimes. Einstein famously said something like "I always resented authorities - God has now punished me by making me an authority".

This book can be regarded as the record of Feynman's attempt to evade or accept this fate.

This book is extremely helpful for interpreting a clean set of tracks, or getting a handle on a more challenging jumble of older and/or windswept tracks. It covers tracks of skittering tenebrionid beetles, to the big cats, and helps to separate out various antelope.

With it's great pictures of the animals, accompanying generally pen drawn tracks with centimeter ruler, and occasional color photos of tracks, it is a solid and readily available guide for a beginner in the field. I have been once to Southern Africa, I would welcome opinions from those more experienced with tracks, and especially with books upon tracking, for recommendations of other books as well.

No, as a beginner, you won't be able to necessarily separate out different zebra at first, or tell a black from a white rhino, or juvenile males lions from a lioness from tracks alone, however you'll use other clues to get there! While figuring out a set of cat tracks, listen to the agitated monkey in the next tree, warning you of the leopard perched in the tree, directly overhead!

It's strength is that it's a thin narrow book to go in a shirt pocket quite easily; to add more to it would have made it less pocketable. It has helpful ink drawn pictures of droppings...and scattered scats throughout the book in color, no less!

I gave the book a 5, and would have preferred a 4.5, downgrading from a 5 only because it tantalizes rather than tells much about the Art of tracking, i.e. using the many clues of spoor such as marks on trees, distinguishing running from walking or hopping tracks, talking about utilizing dehydration of scat to "age" it...and these are skills best learned in the field, with day after day experience with a more experienced guide.

I highly recommend this to accompany you to Southern Africa to learn about tracks, despite my reservation about it's tracking, as a good guide can fill in on that quite readily, whilst in the practical laboratory of the field!

Now in a newly revised and updated edition, Please Don't Call My Mother!: How Parents And Schools Can Team Up To Get Kids Back On Track by school administrator John Lazares and classroom teacher Coleen Armstrong is a straightforward treatise describing how parents and teachers can cooperate to help bring misbehaving kids back into good graces. From setting up parental interventions when necessary to guidelines for school principals, Please Don't Call My Mother! is packed with solid information, sometimes presented in concise point-by-point format, sometimes in question-and-answer format. Please, Don't Call My Mother! is a first-rate tip book for helping unruly kids.

This is a fantastic book . . . my husband read it in 2 days, very interesting and lots of great pictures. Thank you!