Open Books

Like many people, I was skeptical about this book. How could I truly learn to swim better from reading a book. But after reading this and practising the techniques I am a believer. I am a triathlete, albeit a 50 year old slow triathlete. But I began as a swimmer, so I am very comfortable there. I am not fast, but love the water. But this book has made me a better swimmer. It's in the economy of stroke. This book will teach you a way of swimming that's more like yoga or TM than those swimmers you see flailing their arms and being out of breath. This won't happen overnight, but as the author says, if you practise at this long enough you will get better.

This is the best book you can buy on swimming. Period. In fact, most triathlon training books refer the reader to Terry Laughlins Total Immersion (TI) program, which is explained most clearly in this book. (Don't buy the out-dated book entitled "Total Immersion." I've read it; it's good; but it doesn't fully reflect the author's most recent ideas on swimming drills.)

When you buy the book, you should also order the video "Fishlike Freestyle," which shows all the drills beautifully executed by top-notch swimmers. (In fact, the "models" in the video make the drills look TOO easy.)

If you read the book, follow the program, and execute the drills according to the video, you'll become an excellent swimmer. It might take you several months or even a year or two, but eventually you'll do it. Personally, I'm still working at it--slowly--but a friend of mine went from being a terrible swimmer to being a beautiful, smooth, fast fishlike triathlete in the water by following the Total Immersion program. Several other of my triathlete friends have used the Total Immersion program with excellent success. You can spot these swimmers for the grace and fluidity as they glide effortlessly through the water.

If you're serious about swimming or triathlon, this book is a must buy.

This book is all you need to understand the process of performance improvement in organizations, and the "active ingredients" that impact performance. The book separates the snake oil and fads from solutions that are supported by research. It gives clear and research-based guidelines for diagnosing the causes of performance gaps and selecting solutions for knowledge, motivation, and organizational problems. Case studies illustrate the application of the model and rules. In addition, the book describes how to reliably and validly evaluate the effects of performance solutions and identifies flaws in some common approaches to evaluation. The book answers the kinds of "why" and "what if" questions that rarely get addressed. It includes a powerful model of motivated performance that can be used to address any motivational problems. This book gives one the arguments and references to support organizational development and training practices and also the arguments and evidence to abandon practices that have been shown to either be ineffective or to do more harm than good. If you want to understand why what you are doing works (or doesn't work), you need to read this book. It is unlike any other to date in the field of performance improvement and training. It takes the profession to a higher level and is a must for anyone working in the area of organizational development, performance improvement, or training.

This book is all you need to understand the process of performance improvement in organizations, and the "active ingredients" that impact performance. The book separates the snake oil and fads from solutions that are supported by research. It gives clear and research-based guidelines for diagnosing the causes of performance gaps and selecting solutions for knowledge, motivation, and organizational problems. Case studies illustrate the appliation of the model and rules. In addition, the book describes how to reliably and validly evaluate the effects of performance solutions and identifies flaws in some common approaches to evaluation. The book answers the kinds of "why" and "what if" questions that rarely get addressed. It includes a powerful model of motivated performance that can be used to address any motivational problems. This book gives one the arguments and references to support organizational development and training practices and also the arguments and evidence to abandon practices that have been shown to either be ineffective or to do more harm than good. If you want to understand why what you are doing works (or doesn't work), you need to read this book. It is unlike any other to date in the field of performance improvement and training. It takes the profession to a higher level and is a must for anyone working in the area of organizational development, performance improvement, or training.

A thoroughly researched and extensively documented book which efficiently outlines 20 years of studies on adult learning. Effective adulte learning practices are explained in from six categories, voluntary engagement,respect among participants, collaboration and negaotiation of needs, relective praxis, critical appreciation of diversity, and student empowerment of self improvement. Aside from the institutional mode of learning, external authority, set objectives, set teaching roles, prescribed evaluation, adult learning seeks to empower self directed learners with critical thinking modes. This latter kind of learning is not without risk. The risks of dillusion, professional incompetence, and the perils of playing close to a kind of classroom therapy. Nonetheless, adult students bring a wealth of experience (good and bad), maturity, problem posing, problem solving, and task focus to adult learning. Finally, adult learning will invariably be restricted by institutional contexts, evalution criteria, and contextual business norms.

A thoroughly researched and extensively documented book which efficiently outlines 20 years of studies on adult learning. Effective adulte learning practices are explained in from six categories, voluntary engagement,respect among participants, collaboration and negaotiation of needs, relective praxis, critical appreciation of diversity, and student empowerment of self improvement. Aside from the institutional mode of learning, external authority, set objectives, set teaching roles, prescribed evaluation, adult learning seeks to empower self directed learners with critical thinking modes. This latter kind of learning is not without risk. The risks of dillusion, professional incompetence, and the perils of playing close to a kind of classroom therapy. Nonetheless, adult students bring a wealth of experience (good and bad), maturity, problem posing, problem solving, and task focus to adult learning. Finally, adult learning will invariably be restricted by institutional contexts, evalution criteria, and contextual business norms.

T.C. takes you into a new dimension with this book. Kyle D'Arcy starts out with a fairly normal life and ends up in a whole new world. The twist and turns in this book will keep you reading for hours. A wonderful weaving of action and adventure with a splash of romance. The only "bad" thing is once you read this first book in the Manipulated Evil Series, you won't stop until you have read them all!

Thriller? Speculative fiction? Romance? Science fantasy? Once again T.C. McMullen's work blurs the genre boundaries, and once again she's kept me reading until I finished the book. From the wonderfully creepy prologue to the cliffhanger ending (this is Book One in a trilogy), this story held me captive.

College student Kyle D'Arcy knows nothing of his true heritage. He believes he's the son of the couple who reared him. Bored, goal-less, and more spoiled by his easy life than he realizes, Kyle finds himself as baffled as both his mother and the police are when his father's murder calls him home. Who would want to kill Carter D'Arcy? What's in the envelope the geneticist left hidden in his home office, with Kyle's name shakily printed on it? And who is the striking young woman in a photograph that shares space with Kyle's likeness, when investigators go through the older D'Arcy's wallet?

Her name is Ravyn. Unlike Kyle, she knows all about her heritage - and his, too. She's as hard as he is soft, a trained and seasoned soldier (and leader) in a war for which Carter D'Arcy failed to prepare Kyle. A war that pulls the young man in nevertheless, forcing him to either rise to its demands or die. A war on which the fates of at least two worlds hang, although the people of Earth know nothing about it. Yet.

What is the true nature of evil? How can it come not from ill intent, but from good people who do wrong believing that "this one time, the end justifies the means"? As I read THE UNSEEN, I asked myself those timeless questions. Sometimes I shivered in sympathy with the characters, and sometimes I wanted to reach through the pages and shake them. I couldn't wait to read Book Two!

Read this book, go to the websites indicated. Take Action. This book is an absolute wake up call to America and Israel. Thank you Karl Grossman. Time's a wasting.
Wendy
Zayante, California

Important issues are rarely discussed with seriousness in the mainstream media; the efforts of the present Bush administration to go full speed ahead on the U.S. government's project to miitarize outer space is certainly a prime example of this.

While there is all sort of fulminations about "missle defense" from think tank pundits, talk radio hosts and other such fools about defending ourselves from ballistic missles from North Korea, Iraq and the other favorite hobgobolins, few people actually knowledgeable about such issues talk about such quite bogus threats. Professor Grossman in this book digs very deep into easily availabe U.S. space command literature and other easily available documents to get at the reality.

And the reality behind the U.S. plans to militarise space is simply stated by the U.S. military: achieving hegemony in space will have a similar, though probably much greater effect, as the achievment of hegemony of the seas achieved by England and the other European imperialists centuries ago. And of course those powers always justified their aggressions as "defense."

Perhaps the most interesting quote in the book comes from the Space command's "Long Range Plan" produced during the Clinton years. It explains that as the so-called globalization economy expands throughout the world "the gap between 'have' and 'have-not' nations will widen--creating regional unrest." This is, of course, contrary to the propaganda that as time goes on globalization will create a literal utopia throughout the world.

The document goes on to say that "The United States will remain the only nation able to project power globally...One of the long acknowledged and commonly understood advantages of space-based plaforms is no restriction or country clearances to overfly a nation from space. We expect this advantage to endure...Achieving space superiority during conflicts will be critical to U.S. success on the battlefields."

Another interesting document quoted in the books is the report commissioned and endorsed by the democratic controlled congress in 1987 which describes how the U.S. might be able to hijack the deposits of minerals on the Moon collected by other nations. Like the hegemonic powers of the past, the U.S. will engage in piracy when it is able to.

Now the "missle defense" is one component of a vast array of offensive weaponery, in large part nuclear powered, that is planned to be placed in space. Of course, missle defense itself, adopting the dubious assumption that it works, would theoritically protect the U.S. from any retaliatory strike andywhere in the world, allowing the U.S. to engage in military operations probably completely unimpeded which is why other nations are and will be building up anti-sattelite weapons and space-based and conventional weaponery and capablities. In other words the U.S. is starting an extremely dangerous arms race.

Grossman goes into other some interesting stuff. Such as about the Challenger space shuttle which exploded in January 1986 was scheduled in May 1986 the Ullyses plutonium fueled space probe with 24.2 pounds of plutonium on board; thus it would have been really horrific if it would have exploded then. And he compares the Cassini space probe flight about 700 miles above the earth's atmosphere so it could get enought gravity to push to go on to Saturn to the Mars climate orbiter which was navigated too close to the Martian atmosphere and crashed into the planet because the geniuses at Nasa and Lockeed Martin working on the project had failed to convert English units of measurement to metric ones. He wonders what would happen had they made the same mistake with the Cassini, fueled by 72.3 pounds of plutonium. Well, he says, in 1964 a U.S. navigation sattelite fueled with plutoniun failed to get into space and disintegrated into the earth's atmosphere dispersing 2.1 pounds of plutonium all over the earth, perhaps causing the global increase in lung cancer since then according to a Mannahaten project scientist.

Well, anyways, the point is stressed that our great leaders don't really carry about "defense" in the honest sense of the word but want to enrich the military manufacturers which subsidise them and the military buereaucrats. They will continue to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets executives of Boeing, Raytheon, Lockeed Martin and continue to spread suffering and terror around the world. The public is currently being roused to jingoism and fear so that the Bush administration has the support to do virtually anything under the guise of "fighting terrorism." and they already have done a terrible amount. It's important that the work of the group Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear, disussed extensively in the last half of the book, is supported.

Westward Go! presents the exciting story of how John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, and twelve-year old Rand Benton explored the American west in the Fremont expedition's 1842 Map-Making sojourn from St. Louis, Missouri to the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains. This lively, energetic text is enhanced with line-drawings and marginal notes as the expedition encountered Native Americans, buffalo herds, Sacajawea's son, mountainmen, rivers, and the vast unexplored horizon. Westward Go! is fun, informative reading for anyone with an interest in the Old West generally, and the John C. Fremont expedition in particular.

It's always a pleasure to discover the occasional historical novel that both educates AND entertains. This is not the tedious textbook presentation of America's past that I remember (and so painfully endured) over the years in required American history courses. Ms. Loftin's book is engrossing, with dialogue as dazzling as its illustrations. More significantly, she proves something I've always believed but rarely experienced--namely, that we can learn about America's remarkable past without being bored into a stupor.

Great for kids in speech therapy...ie a 2 or 3 year old. Asks questions like "on the table there is a chocolate cake, to eat it, you need....." and then under a flap is a picture of a fork. Very rewarding to open the flaps...creates a sense of anticipation too...and success when they get the answer right!

This book is an excellent resource for parents to use in teaching their toddlers the concept of what is needed in various situations. The child lifts the flap to reveal things such as needing a fork to eat the cake, a towel to dry off after bathing, etc. The child feels great accomplishment when they correctly "guess" what is needed for the picture. Also a good tool for delayed speech children, to reinforce understanding of relationships of everyday things.

I kept this book as one of my kid's favorites and plan to read it to my grandchildren. Willy the Wisher contains interesting and humorous stories which will raise your child's inquisitiveness, arouse their curiosity and prompt them to ask questions and test their memory skills at the appropriate times when hearing the stories.
I think this is one of the better "logic" books for early childhood education.

This is an excellent book for teaching/reading to children with language or social impairments. The stories repeatedly use characters endowed with typical language difficulties such as those encountered by language-disorded children -- e.g. using vague language; making illogical guesses; not using strategies to remember what someone has said, etc. Each story has questions throughout the text which are meant to be asked at that specific point in the story. Children I have worked with (in my speech/language pathology practice) enjoy the stories and learn from them.

The very best of a long and storied career, "With Mouths Open Wide" is an anthology of John Caddy's poetry ranging from over three decades of his writing. With a sharp wit that will entertain readers as well as inspire them as Caddy tells his tales of overcoming his disabilities. "With Mouths Open Wide" is a collection of poetry from a master, sure to please those who love poetry. "Solstice Sky": This long night solstice sky is filled with fires/that burn through air so cold/on this small northern place/of tilted Earth, air so cold/it carries echoes of the void,/the heatless absolute of space,//yet these ancient stars/are the memories of fires/that burned long before eyes/ever tilted up to them/and thought of light.

John Caddy combines the keen eye and knowledge of a naturalist and born teacher with a child's sense of wonder and a delightful mastery and freshness of language as he observes the world around him and wryly comments upon his own and our relation to it.
Yes, he sees joy: he watches swallows at dusk with such intensity his poetry skims along like their flight--"Think: to first know sky within a swim of swallows."
But his is not an easy, superficial glance. Observing a hawk pluck a goldfinch from a bare tree, he writes:
"I was going to say,
"A small hawk, sharp-shinned hawk,
adult: eye red, the fieldmark greyblue back.'
Do that. Pull back."
He forces himself, and us, to look closely at the small tragedy. "I can't pull back."
This is a book to be savored leisurely, written by a poet large in heart, a man who takes grocery sacks of fresh catnip to the large cats at the zoo, watching while "tigers roll in it and bite and croon and drowse," while "leopards drape boneless on their tree, and smile, extend their claws into the wood over and deeper and over," and concludes simply. "It is what I've hoped. I have given pleasure."
With this book as well as with catnip.

Most of the books that I've read about LotR that have come out sine the release of the films have been very long winded. None of them say anything original or substantial and tend to feel like a "dumbies guide". Mr. Lobdell's book isn't that long, but it really makes you think and touches on some interesting topics that other authors haven't (because they're too busy rehashing the same old things that every one else has been talking about).

I also really appriciate that Mr. Lobdell doesn't dumb down his language for his reader. When authors dumb down their language, I always have a feeling that they're talking down to me (which I don't appreciate). In this book, where a big word is meant, it's used, and it isn't substituted for a smaller, dumber word. As a result, I feel like I'm being "talked" to, instead of "talked" at.

This book was originally published ca 1980 as England and Always. I have not seen the original so I can't tell how much of this book is new material (beyond a chapter dealing with Peter Jackson's films). Lobdell has examined Tolkien's writings from several interesting and unusual perspectives. One of the most interesting deals with the influence of Edwardian adventure fiction (Haggard, etc.) on Tolkien. Another fascinating chapter deals with Middle Earth as a Christian world in a pre-Christian age. There is also a short fiction story in an Appendix which is meant to be a sort of parallel to Tolkien's own abandoned sequel to The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the Shadow. I enjoyed this story, though of course Lobdell as a fiction writer cannot measure up to Tolkien. (But then, no one can!)

I am a long time Tolkien reader and addict (since the age of 12 in 1969.) Most of the time I do not care for Tolkien "criticism" and "literary analysis", which to me seems to suck out the magic, but Lobdell's work is different. The World of the Rings enhances Middle Earth and intensifies the love I feel for it.