Winston-Salem Books

We live in a life-care community. I shall try to give this book to our health care center activities person, and to anyone I know who is having difficulties with dementia in a loved one, as well as to the active clergy of our acquaintance. The point Hill makes--requesting equal rights for the demented dying as for those who are in full possession of their mental faculties--is one that had never occurred to me before I read this book. I kept thinking (naturally) of my own mother, who for at least six months, and perhaps longer, didn't know anyone, and who seemed not to have anything at all to "get off her chest." Hill's entertaining (yes, it is) story of her wonderfully eccentric and charming parent made it clear that no matter what is happening, the person it's happening to is still somehow the same as in years past, at least enough so that it is cruel to ignore his or her need for expression. Whether there are old wounds to heal or bridges to mend is really secondary. Read this lovely essay and learn!

This is the most moving memoir I have ever read. The intimacy Sheridan Hill shares with her readers and close attention to details is breath taking. I could not put it down. Astonishing and simply beautiful.

This is a must read for the hospice community and the families they serve.

I could not put this book down, so real, taking us to that uncharted territory, the death of our mother. How do we stay present, how do we understand our relationship, how do we face death and find life?
Sheridan Hill tells her story with such detail and honesty. I am no longer afraid of death, for my parents or myself after reading this book.

Refreshing for the heart -- as eternal family values wait til the end of one's life to come to light. I want my siblings to read this. How I wish I had had time with my own mother before her passing!

I'm one of the "baby boom" generation, we who once shouted "never trust anyone over twenty-five!" And now we are in our forties, fifties, and sixties, often facing alone the crisis of the death of a parent or loved one. Our culture has ill prepared us for this passage, a society that dwells on youth and so carefully hides away death. I lost both of my parents several years back and only wish I had first read Ms. Hill's book, it would have served as a guide, and reaffirmed as well the rightness of decisions I made for the sake of my mother and father. It is not a book about death, it is a book about living and sharing to the fullest one's final journey with a parent.

I will freely admit I wept repeatedly as I read Ms. Hill's beautifully crafted tome which honors and celebrates her mother's final months. Reading it made me realize that so much of what I experienced was valid, that I was not alone in my feelings and gave me new and hopeful insights into my own life and the spiritual journey of my mother and father.

If you just read these reviews and do not buy the book, please heed her advice from this reviewer. Listen to your parents now, talk with them, share and recall all the moments, good and bad, and fight with all your passion to insure their time of passage is a time that is respectful of their dignity. Though I do hope you purchase this work even though the subject might be the last one on your mind at this moment. For someday it will occupy your life front and center and Ms. Hill is a guide you can turn to and trust.

Fantastic message. Every parent of a young athlete should read it, and every aspiring young athlete should read it. Alan Williams demonstrates everything that is still right about wanting to succeed as an athlete... and the way to go about it. And for those athletes that are a "can't miss" or already there, the example and impacts that a Robert O'Kelly can make on those kids fighting to succeed are priceless. I made every girl on my 12U AAU basketball team read it.

They always say if you want to know what the Coach or the star of the team is really like, then you should ask the last player on the bench. This is exactly what Allan Williams does as he takes you on a journey through his life and times of triumph and dejection on the Wake Forest men's basketball team. It's a great story for basketball players and non players alike. truly inspirational

Walk-on is a must read for coaches, parents (especially fathers),star athletes and "bench-warmers." Alan Williams is a living example of what it means to be a team player. His story is a great encouragement to the athlete who loves his/her sport, but rarely "gets in the game." The book also brings out the positive relationship he has with his father.

Realistically describes the role of the non-starter in college athletics; worth reading for the roles of determination, family and faith in an individual's life. Good to share with high school athletes aspiring to play in college. Quick read, not the very best writing, but not awful either.

This book is incredibly inspiring and one that anyone will enjoy reading. I would give it six stars on a scale from 1 to 5!!!!!

Collins not only does a superior job of telling the tales, but also characterizing the people who lived them. At Wake Forest it is not so much the story as the people. The university is one built upon relationships. This is a book for any generation of Wake Forest or ACC fan because one can open it and connect to the players and coaches with whom they are familiar. Collins offers an accurate and unbiased account. He has witnessed many of the events he described in this book first-hand as a veteran journalist and Wake Forest beat reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal, Wake Forest's hometown newspaper. Open to any page and enjoy!

It's been almost a century since basketball started at Wake Forest (1906). And from that beginning, not long after basketball was invented, there has been time to develop a lot of history. A history of events, certainly, but especially a history of people: the team, the players, the coaches.

Dan Collins has covered Wake Forest for the Winston-Salem Journal since 1978. He's collected a century worth of stories into this small book. It's clearly aimed at the Wake Forest fan. This is not basketball in general, this is Wake Forest basketball. Well maybe a little bit about North Carolina basketball, but not much.

Beyond that, the writing is excellent, it flows quickly and is absolutely filled with amusing anecdotes. If you're a fan....

This book is an excellent read, not just for Wake Forest fans, but for all sports fans. I recommend it highly!

Collins effectively presents interesting and informative anecdotes on Wake Basketball, its players and coaches. A pleasant read for any Deacon fan.

Liked this book quite a bit for the quality of the images and the breadth of the artists covered. The biographies are very clear and interested. My interest in this book stems from my purchase of a picture from one of the artists in the book (http://www.dinesfamily.org/DinesArt.htm).

Good purchase for anyone interested in this narrow spectrum of modern art

Before the Second World War, while the "Ash Can" school was stealing the cultural limelight, a group of European immigrants brought the abstract European tradition to America. Their work is still exciting and fresh, as this skillfully assembled collection makes clear. Unless you have studied the period extensively, you're likely to recognize only a handful of names, Calder and Stuart among them. What a wonderful surprise this book is. How could we have overlooked these gloriously gifted artists?

Before the Second World War, while the "Ash Can" school was stealing the cultural limelight, a group of European immigrants brought the abstract European tradition to America. Their work is still exciting and fresh, as this skillfully assembled collection makes clear. Unless you have studied the period extensively, you're likely to recognize only a handful of names, Calder and Stuart among them. What a wonderful surprise this book is. How could we have overlooked these gloriously gifted artists?

Big House was one of the first persons I met when I was a freshmen at WSSU. Reading this book brought back some great memories. This is an Outstanding read that anyone would enjoy.
K.B.

very compelling Book about Big house and His legacy which has him as One of the winningest Coaches Ever in College Basketball. but this Book reflects on the struggle and Bridiging the gap socially and spiritually. Humor keeps things into perspective in the Book,but what Big House had to deal with in Jim Crow America,etc... is no laughing matter and this book pulls no punches,but it speaks directly about the game on the court and the game of life and so much else in between. very Powerful.

Big House was a great coach - the fifth best in history of college basketball but more importantly he was a guy with a sense of values and a good sense of humor. He knows basketball as well as anyone in the country and has some candid comments about how to improve the game. But his real commitment was to the students he coached. He experienced the bitter bite of segregation - working for an HBCU called Winston Salem State - but his memoir is better than a rant - it is a reflection of his insight and integrity.

Peter Perret and Janet Fox have made a worthy contribution to education by telling a story of how music can affect children's ability to learn, to listen and to raise their overall performance in school. This book explores the way musicians teach and the way children and teachers learn from the activities described in the ground-braking Bolton Project in Winston Salem, NC.
The writing is engaging and humorous, but also serious and well researched. The book touches on different models of teacher-student relationship, creative approaches to learning, and the sense of vocation and commitment to continuous improvement. It focuses on the realities of the present moment and the sense of accomplishment that results when there is passion for excellence.
The book also touches on some important questions on whether music instruction affects our cognitive abilities, and gives the reader a good overview on the research that has been going on for the last fifteen years. It tantalizes the reader to know more about the subject and makes a good case for adopting new teaching models through music instruction in the early school years.
I highly recommend this book to teachers, parents and to anyone who is interested on new models for effective teaching.
Patricia A. Dixon
Lecturer in Music
Wake Forest University

A Well-Tempered Mind, Using Music to Help Children Listen and Learn by Peter Perret and Janet Fox with a foreword by Maya Angelou
March 2004, Dana Press

"That is what I think the woodwind quintet is doing. Our musicians are playing to a fundamental language of the brain. They are evoking a muse that already lives in every child's head."

Harvard's Project Zero was named that because of Howard Gardner's belief in 1967 that "nothing had been firmly established about the link between the arts and cognitive thinking." Thirty-seven years later, the North Carolina Bolton Project creates a new yet ancient paradigm: live music in classrooms of elementary and middle school students, particularly at-risk ones, causes a dramatic increase in students' standardized test scores, perhaps due to the neurological changes the music catalyzes. This book proves it. And, as the authors point out, the link between music and learning dates back to Plato. Current tests, such as the Audio-Visual Integration test (AVI), were used to substantiate the significant success of the Bolton Project. Since we know most "children who fail to master reading in the early grades rarely learn to read later in life", elementary and middle school educators can find a panacea in this book.

Students listening to live music such as a quintet raised their scores by almost 50%. The authors stress that the quintet wasn't there to teach music but to teach through music, the classroom teacher creating the lesson plan with the music coordinator. Frank Wood, Professor of Neurology at Wake Forest University, states it directly in his introduction: "The Bolton curriculum, I can now say from firsthand experience as a research colleague of Peter Perret and a mentor of Shirley Bowles, has proved effective for enhancing cognitive skills, including the skills that support learning to read." Although the book focuses on music, all performing arts have potential to increase learning.

Far from being a dry read like a textbook, the book tells a success story of a ten-year old project that should rivet educational reformers. The authors also reveal insights into cognitive neuroscience and the learning process. Actual dialog of students enhances the book's readability in addition to showing the spatial-temporal reasoning being developed in students. Humor abounds in the titles and heads of the book, such as allusions "Close Encounters of the Musical Kind" and "Raising Arizona". Even the title of the book connects with the essence of the project.

As a high school English teacher of at-risk students, I'm overwhelmed at the difference this kind of classroom would make. The first thing I teach in 9th grade English is how to think back and forth between specifics and generalizations. If my students had been introduced to this type of teaching in elementary school, their struggle to form abstract ideas from specifics would be far less. Part of my job is to raise the reading scores of students, so when I read the chapter "Is Music A Reading Teacher?" I recognized the incredible value of A Well-Tempered Mind in terms of helping students improve thinking, reading, and, of course, writing skills.

Maya Angelou best expresses my thinking after reading Perret and Fox's book: "I pray the gift of this book, along with the gift of music, will herald the return of art in the classroom. The children need that and so does our world."

This is an important book for everyone who has a stake in the education of young children, meaning everyone concerned with our country's future. The book demonstrates what happens when a woodwind quintet visits the classroom to play music and actively engages the children in discussions about the music. What happens is the children's brain development is enhanced, together with their ability to learn everything in the curriculum.

This book provides a guide for school administrators and parents to adopt the program in their schools. The program's results are eye-opening: the new listening skills that the program develops help children better anticipate, remember, compare, and imagine. As the musicians and children discuss quarter notes and half notes, the concept of fractions becomes real and tangible. When the children compose music, their self-confidence improves.

The book provides empirical evidence about these results. For those who want it, the evidence is correlated with cutting-edge brain research. To many people, the idea of music in the classroom means music appreciation or learning to play an instrument. This program, far more ambitious, does far more.

This is a terrific book--an important history that brings together a story of race, labor unions, economic change, politics, and culture, but never loses sight of the actual people involved. Very well written--not dry and academic like some history, but also very rich analytically. Buy it and read it!

In this wonderful book, African American tobacco workers tell their own story of civil rights struggle and union organizing. It is long, but so was the struggle, and I couldn't put it down. Oral interviews give us the black workers' own accounts, sending, for once, the white supremacists to the back of the bus.
Read it. You will find a South you never thought you would find.

This work should be of more than passing interest to those who more and more find themselves beset on every side by urban sprawl. The author sets out in many ways to preserve an old family homestead; but, more important, seeks ways to make the place profitable. His attempts are often hilarious, the more so when they fail, and they never lack meaning for others who share his feelings about the need for ways to protect ourselves from the menace of an urbanization that has rapidly got out of contol.

This work should be of more than passing interest to those who more and more find themselves beset on every side by urban sprawl. The author sets out in many ways to preserve an old family homestead; but, more important, seeks ways to make the place profitable. His attempts are often hilarious, the more so when they fail, and they never lack meaning for others who share his feelings about the need for ways to protect ourselves from the menace of an urbanization that has rapidly got out of contol.

I was luck enough to find a copy of this book in print and found it to be very well written and very informative. It shows a whole new sphere of life in Salem, NC.

As a resident of Winston-Salem, NC I have always been ashamed of what happened to Darryl Hunt. Darryl served 19 years in prison for the rape and murder of Sharon Sykes, a copy editor for the W-S Journal newspaper, which he didn't commit, the way the case was investigated, witnesses paid-off to lie, and the racism at work have been a blight on the city. This book details the efforts of his one character witness, a white teacher he had in the 6th grade, and her unwavering belief in his innocence. Fortunately, the real murderer of Sharon Sykes was captured after a DNA match. The book is certainly not a difficult read, but an important one for anyone who wants to make a difference in the way our nation's justice system works and fails, and how racism plays a major role. Some proceeds are given to the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice.