Alex Stewart: Portrait of a Pioneer

Book Description

Alex Stewart was a recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship Award in 1983 by the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington which recognized him as a living national treasure. Over a twenty year period of friendship the author developed a profound respect and great love for Alex Stewart, a truly remarkable Tennessee mountain character whose life epitomizes the pioneer development in America. The best of hundreds of hours of recorded conversations with Stewart are compiled into a moving portrait of this cooper, father of 13, farmer, logger, railroad man, and do-it-yourself interpreter of his rugged homeland. Because the ways Stewart tells his own stories are as important as the stories themselves, he is allowed to do most of the "talking" throughout the book. Through his own account of the people around him, Alex describes his rural life in the late 19th and 20th centuries through stories such as when he was bit by a rabid dog, when neighbor children begged for food, or how people gathered honey, made marbles, moonshine or furniture. Throughout his 94 years, Alex, who died in 1985, depended upon his own good sense to direct him and it led him through a rich and fascinating life. This book is a genuine labor of love.

Customer Reviews:

How your grandaddy used to do it.......2007-01-10

This is an amazing book about Alex Stewart, an Appalachian survivor. It is told from an interview style where Alex explains how he learned to make different utilitarian items that his family and community needed to survive. He also tells stories of how he learned what plants healed people from illnesses, learned the skills to survive the harsh locations of the Appalachian mountains and loved life with every ounce of his body.
My Appalachian born grandparents read it cover to cover over and over and then had to travel to the Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tenn to see the common items they remembered with Alex throughout the book. John Rice Irwin, the founder of the Museum of Appalachia is a gifted historian and this shines through in any of his books, written to remember the people of Appalachia. He also seeks to capture this throughout his living Appalachian village, the Museum of Appalachia. A MUST visit and A MUST read for any Appalachian native.

ALEX STEWART.......2006-05-16

i recently read the book about alex stewart and i have to say that it was so good. i loved it. alex was so talented and as the book stated "he was a national treasure." i would liked to have met him. any craft the author asked him about, he responded that he could make it. what a unique human being. he was warm, endearing, and a very kind and gentle man. he told completely the life of the pioneer to john brice irwin and the book is so well written. it was a joy to read and told in detail of the hardships the people of that era had to indure. i felt by the end of the book the sadness of alex stewart's death and that i had gotten to know him well.

fascinating read for the "modern" mind.......2003-03-24

I bought this book at the Museum of Appalachia (also founded by the author) on my first visit to Tennessee. The book is almost entirely a transcript of a dialogue/interview between the author and Alex Stewart. At first, I thought this would be a strange format, but as I read on, I discovered that this would be the only way to authentically capture the mind and spirit of Alex on paper.

If you're not from the South, you might find Alex's dialect charminging unusual. A few times I had to read a passage over and over again to fully understand what words Alex was saying. Here is an example where it took me a while to realize that Alex meant "Lord" when kept saying "Law":

"They didn't have no men folks, but they had several children. Making liquor was the only way they had of making a living. Law, they had it hard."

The author cleverly asks questions to get Alex to reveal his pioneer wisdom. More than that, though, the author's selections and chapter arrangements helped to organize the sprawling encyclopedia of Alex's mind.

By the time I reached the end, I was sad to have the "conversation" over. I felt I had known Alex a bit personally, and I mourned at his passing. It was joyous reading while it lasted and my heart ached to know more of Alex.

This is a fabulous book I can't recommend enough. 10 STARS.

Very Helpful.......2002-04-28

One reason I bought this book is because my Greatgrandmother was Alex's Aunt. I visited Alex as a child with my Parents and Grandmother. Alex was always sending my Grandmother items , such as walking canes. He made my mother a rolling pin, which she still has. Most of all the book gave me many names of my relatives that ive been searhing for.

Alex: A Great Man.......2002-03-03

I have read this book and it is all true. Alex was my great uncle. I remember as a child going to his house and striping cane for molasses. They would start early in the morning and work all day. Before uncle Alex died my father took me to see him. I'll never forget a small wooden carving he had of a racoon in a tree with two or three dogs at the base of the tree. He was a very gentle man with a lot of heart. I am very honored to have known this man and loved this man.

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Alex Stewart : Portrait of a Pioneer

Manufacturer: Schiffer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000I65QVO

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Wall to Wall America: A Cultural History of Post-Office Murals in the Great Depression
Karal Ann Marling
Manufacturer: Univ of Minnesota Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Painting | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Depression Post Office Murals and Southern Culture: A Gentle Reconstruction

Signs from the Heart: California Chicano Murals

Taking the Train

Mexican Muralists: Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros

ASIN: 0816611165

Customer Reviews:

Spectacular Vernacular: Earth Architecture.......2007-07-31

This is a poetic, love-filled appreciation of a variety of desert architecture that is disappearing. Much of the architecture is made of mud; "the material is pliable and responsive but vulnerable." The authors describe the structures needed in this climate: "Massive mud walls turn the house into a thermal, optical, and psychological fortress. Windowless buildings are friendly--refreshing islands of cool dimness in an ocean of heat, glare, and often stinging dust."

Such buildings have thick mud walls that keep the interior warm in the winter and cool in the heat of summer. There are three main types of mud construction, all of which interestingly are used today in the US: rammed earth, coursing or puddling, and adobe brick. These are amply illustrated, as are the maintenance and decoration of these mud structures.

Of interest are a series of mosques in the Sahel, near the Sahara: towers with ostrich eggs at their tips. The walls and towers are soft, sensual shapes with sticks that thrust out like bristles. These contrast with the motherly breasts that constitute ziarats, Islamic shrines found in Afghanistan, or at least were found there back when the authors visited the region. These are fully rounded hills of earth that mimic and honor the feminine aspect and can be traced back to times before Mohammed. They are something like stupas in appearance, including the possible cloths waving in the breeze.

Many of these mud structures look familiar, as if they could be in Taos or some other part of New Mexico, and in fact the authors did later build a home in Taos. I find these mud structure to be beautiful and have incorporated some of them into my Moroccan series of paintings.

lessons of form and material.......2000-03-30

This is an excellent overview of vernacular architecture from various parts of asia and africa. Well documented color photo illustrations were tremendous source inspiration in addressing sustainabilty issues in modern western architecture.

Spectacular Vernacular: The Adobe Tradition

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Spectacular Vernacular: The Adobe Tradition
Jean-Louis (Text by) Bourgeois
Manufacturer: Aperture Foundation, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LOK9QK

Book Description

with special photography, Drawing Shoujo Manga: Easel Does It shows how to ink and color shoujo manga characters, and how to place them in authentic scenes
eight creative step-by-step projects, demonstrating how to draw shoujo girls, bishie boys, magical figures, and fun chibi characters
explains how to use color creatively and build characters and scenes that bring your shoujo figures to life
all materials, equipment, and techniques needed to create shoujo characters are fully explained and accompanied by a gallery of shoujo figures by professional artists

Book Description

Two books in one, this is a complete insider's guide to the business of film or television production.

Customer Reviews:

Packed with informaiton.......2006-10-17

In development on a new feature film, this book has proved to be very helpful. From setting up the production checking accout, to offering a few dozen production forms, it is proving invaluable.

A great window into film production........2005-12-18

This book is written mainly from the point of view of the Production Manager (PM), and since the PM is really at the pivot point of the entire production process, this book gives us a great view into every step of that process. If you want to know what happens when they make movies, read this book.

Production Management.......2003-08-10

"If you have produced a low-budget independent movie and want to apply for a job with any Hollywood Production Company, this is the book that you MUST read before you go in for the interview. It explains the way that Hollywood Motion Picture Productions are managed." -- RMS

A Production Management Course and Textbook All in One!.......2003-05-14

Details, details, details....the things that determine the effectiveness and efficiency of a production office. Deborah Patz provides us with a concise, well written and wonderfully organized, must-have guide for anyone just entering or working in, the film production office, from PA through PM. An invaluable tool for Producers as well, packed with accurate, step-by-step details!

Book Description

Don't Stop Believin' * Wheel In the Sky * Seperate Ways (Worlds Apart) * Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin' and lots more!

Customer Reviews:

Journey piano music works well.......2007-02-15

The expression of Journey's music comes out very well with this piano book.

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Greatest Hits
Journey
Manufacturer: Columbia
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio CD
ASIN: B000I2OXD0

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Journey: Greatest Hits

Manufacturer: Weed High Nightmare Music
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000NYES0G

Joy in the Journey (10 Years of Greatest Hits) (70077 Keyboard - Medium Voice - Chord Symbols)

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Joy in the Journey (10 Years of Greatest Hits) (70077 Keyboard - Medium Voice - Chord Symbols)
Michael Card
Manufacturer: Sparrow Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Sheet music

General | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Product Description

Table of Contents: celebrate the child; chorus of faith; come to the table; el shaddai; the final word; God's own fool; heal our land; how long?; immanuel; joy in the journey; jubilee; know you in the now; known by scars; scandalon; so many books; that's what faith must be; to the mystery; why?

Customer Reviews:

Use this and pass your NCLEX RN.......2007-09-06

I am lost for words. Great book! Excellent layout.....good chance of success if you diligently do as told!

Love these puzzles.......2007-08-13

I was very happy to find this book of puzzles - I enjoy working them a lot. Thanks

Crazy Jumbles.......2007-01-20

The puzzles are good,but the format is too large.I prefer a smaller size book.One that is easier to carry with you, as on planes etc.

Jumble Madness: Crazy for Jumbles (Jumble Series).......2005-10-25

A paradise for jumble fanatics! it's a wonderful way to pass time on a car trip, or while you are watching TV.

Would recommend for anyone who loves jumbles. There are move jumbles in every puzzles verses the Newspapers version. Some are hard most are very common words.

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Jumble Madness Crazy for Jumbles

Manufacturer: Triumph books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1572434783

Book Description

This pocket-sized guide provides ratings and reviews of over 1,000 baby-friendly stores, activities, restaurants, playgrounds and much more in the DC Metro Area (includes DC, Maryland and Virginia Areas). Each listing in the guide provides contact information in addition to parent ratings and quotes/commentary. Alphabetical city/neighborhood, product and activity indexes make finding relevant information easy and fun.

Book Description

In September 1863, Union Gen. William S. Rosecrans drives into Georgia flanking Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg out of Chattanooga. Bragg, heavily reinforced, turns on Rosecrans and nearly traps him before he can fall back. The two great armies finally meet at Chickamauga. Through woods and small clearings, a confused but vicious battle rages as each army gropes and grapples at the other trying to find the enemy's flanks. At nightfall, Rosecrans holds his ground and continues to slide his army northward to Chattanooga. The following morning, however, Bragg launches an attack that catches Rosecrans in the midst of a clumsy readjustment of his lines. Half the Union Army is crushed and sent streaming back to Chattanooga. The other half, led by the redoubtable George H. Thomas, stands firm, weathers furious day-long assaults, and salvages honor and survival for the beaten Union Army.

A brief, fast-moving, colorful account of one of the biggest and bloodiest battles of the Civil War by a widely published historian.

Customer Reviews:

Not enough.......2004-10-21

This book written by revisionist historian Woodworth is a somewhat detailed outline of the battle with a few scattered biographical sketches of the leading generals. This short monograph is more like a detailed pamphlet than a book. The information in this book can be found elsewhere and it adds little or nothing to the history of the battle. A Deep Steady Thunder might be useful as a brief overview of the battle but a quick internet search shows many other resources available for free. Unless purchasing this monograph used for a few dollars it's not worth it.

rush job.......2003-08-08

Woodworth would have benefited from a visit to the Chickamauga visitor's center and a look at resident historian Jim Ogden's maps. He does not give Thomas proper credit for preventing disaster both before and during the battle, and, at the very end of the book, couldn't resist putting in a plug for the "quiet man, with an unassuming self-confidence...Ulysses S. Grant."

Good intro book on this great Civil War battle.......1999-11-11

The author deals with Chickamauga at the division/brigade level. This makes it easy for the reader to follow this complex battle over the three days it was fought. My only compliant was the Confederate Order of Battle in the appendix. B. Johnson's Division is missing completely, which includes the brigades of Gregg, McNair and Fulton. A good introduction to a reader who knows little about this battle. The maps are very well done, and add an important tool in describing this complex battle.

Book Description

Rees offers the first in-depth account of the extraordinary transformation in the safety standards, operations, and management of the nation's nuclear facilities spurred by the accident at Three Mile Island. Detailing the surprising success of self-regulation within the nuclear industry, his book reveals the possibilities for effective communitarian action.

Customer Reviews:

Disappointing analysis .......2005-10-08

For a long time I have been looking for a book with a coherent and convincing analysis on successful self-regulation. Well, perhaps any type of successful regulation. Books on regulatory failure are much easier to come by. And this book had such a promising setting. The claim: A single catastrophic accident at any one US nuclear plant would have ruinous consequences for the entire industry. Each licencee is a hostage of every other licencee. Safety pays! Result: the nuclear industry has founded the INPO organization, to police uniform high safety standards, simply to protect industry's huge investment in nuclear power.

Rees' basic hypothesis is that nuclear power plants operate on some sort of Enlightened Self Interest (ESI). This assumption on rationality is never explicitly stated however, nor is it examined critically. But Rees argues from industry sources that nuclear plants strive to be safe, they compete with each other to be the safest, and that the nuclear industry provide INPO with muscle to make life difficult for those who either cannot or will not do so.

Surprisingly, many of Rees' examples have kind of a dualism. On the one hand, Rees' examples tell a story on how the Three Mile Island accident resulted in soul searching and catharsis, how the transformaton has resulted in increased industry responsibility, how new controls have been set up, and how INPO succesfully fulfills its policing role. But many of the examples could equally well be interpreted the other way around:
- that INPO has been given only weak powers - the so-called Management by Embarassment in closed industry fora. Not stong ones; because linking INPO evaluations and insurance cost, for instance, can affect stock price enormously (p94)
- that INPO is extremely cautious not to alienate its sponsor base (p145)
- that the "safety pays" notion is not widely shared across industry, to say the least, and that cost-cutting on safety is widespread
- that the wake-up call from Three-Mile Island is not received by all actors

For instance, take the example of the INPO crack-down in 1987 - eight years after TMI (!) - on a plant where all operators had fallen asleep on several occasions, leaving operating reactors unattended. Is this an example of a more fundamental free-rider problem in the industry and an opportunity to re-examine the rational ESI assumption ?- or is it an example of succesful INPO peer-pressure intervention? Rees only considers the latter.

It is a mystery to me why Rees has not exploited this alternative line of interpretation and the reason why I find the analysis disappointing.
Rees demonstrates that self-regulation can improve the safety of some plants, likely in ways that public regulation cannot achieve and possibly in a more efficient manner. But the analysis fails to demonstrate that self-regulation can replace public regulation, which is surprising, bearing in mind the "hostages of each other" setting of the analysis.

Persuasive Argument For Communitarian Regulation.......2004-09-09

Joseph Rees has written a superior account of the improvements in nuclear systems safety since the Three Mile Island accident. Without getting too deep into the technical details of nuclear systems or chemistry (other than a basic explanation of the general theory of plant operation and a bit of detail about the faulty PORV design), Rees analyzes TMI from a human factors and safety systems vantage point, and subsequently details the improvements made to the US nuclear power industry since the accident.

Rees especially details the workings of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), a non-governmental industry group which oversees safety more diligently than even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in a system that Rees dubs "communitarian regulation." He details industry problems such as "nonconservative decision making" and provides useful analogies to other industries. The case of Consolidated Edison (p. 154) is of particular interest for those people interested in studying corporate safety systems and programs.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in nuclear power, and particularly to professionals and students with an interest in industrial safety, regardless of their specific field. This book has applications in every industry, and will improve the understanding of human factors and industrial safety for any interested reader.

Hostages of Each Other.......2000-05-29

This book is about how the Nuclear Energy Industry "bootstrapped" itself to improve operational and nuclear safety after the TMI accident. Prior to TMI, the NRC had been enforcing minimum safety requirements, not promoting operational excellence. The industry realized it might not economically survive another TMI, and while the fundamental design of the plants appeared to be safe, significant operational improvements were needed to reduce the chance another similar accident. The industry formed INPO (the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations) to share information and resources to promote excellence and safety in operations. The book is full of stories of what happened and quotes from the principles involved (no heavy technical stuff) and I found it an enjoyable, interesting read. The author is a professor at the Center for Public Policy at Virginia Tech, and I detected no pro or anti-nuke sentiment, just lots of well researched information. Probably the best book I have read on the subject.

Hostages of Each Other: The Transformation of Nuclear Safety Since Three Mile Island. (book reviews): An article from: Issues in Science and Technology

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Hostages of Each Other: The Transformation of Nuclear Safety Since Three Mile Island. (book reviews): An article from: Issues in Science and Technology
David Ward
Manufacturer: National Academy of Sciences
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Science | Subjects | Books

Science & Technology | Subjects | e-Docs | Formats | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Issues in Science and Technology, published by National Academy of Sciences on September 22, 1994. The length of the article is 1800 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Hostages of Each Other: The Transformation of Nuclear Safety Since Three Mile Island. (book reviews)
Author: David Ward
Publication: Issues in Science and Technology (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 1994
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
Volume: v11 Issue: n1 Page: p84(4)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Hostages of Each Other: The Transformation of Nuclear Safety Since Three Mile Island

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Hostages of Each Other: The Transformation of Nuclear Safety Since Three Mile Island
Joseph V. Rees
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OPLAWS

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