Lives of the Laureates - 3rd Edition: Thirteen Nobel Economists

Book Description

Lives of the Laureates provides a condensed and personalized history of modern economic thought, with some of the most eloquent and important contributors to that history as guides. William F. Sharpe of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford, Ronald H. Coase of the University of Chicago, and Douglass C. North of Washington University are the distinguished trio of American economic laureates who have added their invaluable insights to this new edition.

They are joined by Franco Modigliani, James M. Buchanan, Robert M. Solow, Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman, W. Arthur Lewis, Lawrence Klein, James Tobin, George Stigler, and Kenneth Arrow in a series of autobiographical essays that describe each economist's personal and professional development.

Lives of the Laureates - 3rd Edition: Thirteen Nobel Economists

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Lives of the Laureates - 3rd Edition: Thirteen Nobel Economists
Roger W. Spencer William Breit
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OQTMCM

Book Description

From Lou Gehrig to Derek Jeter, here are 26 players, including one woman, fans will want to get to know better because of their courage, determination, charity, and sacrifice.

Customer Reviews:

Baseball for the Soul.......2004-04-14

I think Jack Walsh, and Marshall Cook have captured the heart and soul of Baseball's greatest players. Baseball Good Guys is a book that will inspire the reader to learn more of the Character and Integrity of these players. The statistics are there, but their ability to overcome adversity, personal problems, prejudice and more, will inform the readers of the real skills of these players.

Be forewarned, some of the pages come to life, in such a way that splinters (possibly from the bats) seem to leap into your eyes.

Good book, should be a must read for school athletes and those of us who lived during some of those years.

Customer Reviews:

Don't believe what you hear!.......2003-07-08

I would not agree with these others reviewers. Yes, the book is a little evil in it's intent. But, that is the reason we buy it. Although Mr. Hadleigh did do a good job compiling this gabfest, I do not believe that it is harsh enough to harm a mouse. The book is very similar to his other glob of gossip, "Hollywood Babble On." Both are supposed to capture the snotty quips uttered by Hollywoodites, which they do. But, they are trivial and unfunny; some ok, but, for the most part, boring. I feel, that by the time one is done reading a quote, they have probably forgotten what they have just read! That is how blaise that this book can be! In short, read it if you are bored and do not want much entertainment. And, don't completely believe other reviewers...it is not a shame to read this book!

Mean-spirited and Misleading!.......2002-12-09

Save your money. This book is not only disappointing (and misleading), but mean-spirited in its intent and execution.

Very Misleading Title.......2002-02-27

I didn't find this book to be anything like it's title suggests. Rather it is a "coffee table book" with hundreds of one liner quotes from celebrities, none of which appear to be about other celebrities. It's more of book of quotes...period.

Great Bathroom Reading.......2001-01-17

If you love the movies, and who doesnt, you'll love this collection of quotes from actors, directors, etc. They're wise, witty, bitchy, etc. Every week I plow through my issue of Entertainment Weekly in hopes of finding comments from celebrities as incisive and memorable as these. Here,they're in such profusion its incredible. Really enjoyable and enlightening.

Wicked Fun.......1999-10-02

A delicious, scandalous, weird, eye-opening collection that will convince you (in case you need to be) that the stars in real life are very different from the roles they play on the screen--except for Madonna, of course.

Hollywood and Whine: The Snippy, Snotty, and Scandalous Things Stars Say about Each Other

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Hollywood and Whine: The Snippy, Snotty, and Scandalous Things Stars Say about Each Other

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0641566166

Product Description

When sex kittens turn catty and stars let their updos down -- Look Out! This lowdown collection reveals what celebrities say frankly about each other and themselves when they're wondering whether all their gain is worth the pain. Guaranteed to amuse, these witty, gossipy, often hilarious, and sometimes poignant quotes reveal what the stars think not only about other stars but also about their own offscreen selves, their problems, secrets, and their love-hate relationship with fame. Packed with scores of celebrity photos, and nearly 2,000 morsels of backbiting, bitching, and betrayal, Hollywood and Whine could only have been compiled by an insider like author Boze Hadleigh. A fitting companion to his previous bestseller Hollywood Babble-On, this book will delight every movie fan and gossip hound.

Book Description

From one of today's most respected historians and cultural critics comes a new book examining the gulf in American society--a division that cuts across class, racial, ethnic, political and sexual lines.

One side originated in the tradition of republican virtue, the other in the counterculture of the late 1960s. Himmelfarb argues that, while the latter generated the dominant culture of today-particularly in universities, journalism, television, and film--a "dissident culture" continues to promote the values of family, a civil society, sexual morality, privacy, and patriotism. Proposing democratic remedies for our moral and cultural diseases, Himmelfarb concludes that it is a tribute to Americans that we remain "one nation" even as we are divided into "two cultures."

Customer Reviews:

One Huge Contradction.......2006-12-24

There is something either profoundly naive or, more likely, duplicitous, in advocating the state take up the slack of moral vanguard in the face of a progressive assault on traditional morality. Like a good neo-con, there is nothing genuinely conservative about this argument. In essence, Himmelfarb only has one thesis, the same she presents in all her books: we need to bring back shame and moral condemnation. Practically, this means we need to be smug, as smug as the members of her little circle - the same circle that now has American boys fighting to implement Sharia law in the formerly secular Iraq. Why? Because this is the absurd argument that people of morality can make alliance against the western Left, and that the real divide is between traditional morality and progressive thought, whereas the real divide is between the west and the rest. We will always have more in common with fellow westerners, be they Marxists or atheists, than with Others.

There is no love of Christendom here, no grasp of the pulse of western civilization or the underlying culture of America, only an ongoing attempt to impose on the reader an either/or alternative that will appeal to the unimaginative. Read some Thomas Sowell instead. Gertrude and her apartment-dwelling NY friends really are the Reanointed.

short book, long winded.......2006-01-26

I read Himmelfarb's book hoping to gain some insight as to the "moral decay" that so many talk about...what I found was:
a) simplistic values and generalities overstated,
b) many "moral deficiencies" undiscussed, and
c) no solutions.

Her book reads like a long-winded essay that hopes to impress because it uses big words and has lots of footnotes to show she "did her homework." Unfortunately, she uses statistics selectively and only when they help her point (using the phrase "But statistics don't tell the entire story..." far too often). She also cuts references' contexts, so that her point is made (even if the reference is not quite on the same line of thinking).

After completing the book, I must admit that it's a wonderful thing to always be right. Had a black, single mother written this same book, it would never have been published. Connections help!

One Nation, Two Cultures - Review.......2004-12-06

Some interesting points made, the author is too quick to draw a strong line connecting the "moral decay" of our society in part to non-traditional families. She focuses too strongly on the negative statistics associated with our changing family structure while under-stating the benefits (and statistics) that show how this individualism has allowed our country to prosper and which has provided women and minorities a world of opportunities which did not exist 50 years ago.

Cogent, but Disappointing.......2002-02-03

In this book, Ms. Himmelfarb shows that she is a political theorist. She makes cogent arguments about civil society and political institutions. However, I found the book very disappointing in its coverage of the more recent etiology of the two cultures: she says nothing of the legions of ultra-leftists now dominating academic, literary, and journalistic circles. She also neglects the rightward shift in American politics and the rise of the religious right since the Carter era. I also found her arguments long-winded and tiresome. This is a book written to impress academics, not to inform the general reader.

If you want political theory from de Tocqueville and since, this could prove worthwile. If you want to understand what really divides us as a people, read something else.

Liberals Will love This Book.......2001-12-13

As conservative Judge Richard Posner pointed out in the New York Times Book Review (Dec 19, 1999), Ms. Himmelfarb unwittingly makes quite the opposite case from the one she intended to make, describing an American society that could easily impress an observer as being on its "moral uppers". This book should be read alongside Alan Wolfe's "One Nation After All" published a year earlier. Wolfe's book, based on hundreds of interviews conducted for the Middle Class Morality Project of the centrist Russell Sage Foundation, found that most Americans, both liberal and conservative, have developed a complex moral and theological style that holds fast to traditional values while embracing religious and cultural diversity. A better informed population is now more likely to substitute individual conscience and personal responsibility for blind acceptance of authority. The book concluded that the "culture war" theory of America was largely a fiction cooked up by right wing intellectuals and the news media --- which habitually portray the country in terms of stereotyped divisions over moral, racial, and social issues. Ms. Himmelfarb's thesis --- that we must all respect authority simply because it is Authority, is an example of this mode of "thinking."

How to Play The Middle Game in Chess
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For the Advanced Intermediate

Disappointing

How to Play The Middle Game in Chess
John Littlewood
Manufacturer: Batsford
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Chess | Board Games | Puzzles & Games | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
General | Puzzles & Games | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
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The Middlegame, Book 2: Dynamic & Subjective Features (Algebraic Edition)

The Middlegame - Book I : Static Features (Algebraic Edition)

Secrets of Chess Transformations

Understanding Pawn Play in Chess

Pawn Structure Chess

ASIN: 0713486171

Customer Reviews:

For the Advanced Intermediate.......2003-11-01

This book is for the advanced intermediate chess player. He uses symbols rather than letters for algebraic notation. He uses "!" a lot and about half the time I was scratching my head wondering why.

Here's a tip for those lazy about setting up hundreds of positions on a board and playing out lines of play: most of the games are from the historical archive of masters that can be found on www.chesslab.com. Just type in the players' last names and select the historical archive (1485-1990) from the start position. Then select the game by date. They're really there. Then you can play the whole game by clicking a button and not have to set up the board. Also, you can see the whold game, while Littlewood usually only gives part of the middle game. He says "and white won comfortably" - I found it nice to be able to see how online.

He covers all the middle game topics: strategy and tactics, pawn structure, the king, and planning. He also has some self-test chess positions. If you're ready to really study chess, go for it.

Disappointing.......2001-08-23

The book covers various aspects of the middle game: tactics and combinations, the pieces, pawns, strategy and planning. I didn't find it helpful.

First of all, this book isn't easy to use. Littlewood rarely gives complete games, so it requires a lot of setting up of positions to follow his examples.

Secondly, Littlewood's examples don't seem to really target the points he's trying to make. At one point, in a 4-5 page section on the Queen, he asks us not to over-estimate her power. Fair enough, but he has to give us 3-4 examples of Queenless positions to prove this. He even provides a full game in which the Queens go off the board early, but do we really need this to understand his point? Why didn't he use the game to illustrate something else? This is just one example; I could go on. Throughout the book, Littlewood's examples seem interchangeable because he never really focuses on what's salient about each. Its like he just says, "make moves like this, and you'll win."

It is possible that a stronger player (I'm only about 1300 USCF) would like this book, but I've heard it recommended for novices, and Littlewood even provides "hints for beginners" at the end of each chapter....

HOW TO PLAY CHESS - Powerful Moves for Opening, Middle and End Game
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HOW TO PLAY CHESS - Powerful Moves for Opening, Middle and End Game
D. B. Pritchard
Manufacturer: Coles Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GW01HE

How to play the King's Indian, Saemisch variation
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How to play the King's Indian, Saemisch variation
Raymond D Keene
Manufacturer: Chess Player
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Puzzles & Games | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
General | Sports | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0900928840

How to Play the Middle Game in Chess
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How to Play the Middle Game in Chess

Manufacturer: Bobbs-Merrill Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000BHDQMG

Book Description

How would you like to create your own impressionist landscape, a van Gogh still life, or a surrealist Salvador Dali dream world? Or perhaps a classic Ansel Adams photograph of Yosemite or an authentic-looking 19th century Daguerrotype? You can do all of that and more with Photoshop Fine Art Effects Cookbook.

The book tells you all you need to know to turn your original digital photographs into images that mimic the styles of great photographers and painters. From advice on how to develop an eye for appropriate subject matter to 62 detailed recipes that demonstrate exactly how to create an "original" van Gogh, Vermeer, Edward Weston, or Andy Warhol (among others), this book is an authentic guide to understanding and simulating the work of great artists-and a whole lot of fun.

Analyzing the styles of great artists: format, composition, angles of view, color palettes, and image textures
Shooting for digital manipulation, working non-destructively, making your own brushes and patterns
Creating Daguerrotypes, cyanotypes, stop-motion photographs, cross-processed images, Polaroid transfers, and infrared effects
Mimicking photographic styles from the pre-Raphaelites and the Naturalists to Jerry Uelsmann and David Hockney
Exploring painting and printmaking techniques from Rembrandt to Warhol: Dutch portraits, 18th century landscape painting, Japanese woodblocks, Impressionism, Pointillism, Fauvism, Art Nouveau, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Pop Art

Packed with step-by-step instructions, an inspirational selection of full-color digital imagery, and authoritative information and advice, Photoshop Fine Art Effects Cookbook is the ultimate guide to creating convincing digital masterpieces in the styles of many of the world's greatest artists.

Customer Reviews:

Rhondda Boy.......2007-06-11

I would like to thank John Beardsworth for writing this book as it has given me much pleasure in replicating his creations and following his recipes are so easy. The quality of the printing of the book is superb.I look forward to hours of enjoyment making my own paintings.

Lots of errors.......2007-04-15

The concept is interesting & it is fun to try the different recipes, but many many errors mar the book. Also, some the instructions are less than clear.

Waste of money.......2007-04-04

There are many web sites with better information. Take a look on them.

Great recipes, easy steps, wonderful results........2006-07-09

This book puts you on the fast track to grafting the styles of famous artists into your own work through more than five dozen easy-to-follow recipes. Not surprisingly, you'll find yourself learning more than you originally expected to about Photoshop.

not-so-fast ..........2006-05-04

Earlier this year I reviewed what many will see as the companion volume to this book ("Photoshop Blending Modes Cookbook for Digital Photographers"), written by the same author. Unfortunately, the newer publication is less useful. It seems to have been written on a pretext that it's clever to be able to duplicate what traditional artists can do. This seems - from my own personal viewpoint - to be greatly undervaluing the power of Photoshop (and similar software). Practitioners of digital fine art should (really, constructively) be looking to explore what the principles of prior and traditional art can mean within a new domain.

Plus, the book gets off to a definitely poor start. The second and longer of two introductory sections is titled "The Tricks of the Trade". Well it would be better if just some of the "tricks" had been explained in full and more accurately. Say, how to make a selection in Photoshop from the best available precursor (a black-and-white alpha channel). Or say again, how to make tonal corrections to the original photograph using a luminance mask. Then again, the first (and shorter) of the introductory chapters, titled "The Artist's Eye", is just a teaser. This topic - pre-visualizing what can be achieved as an output image when composing the original photographic input - could have benefited from a much more detailed explanation/argument. Indeed, it could even merit an expansive concluding chapter (but the book doesn't have one of those at all ....). This is, after all, at the very core of what the user could harness to any given artistic objective.

Additionally, I think that it's strange that a book such as this simply makes no reference at all to what could be printed from the recipes it contains. Some of the finished (output) images might look quite intriguing as 3 by 5 inch reproductions in the book - but does the methodology hold up if you're targeting a 20 by 36 inch output (say) on a large format printer? And what to do if that's not the case? Finally, and in common with the earlier companion volume, this book suffers from strange and inconsistent layouts of screenshots and text, plus all sorts of technical and editing omissions/errors (which include, for example, having the wrong screenshot in the wrong recipe - see p.108).

Book Description

The impact of Europe on a newly-discovered world of America has long been a subject of historical fascination. Yet the impact of that discovery and conquest for the European conquering powers has traditionally received less attention. In this pioneering book J. H. Elliott set out to show how traditional European assumptions about geography, theology, history and the nature of man were challenged by the encounter with new lands and people; trading relationships around the world were affected by an influx of gold and silver imports from America; while politically, the sources of power were no longer confined to European territory. The 500th anniversary of Columbusâ€™s discovery has prompted renewed enquiry into the relationship of the Old World and the New; John Elliottâ€™s fascinating and now classic account is here reissued with a new foreword addressing the significance of the bookâ€™s insights for a new generation of readers.

Customer Reviews:

Interesting but deeply flawed.......2007-09-14

Some rather fascinating information about the exchange of materials and ideas between Europe and the New World. However, the veracity of the data is corrupted by a rather crude but ubiquitous " Native American-good, European--bad" attitude. It is unfortunate, that the consistent political agenda makes this title difficult to accept as work of genuine scholarship. For instance, the author makes a claim that American Founders' ideas were based in their entirety(!) upon the Constitution of the Iroquois Nations, while discounting in its entirety(!) the influence Classical thought and Enlightenment has had upon the Founders. Indeed, the author claims that the ideas of Enlightenment were largely derivative of the concepts of freedom imported from the New World Noble Savage etc). A Fun read, but suspect scholarship.
Not recommended for impressionable reader incapable of critical analysis.

The old world and the new, 1492-1650 / by J.H. Elliott

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The old world and the new, 1492-1650 / by J.H. Elliott
John Huxtable Elliott
Manufacturer: Cambridge : [Cambridge] University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000VZBFGM

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THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW 1492-1650
J. H. Elliott
Manufacturer: Cambridge university Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000QAD5BA

The Old World And The New World 1492-1650

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The Old World And The New World 1492-1650
Elloitt
Manufacturer: Cambridge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JF80F8

Old World and the New, 1492-1650 : Wiles Lectures (Studies in Early Modern History)

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Old World and the New, 1492-1650 : Wiles Lectures (Studies in Early Modern History)

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HNAMZI

Book Description

During the Great Depression, a sense of total despair plagued the United States. Americans sought a convenient scapegoat and found it in the Mexican community. Laws forbidding employment of Mexicans were accompanied by the hue and cry to "get rid of the Mexicans!" The hysteria led pandemic repatriation drives and one million Mexicans and their children were illegally shipped to Mexico.

Despite their horrific treatment and traumatic experiences, the American born children never gave up hope of returning to the United States. Upon attaining legal age, they badgered their parents to let them return home. Repatriation survivors who came back worked diligently to get their lives back together. Due to their sense of shame, few of them ever told their children about their tragic ordeal.

Decade of Betrayal recounts the injustice and suffering endured by the Mexican community during the 1930s. It focuses on the experiences of individuals forced to undergo the tragic ordeal of betrayal, deprivation, and adjustment. This revised edition also addresses the inclusion of the event in the educational curriculum, the issuance of a formal apology, and the question of fiscal remuneration.

"Francisco Balderrama and Raymond RodrÃguez, the authors of Decade of Betrayal, the first expansive study of Mexican repatriation with perspectives from both sides of the border, claim that 1 million people of Mexican descent were driven from the United States during the 1930s due to raids, scare tactics, deportation, repatriation and public pressure. Of that conservative estimate, approximately 60 percent of those leaving were legal American citizens. Mexicans comprised nearly half of all those deported during the decade, although they made up less than 1 percent of the country's population. 'Americans, reeling from the economic disorientation of the depression, sought a convenient scapegoat,' Balderrama and RodrÃguez wrote. 'They found it in the Mexican community.'--American History

Decade of Betrayal focuses on the experiences of individuals illegally shipped from the U.S. to Mexico in the 1930s and the recent questions of a formal apology and fiscal remuneration.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Start.......2005-10-03

Balderrama explores an over looked chapter in American history--the deportation of hundreds of thousands of American citizens of Mexican descent during the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, he tries to argue that repatriation was not economically feasible for employers. I say what difference does it make? It's the same old argument we hear now: They do jobs nobody else will do. But what if they didn't? The fact is, the government has no right to deport its citizens, regardless of what they do for a living, regardless of their race/ethnicity/skin color.

Thios book is a great start, but more scholarship needs to be done in this area.

One of my great uncles, an American citizen of Mexican descent, was deported by the US government during the Depression because they wanted to free up jobs for the dustbowl refugees. To the reviewer who calls this sad chapter in our nation's history a "minor incident," I wonder how he would feel if he were uprooted and taken by the US government to a foreign country.

The reason this reviewer thinks something this huge is a "minor incident" is that he doesn't view people of Mexican descent as truly American. He sees anybody of Mexican descent as foreign even if they are American citizens just like him and therefore thinks it's no big deal for them to have been deported. Many of the American citizens who were deported had never been to Mexico and could not Speak Spanish. But even if they could, they were still AMERICANS and had every right to live and work in the United States, the nation of their birth, as much as any other American citizen.

Read before you review, please.......2005-06-18

I am wondering whether a few of the other reviewers have actually read Balderrama's book. I haven't finished it yet, but even I have figured out that Balderrama and Rodriguez are writing about how not only Mexican nationals were 'repatriated,' but also US-born, US citizens who happened to be of Mexican ancestry (and most likely not pale-skinned enough).

One of the principal questions the authors pose is: what is the relationship between legal citizenship and cultural citizenship? In other words, if even citizens get deported, many to a country they have never even seen, because of their imputed race, what does citizenship even mean? This question is very relevant today given the current scrutiny by ICE of immigrants, legal or not, and by all of DHS of citizens, especially those who fit certain suspect profiles.

The most interesting part of the book for me so far is the authors' in-depth look at Mexican families in the US in this period. In particular, their portrait of how families of Mexican descent were stereotyped and misunderstood by both the US and Mexican governments, and how as a result immigration and welfare policies were poorly formulated. It's worth thinking about how government policy can work (directly or indirectly) to either strengthen or break up families--and how many Mexican/American families (by this I mean families comprising people with Mexican and US citizenship) managed to stay together despite the economic and political struggles they faced.

Tenditious and Without Perspective.......2004-02-02

The deportations of the 1930s need to be put into historical perspective and not just labeled as another incident of how bad America is to Mexicans. In 1924, the Immigration Act shut down immigration from Europe; Mexicans were EXEMPTED from such quotas between 1924 and 1965 (unacknowledged by most Chicano polemicists who can't deal with the fact that a policy was biased against white Europeans benefitted non whites). According to historian John Womack, some 900,000 Mexicans entered the US between 1924 and 1930, some 630,000 illegally. So this wave continued unabated into the Depression, and with 25% unemployment, the Federal government decided to crack down on this migration. Europeans were not targeted because the waves of immigartion had already been shut down, and those who did enter did so legally throught the nation's ports; most Mexicans entered through a land border. Abraham Hoffman puts the number involved and deportedat 400,000, not 1 million, with about half leaving voluntarily and half forced. Fifty percent were US citizens, largely the children of illegal immigrants who left with their parents. Of course, there were many cases of discrimination, as Manuel Gonzeles points out, where the methods used, especially in Los Angeles, were heavy handed and even in some cases illegal. These individulas should receive compensation. But it is ridiculous to compare this to the forced migration of Indians or to say that this was a program of complete discrimination ala those which targeted African Americans, even though there were individual cases of such.

As for those who took Balderrama as a professor, of course Chicano activists want to portary all of their problems and poverty as simply the result of racist Anglos versus innocent Mexicans. While legal discrimination did exist in many individual areas in the Southwest, particularly South Texas, thsi ignores the fact that more than two-thirds of all Mexican immigrants have no high school diploma (versus only 8% of native whites and 13% of Asian immigrants), that more than 4 out of 5 are not proficient in English, or that Asian immigrants and their children, despite being subject to historically more vicious legal racism, actually do better than whites !!!The vast majority of Mexicans are immigrants or their immediate children who arrived after 1965, whose presence makes the tracking and progress of wages for Mexican Americans very difficult to measure.

Between 1920 and 1970, Mexicans were considered legally white by the govt.; they were allowed to intermarry with whites (unlike blacks and Asians); were allowed to get citizenship upon arrival (unlike Asian immigrants); served in all-white units during the SEcond World War (unlike blacks and Japanese); could vote and hold elected office in places such as Texas, especially San Antonio (unlike blacks); ran the state politics and elite of New Mexico since colonial times; went to integrated schools in Central Texas and Los Anegeles (unlike Blacks in the south and Asians in Southern California); were not subjected to immigration quotas like Europeans and Asians between 1924 and 1965.

According to the PPIC, Hispanics with similar education and occupation as whites make just as much in income; Asians in the similar situation make 10 to 15% MORE!!!! So while racism has been a factor, it is not the determining factor as to why Mexicans do or do not succeed. This is too much for Chicano professors and activists to acknowledge since their world is framed around victimology.

Chris

A Great Addition to Mexican-American History.......2003-11-15

Dr. Balderrama is a great historian. His research into the Mexican repatriation is told magnificently. I also happen to be one of his former students at CSULA. I do remember his class and enjoyed his lectures. Unlike other history professors at CSULA, his style of teaching and lecturing was memorable. His contribution to Mexican American history is invaluable. Great book! *****.

ERacism.......2003-09-17

I read the review by Michael Sturdevant and think he is probably a racists. I have took classes with Dr. Balderrama and can tell you he is a excellent teacher. He teaches his Chicano students about victimology and how they are victims of white America. This is very true. Some teachers think that Chicanos are struggling to get ahead because they are not as educated as white people. But Balderrama teached us that it is because we are victims that we can't make enough as the white people.

That is why Balderrama is suing the US government. Then the Chicano people will have billions of dollars to share with him. And we don't need to get more education. Just more money. I believe in Balderrama, I believe in victimology, and I only wish all Chicanos believed in victimology, then we would all be as rich as the white people.

Book Description

Fear of mad cow disease, a lethal illness transmitted from infected beef to humans, has spread from Europe to the United States and around the world. Originally published to much acclaim in France, this scientific thriller, available in English for the first time and updated with a new chapter on developments in 2001, tells of the hunt for the cause of an enigmatic class of fatal brain infections, of which mad cow disease is the latest incarnation. In gripping, nontechnical prose, Maxime Schwartz details the deadly manifestations of these diseases throughout history, describes the major players and events that led to discoveries about their true nature, and outlines our current state of knowledge. The book concludes by addressing the question we all want answered: should we be afraid?
The story begins in the eighteenth century with the identification of a mysterious illness called scrapie that was killing British sheep. It was not until the 1960s that scientists understood that several animal and human diseases, including scrapie, were identical, and together identified them as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). The various guises assumed throughout history by TSE include an illness called kuru in a cannibalistic tribe in Papua New Guinea, an infectious disease that killed a group of children who had been treated for growth hormone deficiencies, and mad cow disease. Revealing the fascinating process of scientific discovery that led to our knowledge of TSE, Schwartz relates pivotal events in the history of biology, including the Pasteurian revolution, the birth of genetics, the emergence of molecular biology, and the latest developments in biotechnology. He also explains the Nobel Prize-winning prion hypothesis, which has rewritten the rules of biological heredity and is a key link between the distinctive diseases of TSE.
Up-to-date, informative, and thoroughly captivating, How the Cows Turned Mad tells the story of a disease that continues to elude on many levels. Yet science has come far in understanding its origins, incubation, and transmission. This authoritative book is a stunning case history that illuminates the remarkable progression of science.

Download Description

Fear of mad cow disease, a lethal illness transmitted from infected beef to humans, has spread from Europe to the United States and around the world. Originally published to much acclaim in France, this scientific thriller, available in English for the first time and updated with a new chapter on developments in 2001, tells of the hunt for the cause of an enigmatic class of fatal brain infections, of which mad cow disease is the latest incarnation. In gripping, nontechnical prose, Maxime Schwartz details the deadly manifestations of these diseases throughout history, describes the major players and events that led to discoveries about their true nature, and outlines our current state of knowledge. The book concludes by addressing the question we all want answered: should we be afraid? The story begins in the eighteenth century with the identification of a mysterious illness called scrapie that was killing British sheep. It was not until the 1960s that scientists understood that several animal and human diseases, including scrapie, were identical, and together identified them as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). Revealing the fascinating process of scientific discovery that led to our knowledge of TSE, Schwartz relates pivotal events in the history of biology, including the Pasteurian revolution, the birth of genetics, the emergence of molecular biology, and the latest developments in biotechnology. He also explains the Nobel Prize-winning prion hypothesis, which has rewritten the rules of biological heredity and is a key link between the distinctive diseases of TSE. Up-to-date, informative, and thoroughly captivating, How the Cows Turned Mad tells the story of a disease that continues to elude on many levels. Yet science has come far in understanding its origins, incubation, and transmission. This authoritative book is a stunning case history that illuminates the remarkable progression of science.

Customer Reviews:

Well Written, Scary as heck.......2006-06-24

An amazing tour of the history of prion diseases. From start to finish, it's well written, beuatifully explained and frighrening. If this book hasn't scared you, read it again

The molecular biology is astounding.......2005-08-07

This is a very complicated matter, with highly specific vocabulary that attempts to describe a variety of forms of a disease which is capable of being distinguished by different incubation periods in the various inbred species of genetically pure or altered mice that have been inoculated with transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) in the strains that have been isolated before the French edition of this book went to press near the end of the year 2000. A key word is prion, a protein that might form part of the membrane of a normal cell. Originally in this book, prion was defined by Stanley Prusiner, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1997, in 1982 as the carrier of the infection for TSEs. "Prions are small proteinaceous infectious particles which are resistant to inactivation by most procedures that modify nucleic acids." (p. 100). Forming rods in a polymer structure, ultimately doctors, "when examining brain tissue from kuru patients, had been able to recognize what they called amyloid plaques" (pp. 101-102).

Assuming that any cow in England which showed signs of bovine spongiform encephalopathy was an indication that the entire herd had been fed contaminated meat and bone meal, (from "forty-six British plants that until 1988 had converted a total of 1.3 million metric tons of meat and bones into animal feed" p. 147), "the total number of cattle affected by the disease from the beginning of the epidemic until the end of 2000 was nearly two hundred thousand in Great Britain," (p. 151). Since the cow form of the disease and the sheep form act differently in mice who are infected, a grand experimental test was performed to see if any sheep have picked up the BSE form:

"In the summer of 2001, rumors began to circulate to the effect that the BSE agent had been found in sheep; the official outcome was to be announced at the end of the year. Europe's health authorities were in a state of red alert. If the results were positive, drastic steps would have to be taken in the sheep-farming sector. Then, just two days before the outcome was made public, there was a dramatic announcement: The researchers had made a mistake. They had mingled samples of sheep brains with samples of cattle brains--and thus there are still no data on the possible transmission of BSE to sheep in natural conditions." (p. 188).

I have noticed that when people try to assign unique numbers to anything, there is always someone who fails to notice that two of those numbers are not the same. I have even worked with a computer that had so few consecutive numbers in a field that it was not able to tell the difference between numbers that had more than the number of digits in the field. There are forty million sheep in Britain, few of which look like cows, even in that night in which all cows are black, but worse than that: the brain samples might look a lot like brain samples from a cow. This experiment was more than double blind if no one kept tract of how samples were mingled.

I love the word epizootic: "Why was an epizootic--an animal epidemic--declared at one particular time, the early 1980s, and only in the United Kingdom?" (p. 189). It must be related to "the death of six white tigers from the Bristol zoo between 1970 and 1977; they died of what was then diagnosed as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, but no one knows what became of the corpses. . . . After all, it isn't often that a cow eats tiger in the way that we eat beef." (p. 190). There are so many things no one knows.

Boring & Dry.......2004-05-20

Maxime Schwartz was a molecular biologist and is now a professor at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Schwartz traces the history of medical research into spongiform encephalopathies, and how the scientific understanding of how they are spread has changed over time. If you know anything about Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or Mad Cow disease, I don't think you'll learn anything new in this book. How the Cows Turned Mad is not a sensational book, nor even a good book. Quite simply it is too wordy and dull.

Book Description

State parks across Texas offer a world of opportunities for recreation and education. Yet few park visitors or park managers know the remarkable story of how this magnificent state park system came into being during the depths of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Drawing on archival records and examining especially the political context of the New Deal, James Wright Steely here provides the first comprehensive history of the founding and building of the Texas state park system.

Steely's history begins in the 1880s with the movement to establish parks around historical sites from the Texas Revolution. He follows the fits-and-starts progress of park development through the early 1920s, when Governor Pat Neff envisioned the kind of park system that ultimately came into being between 1933 and 1942.

During the Depression an amazing cast of personalities from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson led, followed, or obstructed the drive to create this state park system. The New Deal federal-state partnerships for depression relief gave Texas the funding and personnel to build 52 recreational parks under the direction of the National Park Service. Steely focuses in detail on the activities of the Civilian Conservation Corps, whose members built parks from Caddo Lake in the east to the first park improvements in the Big Bend out west. An appendix lists and describes all the state parks in Texas through 1945, while Steely's epilogue brings the parks' story up to the present.

Customer Reviews:

A must read for any Texas enthusiast!.......2000-03-25

Parks for Texas is a fascinating account of the creation of the Texas state park system. Steely deftly weaves political, architectural, environmental, and social history into a rich and compelling text. His examination of the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps in Texas during the depression is meticulous, and is brilliantly placed within the anxious social climate of rural Texas. If you are interested in parks, architecture, political history or just want to know more about how we have changed our view of landscape in the 20th century, this book is a must read. Certainly, if you relish things Texana, this is an absolute necessity for your library. Steely has produced an educated, insightful work, that will no doubt become a classic text on the revoultionary works of FDR's New Deal. Enjoy.

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