Leonard M. Savoie: Words From the Past, Thoughts for Today (Routledge New Works in Accounting History)

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Self-surveys for determining your motivation style.

Management Fundamentals: Concepts, Applications, Skill Development (with InfoTrac®)
Robert N. Lussier
Manufacturer: South-Western College Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Intro to Business

Effective Training: Systems, Strategies and Practices (3rd Edition)

The Norton Book of Classical Literature

Essentials of Marketing

MP Essentials of Marketing w/ Student CD-ROM & Apps 2005

ASIN: 0324226063

Book Description

Get prepared for the workforce now with MANAGEMENT FUNDAMENTALS: CONCEPTS, APPLICATIONS, SKILL DEVELOPMENT. Thought-provoking applications help you learn management skills fast and easy so you'll be ready for your first job in business. Plus with group exercises, self-assessments and behavioral projects, you'll have lots of different ways to get ready for tests so you can get the grade you need.

Customer Reviews:

Self-surveys for determining your motivation style........2000-11-27

Would you like to determine your own motivation / leadership style? Are you task-oriented or people-oriented? Although I have not used the entire book, Chapter 12 of this book presents several self-assessment surveys based on McGregor's Theory-X / Theory-Y, McClelland's Achievement-Power-Affiliation, and Herzberg's Motivators-Hygienics models. Chapter 10 has a self-assessment survey based on Likert's System (Authoritarian-Benevolent Authoritarian-Consultative-Participative). Very useful.

Management Fundamentals With Infotrac: Concepts, Applications, Skill Development

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Management Fundamentals With Infotrac: Concepts, Applications, Skill Development
Robert N. Lussier
Manufacturer: South Western College Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OUOYTO

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Everything but the Pecora hearings

Legislative history of the Securities act of 1933 and Securities exchange act of 1934
J. S Ellenberger
Manufacturer: Published for the Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C., by F. B. Rothman
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Private Law | Law | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0837708028

Customer Reviews:

Everything but the Pecora hearings .......2007-08-28

Ellenberger and Mahar here provide the most comprehensive and complete legislative history published to date of the original federal securities acts of 1933 and 1934. Filling eleven volumes, their compilation contains many materials - such as hearings - that are simply omitted from the far more concise four-volume legislative history that was compiled by the Federal Bar Association's Securities Law Committee and published by the Bureau of National Affairs in 1983.

Even so, it must be noted that the bulk of the celebrated Pecora hearings, which provided so much of the impetus for the 1930s' sweeping legislation, are left out of Ellenberger and Mahar's collection. The editors' preface explains that Ferdinand Pecora's remarkable hearings "eventually accumulated a printed record of 27 volumes," and that "the size of this record precluded full publication here." (Ellenberger & Mahar, vol. 1, p. xiv.) Indeed, only "Parts 15 and 16 of the Senate hearings, instrumental in the passage of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, will be found in this history." (Id.) "If needed," Ellenberger and Mahar add, "the other 25 volumes may be found in the federal documents section of the Law Library of Congress and in the Library of the United States Senate, access to both of which may be arranged by special permission." (Id.)

That said, no one else has come close to assembling and publishing as much of the securities laws' original legislative history as have Ellenberger and Mahar. Theirs is a truly indispensable compilation that should be in every academic law library, and in the collection of any major law firm that litigates federal securities cases on a regular basis.

Eric Alan Isaacson

Customer Reviews:

A great beginners guide to astronomy........1998-04-09

This book provides you with all the basic information you need to start gazing at the heavens. Included are facts on our solar system, including the proper way to view the sun safely. Viewing distant galaxies, star clusters, and other satellites. Also covered are: how to read star charts, basic information on the equipment needed, a star glossary, and magazines and other references. I especially like the part on how to record your own observations and taking pictures. Really a good book for the budding astronomer.

The Stargazing Year: A Backyard Astronomer's Journey Through the Seasons of the Night Sky

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Reads like Cotton Candy, lacks a solid center
Serendipity! Charles Calia has written a gem of a book!

The Stargazing Year: A Backyard Astronomer's Journey Through the Seasons of the Night Sky
Charles Laird Calia
Manufacturer: Thorndike Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Astronomy | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0786281103

Book Description

A quarter-century after giving up his first telescope, Charles Laird Calia lay down one evening on his front lawn with his two young daughters, looked up at the stars, and rediscovered a childhood passion. Part primer on the science and history of astronomical observation, part love poem to the night sky, this is an amateur astronomer's account of a year spent observing the cosmos in his New England back yard.

Available only in Nonfiction 4.

Customer Reviews:

Reads like Cotton Candy, lacks a solid center.......2006-07-15

I found Calia's book interesting a first, but quickly tiresome. The writing is a bit amatuerish, with sachrine prose more likely found in a romance novel, almost, as Calia would say, "desperately so." All in all, I found it a bit too fluffy. It constantly runs off on romantic or nostalgic tangents dotted with a little history or science to hold it together, but never enough to be satisfying in my opinion. And some of the true comedy of being an astronomer is completely lacking. I can't say that I would truly recommend this book.

Serendipity! Charles Calia has written a gem of a book!.......2005-07-10

In the opening sentence of his "Conclusion" to The Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) wrote: "Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me."

In The Stargazing Year, Charles Laird Calia, while apparently having no significant quarrel with "the moral law within," writes of how his imagination was hooked at an early age in Pennsylvania and Minnesota by wonder, admiration, and awe at "the starry heavens above," and how he came full circle, after the passage of half a lifetime, to his fascination with the stars, his own return to the eternal return of the night sky.

Tracing the trajectories of the heavens, he simultaneously traces the trajectory of his own life: "Nostalgia is part and parcel of the human condition, a natural gift of aging, and it protects us from the message that the universe telegraphs to us with frightening accuracy. You are small and will soon be forgotten."

A frequent contributor to Sky & Telescope magazine, Calia is a member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers, and the British Astronomical Association. He now lives in Connecticut with his wife and two daughters, where he has built a backyard observatory.

Calia divides The Stargazing Year into 12 chapters, January through December, cataloguing the transit of the seasons from winter to autumn, and the changing constellations of the heavens.

Stumbling across Calia's work is a remarkable example of serendipity, a fortunate discovery, for The Stargazing Year is charmingly written, insightfully informative, and delightfully funny--a gem of a book.

Escaping from the planetary pull of his mother's obsession with astrology, Calia developed an obsession of his own, a passion for and love of astronomy. Under the watchful eye of his wife, who keeps a close watch over family expenditures, Calia's account of building his backyard observatory is hilarious, as he fumbles and flounders his way through the daunting construction, with help from the guy in the orange jacket at Home Depot.

The book is star-studded with arresting metaphors, similes, and analogies and an ingratiating self-deprecating humor. Think the staccato-voiced words of Rod Serling. Think the bucolic poetic lyricism of Robert Frost. Think the sly wit and wisdom of Mark Twain. Think the whimsy and zany inventiveness of Douglas Adams. Think the contagious enthusiasm and passion of Carl Sagan.

"Love can bring us a long distance," writes Calia, "if we take notice. I finally did. Throughout a celestial season, I had spent twelve months noticing, watching comets and asteroids, faint galaxies, sunspots, and distant stars. Creation unfolding. Some may witness the unfolding of the universe, like a gathering of planets, as comforting, a creation that cares enough to influence us, and they interpret it as such--a mystery with human fingerprints. Others scoff and find no connection where none was intended. Both sides miss the point, I think. And therein lies perhaps the greatest mystery: not how strange it is for the universe to unfold, but rather, that there is a universe to unfold at all."

Along the way, we learn a lot about astronomical history, such as Galileo and Tycho Brahe, and we are enthralled by Calia's playfully anthropomorphic description of the constellations as the mythological movements of predators and prey, monsters and mavericks, lovely maidens and rescuing heroes.

This paean to the cosmos is a joy to read. A word of caution, however, is in order: The Stargazing Year may send you scurrying to the nearest supply store to purchase a telescope. If so, I can envision Calia exulting, "My work here is done!"

Roy E. Perry of Nolensville is an advertising copywriter at a Nashville publishing house.

Note: An alternate translation(by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott) of the quotation by Kant is: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within."

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Very interesting, I'd like to see the revised edition.

Useful to a narrow audience

Good, it gives too much importance to some unimportant detai

A pacifier from the Pacific

In response to the nonscientist

Dawkins vs. Gould : Survival of the Fittest
Kim Sterelny
Manufacturer: Icon Books UK
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biology | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
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Adaptation and Natural Selection

Darwin's Gift: to Science and Religion

The Top 10 Myths About Evolution

The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma

Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life

ASIN: 1840462493

Book Description

Science has seen its fair share of punch-ups over the years, but one debate, in the field of biology, has become notorious for its intensity. Over the last twenty years, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould have engaged in a savage battle over evolution that shows no sign of waning.

Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, conceives of evolution as a struggle between gene lineages; Gould, who wrote Wonderful Life and Rocks of Ages, sees it as a struggle between organisms. For Dawkins, the principles of evolutionary biology apply just as well to humans as they do to all living creatures; for Gould, however, this sociobiology is not just ill-motivated but wrong, and dangerous.

Dawkins' views have been caricatured, and the man painted as a crazed reductionist, shrinking all the variety and complexity of life down to a struggle for existence between blind and selfish genes. Gould, too, has been falsely represented by creationists as rejecting the fundamental principles of Darwinism itself.

Kim Sterelny moves beyond caricature to expose the real differences between the conceptions of evolution of these two leading scientists. He shows that the conflict extends beyond evolution to their very beliefs in science itself; and, in Gould's case, to domains in which science plays no role at all.

Customer Reviews:

Very interesting, I'd like to see the revised edition........2007-02-19

This is a basically successful book, encapsulating some of the disputes in evolution, particularly between Richard Dawkins and Stephen J. Gould. For someone who just wants the basics of the dispute without having to wade through lengthy or complex material, it is perfect.

I think it could be improved, though. Sterelny doesn't have particularly good notes, more like a recommended reading list. It is not easy to tell exactly where he is getting his statements. He points, for example, to Dawkin's criticism of Gould & Eldridge Punctuated Equilibrium as a gloss in The Blind Watchmaker. Sterelny regards this as unfair, but I actually thought it was quite good. I think his criticism as regards local population changes is entirely fair. Sterelny argues that he is not taking into account the portion of the theory that deals with speciation. But exactly where, in the various iterations is the latter point? I don't remember it in the original article - is this my failing memory, or is that a later development, perhaps after The Blind Watchmaker was written? I'll have to dig up and reread all the articles to find out, whereas a simple citation might have made it immediately clear.

I also felt that Sterelny did not discuss the problem of definitions thoroughly enough. He does this with the question of increasing fitness, pointing out that this may true over the history of a particular species, but perhaps not true between different species separated by long time spans. I think this is true of many issues of contention. Part of the issue of the role of chance in evolution depends upon whether or not one considers mass extinctions to be part of evolution specifically, or rather a feature of natural history that changes the conditions under which evolution operates. One of the criticisms of Gould, such as Dawkins aforementioned criticism of Punctuated Equilibrium, is that he exaggerates the novelty of his ideas. In these cases, his critics don't so much disagree with what he is saying as argue that he is producing useful glosses or drawing out implications that are true, but not revolutionary, and that in the process, he distorts other people's work, notably Darwin's.

Certainly worth reading. I think that Sterelny often explains the two combatants' positions more clearly than they themselves do. Those interested in pinning down the subject more firmly will regret the lack of citations, but there are numerous recommendations for further reading, tied to particular subjects by chapter.

Useful to a narrow audience.......2003-11-21

One of the wonders of the Internet was supposed to be the way it could get niche ideas and products into the hands of the very few who might be interested in them, and I am happy to report that it seems to be working. There cannot be a great mass of people who are (a) both aware of and highly interested in the conflict between evolutionary biology popularizers Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, but (b) lacking in sufficient time and education to satisfy their curiosity from primary materials. But for those few who are, as I was, interested in a layperson's outline of the points of conflict between the Dawkins and Gould camps, Kim Sterelny has written one.

Sterelny, a philosophy professor, is strict about giving credit to each camp where credit is due, and about identifying his own biases. He bends over backwards to be fair, and he succeeds.

Sterelny writes at such a level that if your only education in evolutionary biology comes from popular works like Dawkins's and Gould's, his overview is entirely comprehensible. Though this was good for me, it means that he is probably writing far below the level of most people interested in the convroversies he describes.

I suppose it is odd for someone who actually is in the market for a book just like the one Sterelny wrote to wonder who would actually buy such a book, but that is the position I find myself in. One really should be at least somewhat familiar with the Dawkins/Gould divide before reading this book, but if you are too familiar with it, that means you have education enough that this book is pitched too low for you. Those on the razor's edge will get the most out of it. And the delight of the Internet is that there is a good chance enough of that rare breed of people can find this book that it was worth writing, and that those of you in the narrow audience that will find it worth reading -- as I did -- are able to find it.

Good, it gives too much importance to some unimportant detai.......2003-08-15

I recommend this book to anyone who want's to identify and familiarize with different currents of thought in evolution, but this two gigants are not the only ones with opinion. Gould and Dawkins, both great scientists and great thinkers, are not the only ones with valid opinions on this subject, what they have that makes them exploitable is a long history of mild or irrelevant disagreements. A mild disagreement for example is that Dawkins goes for the gene as the target for selection, Gould don't think that way. An irrelevant disagreement may be that Dawkins is an atheist and Gould really believes in God. The principal flaw I see is that there are more players in this game, there's also Ernst Mayr, for example, that doesn't support the gene as the unit of selection, and doesn't support punctuated equilibrium either. But all of them agree in most of the other basis of the theory, though the unit of selection is an important point.

A pacifier from the Pacific.......2003-06-12

Kim Sterelny's overview of the Stephen Gould - Richard Dawkins conflicting views of evolution is a masterful summation. Setting himself an immense task, he addresses the material published by the two evolutionists, assessing evidence, logic and interpretation. To Sterelny's lasting credit, personality is almost entirely omitted in this account. A brief education background note [Dawkins studied under Tinbergen, Gould's mentor was George Gaylord Simpson] and Sterelny moves quickly to the essence of the debate. His presentation makes this a fine introduction to the issues involved.

Debate is a gentle word to apply to some of the acrimonious exchanges the pair engaged in either directly or through proxies. The opening shot was Gould's scornful review of Daniel C. Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" in which Dennett challenged Gould and Eldredge's notion of punctuated equilibrium as setting the pace of evolution. The clash brought to light more fundamental differences in outlook - gene-centred evolution or a multi-level interacting set of forces. As Sterelny ultimately points out, the two are subject to merging into a broader synthesis. Dawkins has made that point frequently, as Sterelny notes, but that reality failed to find fertile ground on this side of the Atlantic.

Gene-centred evolution results in the creation of adaptations through mutations. Whether these adaptations are successful over time is the story of evolution. Gould found many ways to challenge this theme, chiefly because it would apply equally to human evolution, something Gould always found abhorrent. Gould's argument went deeper than human evolution. He advanced "contingency" and mass extinctions of whatever cause, as more viable mechanisms than what he labelled "gene centrism". Sterelny presents both positions with admirable clarity and laudable equilibrium. It would be churlish to criticise Sterelny's temperate treatment of Gould's notions. Dawkins and Dennett have already performed the task sufficiently, although Sterelny skirts Dennett's examination.

The loss of Gould to cancer has not quelled the debate, thus proving it wasn't simply a clash of personalities. A Gould "camp", with adherents on both sides of the Atlantic, maintains the heated dispute. Lewontin and Kamin in America and the Rose cabal in the UK still launch verbal missiles at the Dawkins target. Sterelny keeps his focus tight in this book, not being diverted to these disputants. In performing this feat, Sterelny might be criticised for failing to note why the debate is worth notice by a wider audience. He certainly hasn't written this for the academic community, although many in other disciplines might benefit from his insights and brisk narrative. Sterelny's position as a philosopher located in New Zealand is sufficient example to show how far the debate has reached. Its very universality might have prompted him to reflect on its impact on social questions. Even so, his effort is highly commendable and deserves the widest possible readership. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

In response to the nonscientist.......2003-04-21

Thanks for using this BOOK REVIEW section to enlighten us all on your personal opinion of evolutionary biology. Yet another example of nonscientists trying to sneak their opinions on the masses when it's completely irrelevant. You speak of Dawkins and Gould as resorting to circular reasoning in their arguments, however, this book is not an argument over the reality of evolution, it is a debate about how natural selection works and at what level. Had they been asked to state the evidence for natural selection, both Dawkins and Gould would be able to present compelling data to support it, as would any biologist.

Book Description

Newton, Einstein…now Stewart swells their ranks with The Special Theory of Relative Time (plural): The Presence in the Quantum World…enter Quantum, Classical and Love-Time…gravity has been conquered.

Stewart covers a diverse range of topics including:

Physica section

How Quantum and Classical-Time apply themselves in the subatomic domain through spontaneous interactions.
That Quantum-Time causes finite oscillations to occur…that is fluctuations between particle form and waveform.
The glutinous jelly-like diamond twisted cubes of gravitation and the mobility role of the so-called human aura.

Metaphysica section

Women have a waking Quantum-mind with a Classical unconscious whilst men have a waking Classical-mind with a Quantum unconscious.
Love-Time's production of the neutrino's that serves as the prayer particle, the emotion particle, the E.S.P particle and the love particle.

The Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel section

Serves to detail one or two of the amazing coincidences that have occurred along my journey and that fly in the face of all probability.

Average customer rating:
Husband is the Past Tense of Daddy and Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of Motherhood.
Teryl. Zarnow
Manufacturer: Addison-Wesley Publishing c
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KIVQ8W

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Husband is the Past Tense of Daddy: And Other Dispatches from the Front Lines of Motherhood
Teryl Zarnow
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0449906116
Release Date: 1991-04-03

Average customer rating:

terrific writing, captures America in the 1950s and 1960s

Lowenstein is absent from this biography.

Never Stop Running: Allard Lowenstein and the Struggle to Save American Liberalism
William Henry Chafe
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Political | Leaders & Notable People | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0465049850

Book Description

Never Stop Running is the poignant saga of Allard Lowenstein, one of America's last liberal heroes. The book is both a chronicle of liberalism at the barricades in the 1960s and 1970s and the story of a man desperately seeking peace in his interior life. A leader of student protests against the Vietnam War, he was a principal organizer in the movement that drove Lyndon Johnson from the White House in 1968. Most of all, Lowenstein had the remarkable ability to inspire the people who worked with him; he had a strong effect on hundreds of young people--many of whom (like Bill Bradley, Barney Frank, and Bob Kerry) are prominent in public life today. This is the story of an inspiring character in the fight against racism, war, and social injustice..

Customer Reviews:

terrific writing, captures America in the 1950s and 1960s.......2000-07-27

This is a sensitive, beautifully-written biography of a man whose life both shaped the United States in the 1960s and and reflects the promises and contradictions of the country in that tumultuous era. What Chafe does best is to place Lowenstein's complex and hurly-burly personal life amid the confusion and aspiration that marked the period. Never Stop Running is a truly great biogrpahy--a stunning combination of character and context.

Lowenstein is absent from this biography........1999-07-22

Chafe is to be commended for succinctness in his presentation of the facts which he sets forth. But the heart of Allard Lowenstein's story is the power of his personality. At no point does Chafe give the reader a sense of this personality.

Frequent references to Allard Lowenstein's "biting but brilliant wit," his "superb" writing, and his eloquent speeches lead to exactly one extended quote from him- and that not until the next to last page of the epilogue. Chafe provides ample quotes from friends, relatives, aides, follwers, colleagues, casual acquaintances of Lowenstein, and we learn how all of them felt about Lowenstein's habitually untucked shirt-tail, his chronic lateness, his perpetual attempts to get young men to share a bed with him, and so on. Fine. But the man himself never appears.

Moreover, the book bears many signs of hasty preparation. While I was irritated to find that a woman named Jessie Helms had become prominent in North Carolina politics, I think I should at least mention Chafe's free and often puzzling use of square brackets in quotations.

Average customer rating:
Never Stop Running-Allard Lowenstein & the Struggle to Save

Manufacturer: Basic Bks/Harper Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HZ4AP4

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Never Stop Running: Allard Lowenstein and the Struggle to Save America
WILLIAM H. CHAFE
Manufacturer: See notes
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000RQ7JD8

Average customer rating:
Never Stop Running: Allard Lowenstein and the Struggle to Save Americ.
William H. Chafe
Manufacturer: see notes for publisher info
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000M3SR64

Book Description

Chapter One

The Beginning

Although some names have been changed, the following events are real.

In January 1993 the Huntington Beach High School boys' track team, which I coached, organized a community track meet as a fund-raiser. We ended up having more workers than competitors, and rain was nearly the sole occupant of the bleachers lining our ancient brick-dust track. Of the few athletes who showed to compete, one runner caught my eye. His rail-thin body reminded me of a Kenyan runner's; he looked like a champion. He appeared old enough to be in high school, but I didn't recognize him and figured him to be a junior-high runner. Always on the lookout for future athletes, I wanted to find out more. But rules governing our sport prohibited me from speaking to potential athletes until they had graduated from the eighth grade. To circumvent this, I asked one of my runners, Erich Phinizy, to investigate. "Find out his age and where he goes to school," I said. "And tell him about our program."

Erich returned with valuable information. The runner was in junior high and would be attending Huntington Beach next year. He also informed me that our future runner was of English descent. Erich pointed to the only two people sitting in the bleachers and said, "Those are his parents."

Damn, not England, I thought. They're a bunch of soccer freaks. I hoped he wouldn't be like a former English runner of mine, who once remarked, "What's the purpose of running if there's no ball to kick along the way?"

Although the soccer coach and I were close friends, we often competed for the same athletes, as soccer players are often runners and vice versa. Each of us ran a quality program, coaching our athletes year-round.

"So, Erich, what's his name?"

"Oh, I didn't get that, Coach. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it."

The possibility of this kid's running for our team excited me, especially since he had come to race the three-mile, an unusually long distance for a 13-year-old. I scanned the entry list and saw, unfortunately, that there were only two other runners in his race. One was a 60-year-old jogger, and the other was Erich. Eager to assess the kid's talent, I asked Erich to pace him. "Run alo

Customer Reviews:

Educational and Inspirational.......2002-11-25

I currently have a class with Gumby (Soc of Sport @ UCI), and reading this book was one of the requirements. However, it wasn't just another class textbook--in addition to being educational, it was extremely inspiring. I have not been exposed to many gays or lesbians (maybe a few lesbians and bisexuals here and there, but I was never close to them), in fact, I have been exposed to more conservative, anti-homosexual, and heterosexist views for most of my life, so many of the things Gumby brought up in his book were new to me. For instance, I never really thought about how hard it must be not just for a person to come "out of the closet" but how it would affect his close ones. Though I'm not close to Gumby, I learned a little more about how and why he thinks certain ways, mainly due to his treatment and experiences before and after "coming out". In addition to learning about issues on homosexuality, heterosexism, and how hegemonic masculinity can be, I learned more about how these issues are dealt with in the school administrative and sports arena through Gumby's experience. If you are interested in these sociological issues, or just want inspirational/motivational support in coming out as a homosexual, then READ THIS BOOK! It has definitely changed my view on homosexuality forever.

Breaks the Ribbon.......2001-04-24

I am no fan of athletics or stories about same, but I found Eric Anderson's book an engaging memoir. He keeps the whining down to a minimum and provides instead a truly inspirational piece about an individual who would just not give up on attaining his goals, no matter what obstacles were strewn in his way. Sometimes I found myself skeptical at how easily and immediately accepting his friends, family, colleagues and students were of his homosexuality, but I am inclined to give Anderson the benefit of the doubt. He strikes me as an honest man. His life could certainly serve as some sort of model for young folks of all and any persuasions or predilections: perseverence is the key to success; hard work is unavoidable.

I would liked more about Eric's personal life, but perhaps that would have thrown the book out of focus, because TRAILBLAZING is as much about the talented young runners as it is their hard-headed, hard-working young coach. And if we are lucky, Anderson might even be penning a sequel that gives us further details about his life and loves. Let's hope.

Trailblazing Through Orthodoxy.......2001-03-17

I am usually loathe to read biographies of individuals under the age of 40. As Benvenuto Cellini once wrote:

"All men. . . who have done anything of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life with their own hand; but they ought not to attempt so fine an enterprise till they have passed the age of forty."

Coach Eric "Gumby" Anderson, however, is an exception to this admonition against youthful indulgence. While he glosses over the more personal aspects of his life, like coming out to a gay-friendly mother, his professional struggle to coach track at the high school level is more than worthy of book-length treatment.

Coach Gumby lives in less than an accommodating part of California (Orange County), though it is still probably more "socially progressive" than most other areas of the nation. He demonstrates that a steadfast commitment to pursue one's life calling -- the unyielding exercise of individual volition -- can overcome those orthodox cultural hurdles rooted in misinformation, fear, and the anti-social desire to exert power over other persons.

All persons - gay or straight - who yearn for a civic community where individuals are judged according to their unique merits and talents, as opposed to their "identity," shall find a superlative instructor in Coach Gumby. There is still much work to be done, and his story shows that genuine progress comes from courageous acts of individual initiative and persistence.

The human quest for freedom against the incursion of others' belligerence pertains to all, regardless of sexual orientation. I know that I am a much richer person for having read "Trailblazing," and I strongly encourage all parties to learn from, and empathize with, Coach Gumby's successes and failures (many of which were the product of others' shortcomings).

A wonderful, inspiring book that is a MUST read........2000-11-16

Eric Anderson's book gives us a powerful and up-close look at sports in society and the importance of teamwork. Combining a rigorous account of the fast-paced high school distance races he coached to victory with a compelling and shocking journey, Anderson clearly illustrates homophobia is still very much present in our culture and that sport, when abused, reinforces and perpetuates discrimination and male dominance. His powerful journey urges us to form new perspectives on sport, the system that creates and manages it, and the ludicrous racist, sexist and homophobic beliefs which plague our society today. This book is truly a gem--a must read for every high school and college student and for anyone interested in sports, sociology or humanity.

A Blazing Trail of Truth!.......2000-09-19

Trailblazing has been one of the first nonfiction titles I have ever read from Alyson Publications, a favorite publisher of mine. It is also a perfect example that true life is better than fiction. Although I am far from being athletic (I was a band nerd in high school), Eric's story is one that I would highly suggest to all "team players." A story of acceptance, it is much like any other high schooler's battle to fit in, yet this time it is the teacher trying to win that battle instead. The support he received from his students is truly touching, as they stood by his side to meet their goals as a team, ignoring the hate and harassment. If you read The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren, then don't miss out on Eric Anderson's Trailblazing, the new leader of the race. Pardon the pun, but he is definitely on the right track!!

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