This book provides a fascinating and comprehensive glimpse into the daily lives of pre-contact California Indians. It is laid out in easy to use chapters that provide just enough information to be complete, but still include local examples and myths to add flavor to the narrative. My only complaint is that some of the skills are a bit complicated and are confusing to read. I guess you just have to go out to the wilderness and try it out! This is a must-read for anyone interested in California Indians and their history.

Pual Campbell's Survival Skills Of Native California is an impressive, scholarly, exhaustive, detailed compendium surveying more than 2000 California-based Native American tribal skills. Survival Skills Of Native California is superbly enhanced for readers, students, researchers, and scholars with almost one thousand instructional illustrations. Included are informative sections on all the basic survival skills, the tools of gathering and food preparation, the implements of household and personal necessity, as well as the arts of hunting and fishing. Survival Skills Of Native California offers the reader comprehensive, authentic, detailed information and instruction on how to live off the land and capably employ all of the varied resources of earth's bounty that enabled the survival of California's native population for millennia. Survival Skills Of Native California is a unique and invaluable acquisition for personal, academic, and community library Native American studies collections reference collections.

For years, I ignored the Tarot because I thought it was a frivolous card game and that material written about it was cultish at worst and childish at best. It did not help that Tarot cards on the market were manufactured by American Games. I became interested in the Tarot cards because Bill Moyers interviewed Joseph Campbell, and as Moyers had never struck me as a kook, I thought perhaps Campbell was worth getting to know. Getting to know Campbell led me to TAROT REVELATIONS.

Much of my formal education concerns the social sciences including ethnography and the study of religion, myths, belief systems, etc. As a professional social scientist in a job that deals with ethnic issues, I have struggled to operationally define and measure ethnicity, and view cultural elements including myths as the basis of belief systems around which various ethnic groups organize their societies. I have arrived at the conclusion that most of the smaller systems are doomed, but fortunately, anthropologists and others have recorded enough material that we may still study the myths of our ancestors. Joseph Campbell points the way.

Mark Twain is purported to have said, don't let school get in the way of your education. Like Twain, Campbell--a highly educated man and a college professor--was able to break out of the mold of formal education and develop a fresh viewpoint concerning the world and what makes it tick. In other words, he was able to get past the mental censorship of academe.

In TAROT REVELATIONS, Campbell takes a leaf from Sir James Frazier's book 'The Golden Bough' and suggests a core set of concepts underlie all belief systems. He suggests Jungian psychologists have their own terms for these mythical elements which Jung recognized ages ago. As an empirical test of his idea that mythical elements have universal meanings, he compares the Tarot cards of the Major Arcana with the works of Dante and notes their similarities. He also demonstates how the cards can be used to illustrate the "ideal life, lived virtuously according to the knightly codes of the Middle Ages."

In the remainder of the book, Richard Roberts, a student of Campbell, shows how the cards reflect the various mythological belief systems of historical peoples in the ancient world--Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Keltoi, Iberians, etc. Roberts uses a deck designed about 100 years ago by A.E.Waite, a member of a group interested in arcane matters that included many illustrious members including W.B.Yeats. Waite did not invent the cards, he merely redesigned them using historical sources such as Tarot decks from the Middle Ages. Waite hired Pamela Coleman, an artist and fellow New Dawn member to illustrate the cards. Coleman, a Jamaican by birth with occult interests of her own was later "discovered" by Afred Stigliz who arranged for a showing of her works in New York City.

Roberts compares the elements in the Tarot deck with various myth based and arcane systems including alchemy, astrology, and Hermetic teaching. The Tarot deck is absolutely loaded with connections to all these systems. One could argue that some very educated folks constructed this deck, but the elements of the Tarot cards are recorded back to the mid-1300s thanks to Church Inquisitors who took an interest in the Cathars. Folks in the 1300s did not have had the expertise required to "construct" the cards from scratch because the cards reflect the heavens (arrangement of constellations, solstices, equinoxes, etc.) in about 2000 B.C.E. No one in the 1300s understood astronomy well enough to deduce how the heavens might have looked 3500 years earlier and if s/he did they sure kept it hidden--as in occult knowledge. Since Europeans in the 1300s were struggling with establishing the dates for the moveable feasts (they could not figure out when Easter would come 10 years hence) it strikes me that if anyone could have provided an answer they would have provided an answer--depending on how they felt about the church.

Information about the heavens between 4,000 and 2,000 B.C.E. can be found in the ruins of the ancient world--Stonehenge, the Azetec temples, the Pyramids so there is a great deal of evidence that the ancients understood their moment in time. Events moved too slowly for them to understand that 4,000 years after they lived the spring equinox would not fall in the sign of Taurus. However, Roberts suggests the ancient Persians figured out many things about the heavens and incorporated this knowledge into their belief systems. After all, those Magi who found Christ were onto something. Much of the knowledge of ancient Persia was locked away in Constantinople to be discovered years later by prying minds.

So, the Tarot cards are very old because the knowledge in them is very old. The Tarot cards represent the distilled knowledge of ancient peoples including the Persians who had a Mithraic code that still manifests itself in Zoroastrianism today (number one religion on Islam's hit list in Iran). Archeologists have long argued diffusion versus spontaneous theories regarding the spread of cultural elements including creation tales. Roberts does not take sides, but suggests the information in the cards could support either view point. Whether the information captured in the Tarot cards was discovered by many people in different places at different times or in one place and later spread across the world does not matter. The truth is, humans have been stuggling with the meaning of life for a long time, and while no one has the final answer the Tarot cards are a leading competitor.

I would HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone interested in the interperetations of the Tarot cards and how they relate to the initiatory Magickal systems of organizations like the Golden Dawn and even Freemasonry. Joseph Campbell (who needs no introduction!) writes on the French Mersailes deck, and Richard Roberts does a wonderful job with the Waite-Rider deck, including an explanation of his "Magic Nine" arrangement that is probably the most revealing layout of the cards. The authors focus less on the divinitory aspects of Tarot and more on the individuals journey through the mysteries of the Cosmos as outlined by the symbolism of the Tarot. Get this book! You will be glad you did.

As the disability host on bellaonline, special education teachers will deal with multiple intelligences each day. This book provides you with teaching tips and solutions to deal with them each day.

This book not only describes the multiple intelligences, but gives PRACTICAL, USEFUL ways to implement the different learning styles into your curriculum! I wish all teaching books were as useful.

I work as a writing specialist at an elementary school and I recently purchased this book to use with students in both primary and intermediate grades. Teaching Writing Skills With Children's Literature is packed with practical lessons to use in teaching the elements of writing. The lessons are well written and easy to use. Ms. Dierking and Ms. McElveen have done a fantastic job of bringing together literature and writing skills. Since purchasing my first copy I have bought two more to share with fellow teachers. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

This Book was written by two teachers from my son's elementary school. They have given workshops about just this subject. FANTASTIC. Mrs Dierking is my sons first grade teacher. She is an incredible help to both her students and their parents. My son made honor roll and reads at level 18, he writes wonderful stories in his journal. The book that they have written is a fantastic guide for parents and teachers alike. Not that I'm partial or anything :0) ENJOY.

The day I learned of Richard Lowe's publication of the diary and letters of James C. Bates I ordered the book. I read Bates' diary and letters first then re-read the entire book. I was fascinated! In his letters, Bates reveals his feelings much more often than most Civil War soldiers. I have often wondered how he survived such a dreadful wound. His description of forcing a tube down his horridly damaged throat would make anyone cringe. I knew a descendant of James C. Bates had the major's Civil War papers, but I had no idea where to find that person. This book is a valuable contribution to the history of a band of brave and dedicated young men who deserve recognition. Their brigade, made up of the First Texas Legion, the Third, the Sixth, and the Ninth Texas Cavalry, is the only Texas cavalry brigade to serve east of the Mississippi. They were transferred from the TransMississippi to Corinth in April 1862 and remained in the Confederate West to the end of the war. In the Official Records they were known as the Texas Cavalry Brigade and later in the war as Ross's Cavalry Brigade. I have a special interest in the Ninth Texas Cavalry and would have paid a large ransom for Lowe's book a couple of years ago. I am elated to add it to my library. My mother remembered two uncles, Reuben and Jesse Rogers, who served with the Ninth. Her stories and a few old family records started my research on the regiment ten years ago. In January of this year Avon Books published my book about the Ninth and Ross's Brigade - All Afire to Fight - The Untold Tale of the Civil War's Ninth Texas Cavalry. See Amazon.com for description and reviews of All Afire to Fight.

In our family my great aunt was the keeper of this rare piece of glass pressed into a frame, not even as big as a deck of cards. It was the likeness of my great-great grandfather, a supposed captain in some Confederate unit, captured in an ambrotype, a primitive form of photograph. I peered at him as a child as he proudly gazed back at me from more than a century ago, his hat flamboyantly cocked, beard prominent, and pistols visible at his waist.

We never knew what the war was like for him, the details of his life blurred by a sketchy oral tradition: Didn't know what he thought about the cause in which he was engaged; what he thought about his fellow soldiers; about the Union; about his family. We didn't know why he came back home to Arkansas, so we were told, in the middle of the war, only to die. Had he been wounded or taken ill? Had he deserted, or just walked away on a long odyssey home, as Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain soldier had?

These past few days, though, have offered a vivid and authentic picture of how life must have been for my forebear. Richard Lowe, Regents Professor of History at the University of North Texas, pulled all the strands of that world together in this book.

Captain, then Major, then Lieutenant Colonel Bates' letters and diary entries, along with Lowe's invaluable geographical markers and chronological waystations, give us a true picture of the trials -- physical, mental and emotional -- that must have weighed heavily on those young men in the maelstrom of war.

Bates' own psyche tilts at the eternal and epic questions of Everyman's life and death throughout the book. In some letters, the young Bates playfully teases his future wife Mootie. In others, the darker hand of war and combat color his mind. His lightheartedness with Mootie stands out against the grisly accounts of terrible battles and revenge. In one he reports that his men "set a good many" former slaves who had gone over to the Union side "to stretching hemp," a euphemism for hanging.

As Bates' letters and diaries continue throughout the war, his own accounts of rumors brought into his camp and his joy at optimistic accounts of victories reported leave us pitying his soul, for he knows not yet of the war's inexorable grinding on the Confederacy. Lowe's ample and informative historical notes and charts force us to twist privately in our seats as we read, unable from this vantage point to even vicariously enlighten or encourage Bates in his travels and battles through the Indian Territory, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

Bates would hear of nothing to dampen the spirits of the Confederate cause, evidenced by a letter to his sister, a scalding scolding, after she had written to him a particularly depressing letter. "Why all this gloom," he asks. "You permit your imagination to conjure up a thousand dangers & difficulties & causes for trouble that have no existence in reality." Then, after a tub-thumping sermon on reasons for bearing up under the strain: "Make an effort to appear cheerful at all times - and making the effort to appear so will soon really make you feel so."

Bates' optimism bears up even when he contemplates continuation of the war after the fall of Vicksburg and Atlanta.

Analyses of the deeper reasons for the conflict pepper Bates' writings, based many times on his reading of letters and papers captured from Union soldiers. Then, as if it is all a joke, he relates a story of how the belligerents, negotiating in 1861, came to terrible disagreement over which side would take Mississippi. Abraham Lincoln, who in this tale really didn't want anything to do with Mississippi, reluctantly offers to take half, then precipitating the war, since the South could not bear to have only half. Bates despised Mississippi. On his second trip there, he was obliged to admit that his Confederate troops were treated better than before, the locals having got a dose of the Yankee medicine since his last visit, a medicine which he felt had taught them to respect the presence of their own Confederate troops.

Bates' use of American slang still rings true in the ear today, with his talk of having the "blues" from time to time, but his prose is undeniably pristine and proper. His take on the ineptitude of Confederate leaders is poignant and his analysis of politics is deadly sharp.

Possibly while on a visit back home, he, like so many soldiers in other conflicts, left a code with his friend Mootie, which allowed him to pass along information to her which could have compromised the troops' mission have it been general knowledge. Lowe includes the two instances of the code in use, along with a facsimile of the actual key used in deciphering. How exciting and intimate it must have been to think of passing along privileged information along to his future partner.

Bates also follows the lead of many other soldiers, finding God, or "taking religion," after his brush with death and subsequent injury. He assures his mother that if he were to die, he would be reunited with her one day in the heavens.

The war for Bates ended with his inability to return home for a while. He spent time wandering Mississippi, in all likelihood working through events that changed him from a young innocent to a vengeful, physically shattered man.

Bates was lucky enough to have survived a minié ball wound to the mouth, and lived a productive life for some time after the war, unlike my "Captain," who died before the war was over. Even so, I, and many others who may have wondered about their forebear in their own carefully passed-along photo, now have something to go on, something that reveals the real world of a Confederate soldier, the hopes, the joys, the wrenching twists of morals and psyche.

I have read this excellent book by Kenn Gangel, Personally I want to say that this book is excellent and extraordinary. Because of his insight and scholars background plus his background of practical ministry that make this book became awesome. Especially in Christian Coaching, this is quite new and nobody writes in the some topic as good as Gangel does. With Biblical and scriptural passages background plus practical way of coaching principles and action make this book easy to read and very beneficial. I encourage to all Christian leader to read and apply this principle in this book, this is a book for the future leader in this generation and to the next generation. Thanks and God bless you.

this book provides a treasure trove for both the new and older christian from respected dispensational authors.if you look at the sample pages you get an idea of the depth and helpfulness of this
great resource

Even those who are not interested in art know TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, he has become universal.Yes he is the guy who used to hang around bordellos and the MOULIN-ROUGE will always be associated to him.ARISTIDE BRUANT and YVETTE GUILBERT two popular FRENCH singers were immortalize by him.TOULOUSE-LAUTREC was never interested in doing landscapes, he was mostly a portraitist who had fun as a caricaturist of his society LA BELLE EPOQUE.The book summarize his life the way it should be and has some useful documents that makes it interesting.

I prefer the smaller size of this book (compared to "coffee table" editions). Even though it is a practical size, the reprinted art is vivid and does not suffer from the smaller pages. Also this book is really informative (not alot of meaningless art jargon and expert opinions) like so many of those coffee table books suffer from.

This was another of those synchronist events that happens in the form of the written word. Actually, I got ahold of these videos through my local library at a time when I was searching for questions instead of answers. This book is a tour de force of the mythological evolution of the human species. Campbell addresses what the elemantary ideas of myth are and how they present themselves uniformly throughout all cultures, historical and present, of the world equally. The thesis--there is only one mythology that is inflected in various folk manifestations, comes across beautifully. Campbell will challenge you to rethink about religion and mythology and what it means to you as a human being. This one is a must read.

Read this if you can't afford the tapes of this excellent PBS series (though it gets a little dry in some spots)! It is a (now deceased) esteemed archeologists's comparisons of myth with the actual excavations that he and other archeologists have made. He can validate or repudiate claims made by some religions that their version is the best, only, or earliest version, and can also show how some myths evolved from actual real events or places. Once you are done reading this, go ahead and read the older work The Women's Encylopedia of Myths and Secrets (written by Barbara G. Walker), another heavily referenced work, which looks into the literature of the ancients, right on through to the Middle Ages, highly exposing information that has been supressed by later religions, politicians, and peoples.

I have always been fascinated by Tibetan Buddhism since my youth and viewed it as a more profound philosophy than that which is offered in the West. In the last several years, however, my projections of "otherness" and superiority onto this system has begun to fade and I now see the cracks and problems inherent in this system. June Campbell explores the problems of this system from a female point of view. She is more than qualified in this respect having practiced Tibetan Buddhism for years and served as a secret ... partner to a high ranking, allegedely celibate lama. Being a male, many of the ingrained phallocentric and mysogenistic attributes of the Tibetan system which I casually overlooked previously exploded before me as Campbell carefully explores the meaning and history of female identity in Tibetan Buddhism. So clear and profound are her observations about female identity in this work that I have not not only rethought my stance on Tantric teachings but my view of women and "femaleness" in general. She explores the cultural and historical context of women in the Tantric system with very sharp and biting commentaries on culture and gender. I cannot recommend this title too much since it makes one (at least me) rethink their entire worldview when it comes to the role of women on the spiritual path.

This is one of the best books I've ever read! It's a historyof the evolution of thinking. It focuses on the ways thinking has beenmanipulated, for example, by Tibetan Buddhists to be anti female, to be rigid, limited and fearful.It covers a wide range of time, thousands of years before Buddhism arose as a thinking style as well as the Tibetan version of Buddhism...June Campbell is not only scholar whose meticulous research shines through each sentance of the book but her real life experience studying with Tibetan lamas for 20 years gives deep insight into the reality of Tibetan Buddhism. Having been Tibetan Buddhist myself for 25 years, I can honestly say that Traveller In Space is an exceptionally clear book about how Tibetan Buddhism is actually taught,the core attitudes of Tibetan lamas, as well as serious misunderstandings Tibetan lamas have about human relationships and why. Many of the Tibetan teachers have become unethical and the author has the courage to gently reveal the truth. In the end Traveller In Space left me feeling more in touch with the truth that authentic spiritual awakening cannot be conveyed in the traditional Tibetan atmosphere...I believe the point Ms. Campbell is making is that being truly fulfilled as a human means becoming more at one with the "spacious",unconstucted aspects of one's being.

This book has so many great ideas for all those troubling "little" things in a classroom. Many suggestions are given for one common problem. Any teacher can find at least 3 new ideas on how to handle any given situtation in their class. I highly recommend it for new teachers...as well as those who have been in the classroom for years. One of the few resource books that I felt was worth the money. It is FANTASTIC!

It's the little things that can derail a teacher's day. This book is packed with ideas to try in your classroom. If one idea doesn't work for you there are lots more to try. This is the greatest resource I have come across in 10 years!