"See What We Say" is an excellent guide for developing truly functional augmentative communication devices for adults with disabilities. Ms. Collier is extremely comprehensive -- covering the range of sitations from communicating preferences during personal care to the more complex issues of involvement in the political process. In addition to vocabulary suggestions though, I think the most helpful portions of this workbook are the insightful tips & hints Ms. Collier provides in each section. Not only do the tips recommend additional resources that can be helpful, but they frequently describe the personal recommendations of an augmentative communication user. These personal comments put "humanity" back into a topic than can become very technical and move this book from a simple laundry list of possible vocabulary words/phrases to a tool than can open the door to true inclusion. I highly recommend this workbook as a critical tool for professionals who are responsible for developing & maintaining augmentative communication systems!

Carol Kuhlthau, in her book, 'Seeking Meaning-a process approach to library and information services', describes clearly her theory about the methods students use when they research a topic.The book, covers step by step, the development of her study and the methods she used to validate her theory.

She details the stages of the search process, emphasizing that the stages are not necessarily linear. Students initially suffer anxiety when faced with an assignment.She claims that at this point of time they need to have an invitational mood which will enable them to cope with the new ideas as they jostle with their own personal world view. Some students then begin to form a focus.For students who find a focus, the search process becomes more directed.At this point the anxiety lessens.The search then moves into the closure phase.

I would recommend this book to any librarian,teacher or student. The book not only clearly shows how research is conducted, it contains effective ways students can deal with each stage of the information process. It also describes, for librarians, ways they can help the different types of researchers, both professional and recreational, they are likely to meet in their libraries.

Kay Collier-Slone has done an excellent job in describing what it is like to be an single adult in the Christian church today. She points out that almost 50% of the adults in the post-college/pre-retirement demographic is single, but this percentage is not reflected in the church population. Singleness is not a broken or incomplete state to be 'fixed' by marriage, but is a lifestyle unto itself that is useful and productive, and as much loved by God as any married couple. Most importantly, she provides a definitive guideline on how to develop a thriving and sustainable adult singles ministry for individual churches or groups of churches. This book is an absolute must for every church library.

In a day when most poetry is pre-occupied with self-absorbed and abstruse "insights", this is a refreshing change of pace. The author juxtaposes the serious, the funny, and the silly, but it hangs together well. If you like meter and rhyme, you'll like this. He doesn't use foul language to make his points, which is refreshing.
Collier doesn't hold very much sacred, but his admonitions are, for the most part, gentle. As a teacher of English, I'd recommend this book to other teachers and their students. His poem, "Brave Young Hearts," is a very powerful indictment of the human proclivity to wage war.

In their series, "The Drama of American History," Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier are explicitly trying something different. Their focus is on what they consider to be the "central core" of American History, drawn with broad strokes at the expense of facts and figures. The goal is "for students to grasp the underlying concepts and ideas that emerge from the movement of history," and therefore to understand "how those facts fit together and why they are significant and relevant to the world today." In other words, we are talking depth rather than breadth, not to mention understanding rather than memorization. Consequently, this series does not even try to compartmentalize American History into discrete chronological segments. "Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War" covers the period of 1831-1861, which overlaps to some extent with both "Andrew Jackson's America" (1824-1850) and "Hispanic America, Texas, and the Mexican War" (1835-1850). But each volume is focusing on a different aspect of American History. In "Slavery and the Coming of the Civil War" the emphasis is on how the practice of slavery in the United States inevitably led to a bloody Civil War.


This eleventh volume in The Drama of American History series has only four chapters: First, The Slave Trade, which actually goes well beyond the chronological scope of this book, to the beginnings of the practice during the 15th century. Collier and Collier detail the extent of the practice and explain the Triangle Trade of molasses-to-rum-to-slaves. Second, The Slave South specifically tries to separate the facts of how slavery was practiced in the South from the fiction of works like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Gone With the Wind." This chapter also looks at the origins and growth of the abolitionist movement in the North, so it goes well beyond the parameters of its chapter title as well. Third, The Missouri Compromise Comes Apart provides the reason the timeframe of this particular volume begins in 1831, this being the year after the Missouri Compromise went into effect (the book ends in 1861, ostensibly with Lincoln's inauguration, the succession of the Southern States, and the situation with Ft. Sumter). This is the chapter that most focuses on the political issue of slavery, considering both the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Compromise of 1850 along with the pivotal Supreme Court decision in the Dredd Scott case. Fourth, An Important Man Enters the Scene, introduces young readers to Abraham Lincoln, who was, in my estimation, the only living American who could have preserved the Union in the face of the Civil War. The authors sketch out Lincoln's political philosophy and cover how his 1868 Senate campaign against Stephen Douglas positioned him for the Presidency. After looking at how John Brown's raid once again polarized the nation along regional lines North and South, they show detail the final chain of events leading to the outbreak of the Civil War. The chapter ends with an enumeration of reasons why historians believe the war could not have been avoided, even though the war talk was driven by the small but volatile radicals on both sides of the issue, the emphasis being on the industrial and social conditions that were making the North more powerful both economically and politically than the South.

As I have explained before, while I am greatly enamored with this "central core" approach to American History, I have grave practical concerns about teachers being able to have classroom sets of "The Drama of American History" series for use by their students. I would hate to think that something as fundamentally sound as this approach to teaching American History is limited to only affluent school districts around the country. I would think that at some point these volumes would be collected into two larger works that follow whatever the current line of demarcation is between American History, Part I and American History, Part II. These volumes are illustrated with historic photographs, paintings, etchings, and a few choice political cartoons (you can never have too many of those in a history textbook), all of which are reproduced in color (albeit usually just in terms of tinting). Finally, I have to admit I am curious to see how Collier and Collier deal with the Civil War itself given their approach.

I found this book and the accompanying cd very helpful in my weight loss efforts. It works. The book promises "10 easy steps to weight loss without willpower." For me, that promise was kept.

Had Sylvia Plath been a bit cheerier, she would have love this book. Inspirational, uplifting and deep. A handbook for living in a new century. Isabel Gonzalez @ Atlanta CityMag (2000)

I first read "Star Bridge" in sixth grade at the age of 11; I'm now almost 43, and I still hold this as one of the greatest SF books I've read.

Williamson's imagery and wordcraft set the standard for many of today's modern masters. His antihero Horn, the eccentric man-with-a-secret Wu, and his decaying human empire are shown in high relief, and the imagery evoked burns itself into your mind permanently.

Find and read this book; do what you must to acquire a copy, and savor it slowly. Horn's passage through the Tube and hyperspace is one of the most stirring examinations of consciousness I've yet to read; it still moves me.

Find out why one man can move an empire...

Harry is the founder and sponsor of the very interesting Association for Global Strategic Information. His book is as good a review as one could ask for, of "whither electronic publishing." He defines the pieces as consisting of data originators, information providers, online vendors, information integrators, delivery channels, and customers. Overall Harry is quite firm on pointing out that the Internet is not revolutionary and will not transform most medium and small businesses in the near future. He goes over the Internet in relation to established publishers, covers pricing and copyright issues in relation to the Internet, and ends with a discussion of next generation applications and technologies and forecasts.

A thrilling adventure! More thrilling even than all her other books combined!