A detailed and thoughtful assessment of how the work of corporations and their lawyers in the developing world can have devastating consequences, and can ultimately work injustice. As an international corporate finance lawyer, I can tell you that this is a cautionary tale that we all should read.

Perhaps one of the most touching books on Russia that I've ever read. I travelled there in 1998 and this book vividly took me back to that trip. Even if you haven't been there, this book will help you understand a little better what it's like. Emotionally captivating!

If you wondered what was wrong in government schooling, the union contract is a good place to find answers. Teacher unions often control both sides of the bargaining table by influencing school board elections and policy making. Management (encouraged by bad court decisions) has given away its rights to fire poor teachers, to pay on basis of performance, and to hold teachers responsible for results. School boards sign contracts that prohibit them to contract out failing schools to private management, to create charter schools without union approval, or to issue vouchers so children in failing schools can select a private alternative to government-operated schooling.

This is a scholarly book that presents facts without a chip on its shoulder against unions. But the reader may question in the end why as a society we would place monopoly power in the hands of the National Education Association and its state and local affiliates. We certainly were not considering the welfare of our children in so doing.

'The Undiscovered Chekhov' is a real tressure for Chekhov lovers. This is a collection of 38 stories previously untranslated to English-speaking readers. The original stories published in Russian magazines while Chekhov was studying medicine at Moscow University in the 1880s represent new angles in many ways. They provide great insights into young Chekhov's talents as an innovative and a gifted writer. Secondly, they represent Chekhov's early experimentations with narratives and techniques even before he became well known as a master craftsman of modern short stories. Thirdly, the stories translated by a gifted translator provide an excellent historical account of Chekhov's contemporary Russia.

As Peter Constantine records in his introduction the discovery of the original Russian stories at the New York Public Library is also an interesting story. The introduction provides an excellent background to the Chekhov's life, his techniques as well as background to some of the stories.

This collection is a rare gift for anyone who wants to know how a modern master story-teller had begun his career.

The Unfinished Struggle, considering its brevity and the number of years that it covers, represents an adequate, even good, effort at describing the difficult, hazardous, uneven, and highly compromised journey of the labor movement since the Great Railroad Uprising of 1877.

Since the book is intended for those without thorough knowledge of the labor movement, a shortcoming of the book is the absence of any history of unions prior to 1877. How did they start? What was/is the social, economic, and political/legal context of unions? But the book is a window into the practicality and realities of unionism since 1877.

The author shows that other than for a brief thirty-year period the labor movement has mostly struggled for relevancy, even survival. It is not clear as to the degree of optimism that the author has regarding the completion of the struggle. As a practical matter, a reading of this book leaves little room for optimism.

In the absence of great detail, the author focuses on historical "turning points" as markers to indicate the standing and prospects of the labor movement. Among those selected for discussion were the Strike of 1877, the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912, WWI, the Steel Strike of 1919, the Great Depression, the Wagner Act of 1935, WWII, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, the PATCO Strike of 1981, and the change in the leadership of the AFL-CIO in the mid-90s. In addition the conflicts and contradictions within the labor movement are well assessed. Basically, the book is a very sobering account of the labor movement.

The author acknowledges the next to impossible task of writing a short history of the labor movement because of its complex past, but he has done a very credible and worthy job.

Readers who are familiar with Don Share's remarkable translation of Miguel Hernandez might expect Share's own poems to be rich with feeling and intelligence. They won't be disappointed. The searching, sometimes searing voice in these poems invokes a speaker who takes his material from all the layers of a profoundly felt life. The combination of personal history and mystery, along with the paradox of history as a whole create echoes that inform and haunt these poems. I read this book and felt challenged to think more deeply about the larger world around me and to hold more dear the details of the life I live.

This book by J. Hudson Taylor is a good example of "great things coming in small packages." Although less than 100 pages, when read along with your Bible, UNION & COMMUNION really demonstrates God's redemptive love through Jesus Christ is present from Genesis to Revelation.

Faith/religion without love is nothing more than meaningless ritual. The SONG OF SONGS/SOLOMON really is the Holy of Holies in terms of the God's love for all of mankind. I highly recommend this book.

This is the fourth entry in the Ben and Zack sereis by talented children's author, Lucille Travis. Her talent derives from a much apprecited ability to set a plot in motion and propel it along, keeping the reader running with it (happily). Her characters are so perfectly blended with this ever-quickening narrative that you worry, from one chapter to the next, about how things will unfold for Ben and Zack. These are comments from an adult, but kids have the same sort of reaction, expressed differently: they keep on reading 'till they are done--even foregoing Nintendo and other digital delights.

This is a fabulous book for any Union Case collector. Very well written and a ton of good material. Photographs are outstanding as well. The authors certainly did their research in preparing such a fantastic book.

John Sayles is better known as a film maker, but he's an even better novelist. This book is the best example of why. If one flashback chapter can lead to a movie as good as "Matewan," imagine what the rest of the book is like. For a more playful story with equally serious themes, try "Pride of the Bimbos," too.