Bill Stark's 1980's book covered the events and sites of the 1832 Sauk War is written in an easy to read, well-paced style. Unlike other authors (including some of his sources), Stark attempted balance and a sympathetic look at both sides of the conflict.

The real value of the book lies in the ability of the reader to follow both portions of the "Black Hawk Trail" and view sites of interest along the way. Supplemented by dozens of black and white and color photos, most (but not all) sites are easily found by the patient day-trekker. While Stark is very good with directions to some sites, he is deliberately vague with others.

One major drawback is the volume's age. More than 15 years have passed since publication, and numerous changes have occured in the areas and sites covered by Stark. The Pecatonica battlefield is now accessable as a county park. The fort at Blue Mounds was the subject of a recent archaeological study by the State of Wisconsin. Several camp sites and areas of interest are now marked by small signs (the result of several projects during Wisconsin's Sesquicentennial celebration.) The Fort Defiance site now has a state marker, and the small concrete obelisk has been relocated from the intersection at Ft. Defiance Road to a spot near the state plaque. The painting of Fort Hamilton at Wiota has been replaced with new artwork as of Summer, 2000. Most of Dr. C. V. Porter's historical markers in Vernon County and elsewhere have been relocated. In short, the book would benefit from an update.

Persons looking for extensive footnoting or an exhaustive bibliography will need to look elsewhere. Despite this and some minor historical errors, Stark's work has persisted as the only volume of its kind covering Sauk War related sites in Illinois and Wisconsin.

Glock reveals one portion (of three) of a study designed to evaluate/describe the type and degree of commitment American Christians have toward their religion.

Three thousand people were randomly selected from churches in California to answer a 500-item questionnaire. Through the analysis of responses, Glock is able to discern that religiosity relates to different things: membership, belief, ethics, attendance, outlooks, practices, knowledge, experience, faith, baptism, communion, prayer, good works, etc.

Glock created several indices by which he could measure these characterisitcs. The Orthodoxy Index is based on the belief in life after death, Jesus's birth to a virgin, Jesus's miracles, original sin, the existence of Devil, and other traditionally held Christian beliefs.

The Index of Ritual Involvement considers church attendance, saying grace, tithing, and importance of church membersihp.

The Devotionalism Index, a person's private actions of worship, ! ! is based on Bible reading, importance of prayer, belief in prayer, and inclusion of prayers of forgiveness.

The Index of Religious Experience postulates four general types of group members: confirming, responsive, ecstatic, revelational.

Knowledge is assessed through recognition of Bible verses and of OT prophets and ranked through a scale on the Knowledge Index.

Using data based on his indices and comparisons between them, Glock reaches several conclusions. One of the most interesting conclusions is that there are two kinds of church memberships--religious audiences and religious communities. According to the data, conservative groups tend to develop religious communities, with their bonds and activities spilling over into daily life and including best friends. Less conservative, more liberal groups, develop religious audiences; their friends and weekly activities do not overlap with their church participation.

Another interesting conclusion is that, overall, cons! ! ervative bodies are declining in membership and liberal gro! ups are attracting those who are moving from the conservative groups.

Glock's use of numerous charts and "layman" language makes this book an easy read as well as a unique eye-opening experience. Anyone really interested in research-based information about American religiosity should read this book.

Assessment and Program Evaluation : An Ashe Reader

First of all, since TSR, Inc. decided to stop publishingBirthright products, they have decided to give this D&D sourcebook away for free in a pdf format. You might want to buy the other excellent Birthright campaign sourcebooks from Amazon. :-)

To the review. If you are running a D&D campaign in the Birthright setting you need to download and use this sourcebook. If you are running your average hack and slash D&D game you might want to download this free product to add a political dimension to your games.

High points include a streamlined chart for rolling up ruler bloodlines (an appreciated time-saver), a good explanation of the effects of law holdings in domains and excellent biographical examples of rulers of the fictional continent of Cerilia with analysis of their methods and how players can use their ideas. The bios will definitely add some good adventure ideas to your D&D campaign and add a lot of background flavor to the game. The book is a good read too with plenty of fictional examples with accompanying game information.

Low points aren't many. First the pdf file didn't go through final editing edited (TSR admits this but it is a free product) so there are a few typos that look like issues when converting the text to pdf format. There is also no artwork within it (or a cover). Next, there are a few over-powered abilities that I'm ignoring in my game sessions. The overpowered Trade Service ability definitely needs to be toned down or eliminated. If a group of player's use Trade Service, they won't even need to tax their nations! Finally, the rules about getting free magical items in lieu of taxes should be cut in most games unless you want players with every magical item in the books.

Summation. A very written book (four and a half stars really) and it's free. I would have bought it if TSR had published it.

On a recent visit to Chile, I read Patricia Verdugo's insightful book on a specific trail of murders conducted by the infamous "caravan of death" led by General Sergio Arellano- Stark in the aftermath of the 1973 military coup. Verdugo interviews families of the victims, but even more impressively, interviews military officers themselves who have since felt the need to speak out. Apparently, officers in the northern regions were being criticized by their superiors in Santiago for their relatively peaceful takeover during the coup and for failing to create a reign of terror already prevalent in the rest of the country. Hence, Arellano-Stark arrives in his helicopter with his people, overruling local officers, taking political prisoners and executing them, leaving behind a trail of death. One gathers Pinochet himself sent the general to create fear and to send the message he was in charge. Verdugo documents the murders with paintstaking journalism, but is not afraid to also provide perspective and opinion on this inevitably emotional issue. For readers who seek an even more personal perspective, I'd also recommend Verdugo's Bucarest 187 (I don't know if the book is in translation, however) in which she chronicles the disappearance of her own father in the aftermath of the coup. The two books together allows us insight into the work of an excellent Chilean journalist who maintains a rigorous journalistic ethic of investigating the facts to the best of her ability in what must have been trying times for her personally.

Goat cheese anyone?

Goat milk products are a booming business these days, especially in Canada and the U.S. This book, by two U.K. agricultural professors, was written about 10 years ago to make a case for raising goats commercially and selling their products.

This is one of many publications we used in planning our successful grade A goat dairy in Canada, and one to which we often refer still. It is a great resource for anyone on either side of the Atlantic considering creating a commercial goat farm, especially a dairy. Meat and fibre are covered, but in using this book remember that meat markets vary greatly from region to region.

The book is based on British experience so North Americans will find some of the feeds unfamiliar. Still, there is much useful information on nutritional requirements, housing needs, breeding planning and more.

Overall it's a great checklist and overview of most of the factors you'll need to take into consideration in your planning.

For those in the field of religious studies, this book addresses the argument over secularization with a twist: Secularization actually maintains and perpetuates religion. Most of those who accept secularization's existance claim that it destroys religion. The authors provide persuasive arguements for their theory, and back it up with data organized into easy to use charts. Be aware, however, that their use of maps leaves something to be desired. The data in them is often outdated (not a problem according to their theory) and coclusions are drawn about whole regions based on information from parts of the regions. This is a large tome, and is probably suitable, if broken up into smaller units, for undergraduates in religious studies.

This book was an excellent disclosure of what is normal and abnormal in human sexuality. The author collaborated anonymous essays from students in human sexuality classes. The students revealed many sexual experiences that would not have otherwise been exposed had their identities been known to anyone. Unidentified... but candid individuals wrote of experiences that most people would bind soley between the boundaries of their minds. Some blatently dicussed topics were first sexual experiences, interpersonal sexual experiences, solitary sexual experiences and fantasies. This text surprised me as to what was normal... especially early in childhood. I read essays that explained the true age at which most people first experience sexuality. Other essays desentized me to the anomolies of male and female sexual experiences. I have to say that this book opened my mind up to many behaviors and practices that I would have otherwise considered "abnormal". Also, I believe that anyone who reads this book will feel more comfortable sexually. The honest reports from many "normal" individuals will help others understand more about themselves sexually and will provide a security in knowing that possibly... what the individual has experienced is in truth, what many people have experienced as well.

Honor the Keeper takes you on a mind opening journey into the possibilities of a parallel universe as well as the possibility of the parallel self. Through the main character's awakening as to whom he truly is and the trials of finding his place in this world (of which it is not), Stark challenges us to accept the unknown and explore our own dark side.

That Paul is a believer in the Steven King's "gunslinger" is of no surprise to this reader. This soulful belief has molded him into a writer of depth, vision and validity. As any King fan anxiously awaits the next tale of the gunslinger, this reader patiently awaits future journeys with Paul Stark.

In general, this book gives a comprehensive account on elementary number theory. The first few chapters include some fundamental concepts like divisibility and congruences (i.e. a simple kind of modular arithmetic), as well as famous yet basic theorems like the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. Important topics in number theory such as Diophantine equations, fractional approximations for irrational numbers and Quadratic fields are there, and if you're interested in magic squares, I'd like to say that a whole chapter is devoted to it.

There're some good points featuring this book. It assumes no prerequisite in number theory. Just a bit knowledge about numbers and operations on them are needed. Results and theorems are closely related, allowing you to observe how things are connected. Although not many examples are available, some are really instructive and helpful enough to avoid misconceptions.

However, it's a pity to say that the materials contained are not really well-organized, especially those in Chapter 7: the geometric arguments used in the development of the continued fraction algorithm lack concision, and a few proofs are quite annoying because the author failed to justify some claims that shuold not be treated as something "obvious". It can be motivating just to provide readers guidelines about how to work out those minor stuff, but such things shouldn't have been misleadingly called "proofs". Another problem is that the illustratons presented are occasionally insufficient, and this is particularly the case in the chapter about Diophantine equations. Novices in the subject can hardly rely on the text to solve harder exercises contained without tracing out more technique which is not emphasized.

Overall, the book deserves to be a fine reading for the interested ones new to number theory. But if you're serious about the topic, find an even better book instead.