Anyone who feels that literacy has changed their life should read this book. The author tells of her heart-wrenching, lonely existence as an abused child who was shuttled from one foster home to another until she was adopted by a woman who opened her eyes to the world of reading. The author was able to overcome her less than auspicious beginning to become a professor of English at IUPUI. This story could have been told with much melodrama, but the author tells it in an extremely honest manner and lets the drama of the story come through naturally. She does not beg for sympathy for the circumstances of her childhood. She simply tells the readers how literacy brought her out of a miserable existence and makes a connection with her readers that will, at least for this reader, last forever.

great pictures!!! a fun story (ofcourse) & very timely for autumn and halloween. this book gives children and adults a good peek into indiana as the west in the early 1800s. am awaiting the paperback version to buy serveral copies.

This is a wonderful book in that it presents women as strong and
able to do much. If you are tired
of reading books about "evil" people, this is a good choice.
Nancy is a great woman, simple and strong. She becomes
widowed and takes her son with her on a long
trip by wagon out west. Many advertures await them as they reach
their destination. Mr. Albertson is a blessed writer who
keeps the story moving forward. As I read it, he helped me feel like I was right there over 100 years ago, riding on that
wagon pulled by 4 mules. Cheering my new friend Nancy on
to her destination, all the while admiring her commitment. So many books are about men and their adventures, but finally someone, even though the author is a man, wrote about a woman.
The tenderness with which he wrote it makes me feel that he must have known some great women in his life
and wanted to pay homage to them. I loved it and
hope Mr. Albertson will write a sequel.

I most enjoyed reading New Media in the Muslim World. This bookexamines the recent introduction of mass education and theavailability of new media (including: fax machines, private and satellite Television channels, internet, desktop publishing as well as video tapes and telephone) in the Muslim World. These new media challenge existing modes of governmental and religious authority and creates new discursive spaces for the articulation of ethnic and religious identities.

This work starts with three theoretically oriented chapters and continues with ethnographies. All case study presented in the collection are immensely relevant to new media researchers, although only one of them deals specifically with the Internet.

Other themes consist of: the continuity between old and new in popular culture (Armbrust), interactions between technology and culture in the new "communication ecology" (White), how new communication networks have de-centered debates on the construction of ethnic identity to Europe (Yavuz), the narrowing gap between broadcast production and audiences and the intellectualization of Islamic discourse (both by Eickelman), the discovery of the civil society as a topic for debate in the Muslim world (Norton), etc.

One of the book's strengths is that no simplistic causal link is assumed between new communication technologies and their social impact. The essays are informed by a rich ethnographical context and an understanding of larger social and political.

This book comes to fill this gap with case studies of regions as diverse as diverse as Indonesia, Bangladesh, Turkey, Iran, the Arab world, and the United States...

Excellent full page, color habitat and close-ups

Otto Ping was an early 20th century photographer, who did work while secluded in the back hills of rural Indiana. His work is noteworthy not only because of his results that are comparable to the work of the famous Dorothea Lange, but also because he was complely self taught in the art and science of the then emerging art form. He had an instictively unerring eye for images which transcend time. The photos speak directly to the modern reader, comments by the well known art historian Douglas Hartley add depth to the book. A wonderful piece of midwestern history.

"Painting Indiana" is an awesome collection of art.A must for anyone interested in fine art. My dad is Dan Woodson and his artistic ability is way beyond anything I have ever seen.

I can't read enough about the Pennsy and generally enjoy most books about the railroad. This book gives a good overview of how the PRR came together in Indiana in the early days and how it came apart at the end. I was very entertained by this book and learned a lot about the operations in this state.

I have never seen a more helpful, organized, informational guide. If you want the greatest maps, this is the book to buy.

For so long time, people have though that centralized, unified and developed bureaucratic system is the most useful and efficient institution to produce and provide public service, even local public service. The efforts of Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University tell us that it is definitely wrong. Such system is among the most wasteful and unefficient systems. After so many years empirical research about local police service and metropolitan governance in USA, they strongly argue that over-lapping jurisdiction and polycentric governance are far more efficient than unified and centralized governance. In terms of its som much innovation, I would like to call it as a creative revolution in both theoretical and practical area of local public econoies. The more I would like to say is that this book has been translated into Chinese and the formal publication is forthcoming.