--"Lola," an eighteen-year old boy living at an orphans' home who writes a popular national advice column rounds up five other children at the home whom he likes: thirteen-year-old James, ten-year-old Annie (the narrator) and her twin brother Al-Willie, nine-year-old Edmund, and five-year-old Ben, and they set off for a small town in which they form a family and move into a nice house, dodging the neighbours' nosy questions and having a great time, that is, at first: soon, people start to wonder why their "grandfather" whom they always assure is around somewhere, is never seen, and why the family looks so suspicious in general. --I loved the emotions and excellent detail in this book, and it was lively and quick, making it a great book to read. --Marisa

Have you ever wanted to live on your own? That's what Annie, Al-Willie, James, Edmund, Ben, and Lola (A.K.A Arthur) wanted. So they ran away from St. Theresa's, a home for orphans, to create their own family. They moved to Sweet River and began a whole new life filled with adventure. As time goes on problems errupt and confusion begins. Dear Lola is an outstanding novel which is difficult to put down. Judie Angell has written a remarkable story filled with vivid language and rich vocabulary. This is truly a book you'll never forget.

What an amazing woman! I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Jeanne Foster, and it brought back many memories of my early years in the "north country" before I retired and moved to Florida. The authors winter here in Venice, and they have given many interesting talks in the area about Foster and her famous friends, displaying diaries, actual letters to Foster from people like Ford Madox Ford and Ezra Pound, and drawings of her by William Butler Yeats's father. Recommended for lovers of biography and great stories.

This book is a great story of a truly "American" woman who was a friend to the world or at least to the world of artists,writers, and politicians. The biography has everything to keep a reader reading: beauty, poetry, intrigue, sex, passion mysticism, and sweetness. I wish I could have known this person called Jeanne Robert Foster.

Being an avid collector of US Army medals, badges, uniforms and accoutrements from the Vietnam War period I have found this book to be invaluable in both assisting me to correctly identify items I have in my collection (and want to have!) and telling me about their design and history. The colour plates are just superb as is the informative text. I have not been able to find a better book that comprehensively covers the subject matter as this one does - it takes pride of place in my library and is referred to so often I've had to have it rebound!

This is the most complete and detailed book ever published on U.S. Army Military Awards and Insignia. It is lavishly illustrated with original drawings and beautiful color pictures of every medal, badge and insignia in the Army since 1941. The book opens with a short history of US Army insignia starting in 1775 and how they developed war by war up to today. Each period is illustrated with numerous examples. The book then covers all Army branch insignia in detail and the development of both officer and enlisted rank from 1775 to 2001. All skill and combat badges are laid out with criteria and dates to include those which have been discontinued.Every badge is shown in full color. Decorations and medals are displayed in color showing both front and back to include ribbon only awards. Additionally there is a complete ribbon chest in the correct order of precedence for wear. Detail descriptions of the medals cover criteria for award, symbolism of the medal and ribbon and even campaign dates for all service medals. There are special sections on how to detemine what medals a veteran would earn in each conflict as well as sections on How to claim awards from the government and once obtained how to display military awards. The book took 5 years to research and write. With over 140 pages loaded with color illustrations and detail it is an incredible value.

This book should be required reading for medical students and established physicians alike.

Fran's journey is an exquisite example of one's ability to connect the mind and the body with the Divine for healing that is total, whole, and complete. her story is empowering and I am honored to have been a participant along her path.

With roots reaching deep into film history, the stylistic conventions of film noir have been present throughout the history of cinema. Moreover, the hardboiled tales that lent themselves to noir's stylistics that reached their heyday in the 1940s have never fully disappeared from the silver screen. In Detours and Lost Highways, Foster Hirsch examines classic noir films and their influence on later films. Primarily focusing on original works and their later remakes, Hirsch places the films into cultural and historical perspective, noting the necessity for change in the films according to their era and how they work (or, more often, don't).

Hirsch's book is right up my alley. I'm a big fan of noir and am always curious about how films change going from their original concepts to the screen and to their subsequent remakes and/or influences. Detours and Lost Highways is an exhaustive work whose only fault may lie in its curious omission of key noirs and neo-noirs such as WHITE SANDS, PALMETTO, and DETOUR (and its remake). Likewise, while Hirsch provides a terrific history of noir in pre- and post-war France, he unfortunately misses out on discussing the great noirs of Japan. These points notwithstanding, Detours and Lost Highways is necessary reading for noir fans and students of film history. (ISBN: 0879102888)

I liked this book, although it seemed that half the time I disagreed with Hirsch on the film he was discussing. For example, he found a lot more to like the the Lumet-Fonda "The Morning After" than I did. Curiously enough, even when Hirsch criticized a film I liked, I didn't find him annoying.

The book begins very well, with a discussion of "Odds Against Tomorrow," a film noir that came out after "Touch of Evil," the last "official" noir. This leads Hirsch, after a discussion of noir in French cinema, into looking at neo-noir. Hirsch organizes his material by subgenre or archetype, such as private eye films.

My serious problem with the book was that it covers so much, from 1959 to the late 90s. That is much longer than the original noir era (1941-59). Thus it seems odd to have films like "Shock Corridor" and "The Long Goodbye" discussed with "Reservoir Dogs" and "Basic Instinct," as if they were part of the same era. I think Spicer in his new book on film noir treats neo-noir better by splitting it in two (Sixties and Seventies vs. Eighties and Nineties).

However, Hirsch discusses a large number of films in detail and it is always interesting to see what he has to say, even when you disagree.

A book full of the common sense reality of the struggle to preserve your land and (what do farmers do again) grow food to feed people. Having grown a lot of food in my earlier years, the author communicates the closeness a farmer feels to the cycles of nature. Farmers are the original environmentalists. A great non-judgemental review of the effect of the spread of non-farmers into her world. People move from the city to the country and then citify the country.

Dirt Under My Nails: An American Farmer And Her Changing Land is the engaging memoir of Marilee Foster, a fifth generation farming woman who devoted herself to a world of fertile soil, looking after turkeys, reveling in the change of seasons and much more. A solid, inspirational book about enjoying a hands-on closeness to nature and the joy of farming as a way of life, Dirt Under My Nails is a very pleasant read and highly recommended for anyone who has ever worked the land or contemplated doing so.

John Bellamy Foster's "Ecology Against Capitalism" is a collection of essays that addresses some of the various aspects of capitalism's crisis of accumulation and the environment. Importantly, the author compares and contrasts the failures of the ecological economics model with the more promising ecosocialist paradigm, arguing that the latter is humanity's best chance to create a stable, healthy and humane world.

I haven't read any other books by Foster, but it is hard to imagine a better effort. This powerful little book is written with passion, clarity and purpose. Foster seems to pack more meaning in 170 pages than others who use twice the space. Consequently one can imagine the book serving as an excellent supplemental textbook for students who may be interested in rapidly developing their critical thinking skills.

Many of the articles discuss how the growth of capitalism is leading to environmental collapse. Foster shows that assigning market values to nature and introducting relatively less harmful technologies will not end the destruction. Rather, these so-called Green Economics solutions will merely lead to a "more efficient exploitation of the environment" (pg. 58) by the capital markets.

Foster strongly believes that a moral element is at play. The "higher immorality" of the bourgeoise class is implicit in its accumulation of material goods and profits at the expense of the poor and the environment; but it is also sometimes explicitly stated, such as in Lawrence Summers' infamous World Bank memo where a policy of exporting pollution to poor countries was rationalized because the economies are less developed there.

In my opinion, one of the best passages on the issue of morality concerned Foster's devastating critique of Malthus, who was one of the original apologists for the privileged class. Foster brilliantly turns the cult of Malthusianism on its head by arguing that the environmental crisis is a result of overconsumption by the rich, not the poor. Foster points out that neo-Malthusianism remains influential within neoliberal thought and argues forcefully that it must end if we are to ever stop deluding ourselves and get to work on real solutions to the crisis.

Foster's personal experiences with the timber industry conflicts in the Pacific Northwest are related in the book's lengthiest essay. The author discusses the limits of achieveing environmental sustainability without class struggle and the support of labor. Interestingly, Foster demonstrates the practical value of ecosocialist theory by articulating a workable solution that went beyond the rhetoric of "jobs versus logs". Perhaps not surpisingly, the author tells us that the promising proposal was quashed by a Bush Sr. administration official in favor of a pro-industry solution.

Ultimately, Foster shows that an ecosocialist society that values democracy, community and nature can indeed create "a positive, not just a negative, alternative to capitalism" (pg. 132). I urge you to read this outstanding book.

In this new book John Bellamy Foster has assembled a great deal of evidence (in a dozen chapters written and published over the last decade) that the earth's ecology is incompatible with capitalism. But is there an alternative?

Foster says: "A shift toward a broad movement for ecological conversion and the creation of a sustainable society also means that that the partnership between the state and the capitalist class, which has always formed the most important linchpin of the capitalist system, must be loosened by degrees, as part of an overall social and environmental revolution. This partnership must be replaced, in the process of a radical transformation of the society, by a new partnership between democratized state power and popular power" (p. 132).

Reading just that far, one might conclude that such a loosening by degrees could be achieved within the two-party system in the United States or in other regimes where voters choose between conservatives and liberals. Certainly many environmental progressives (if that's not a contradiction) have opted to work within the existing political duopoly.

But the Ralph Nader campaigns of 1996 and 2000, and the concomitant rise of the Green Party, presage a different direction. It is one, however, which will require both a deeper and more ecological understanding of the incompatibility of ecosystems with a profit system, and a more radical politics than the market-regulation offered by the Green Party platform and Citizen Nader's narrower planks.

Foster goes on to say: "Such a shift requires revolutionary change that must be more than simply a rejection of capitalist methods of accumulation and their effects on people and the environment. Socialism -- as a positive, not just a negative, alternative to capitalism -- remains essential to the conversion process, because its broad commitment to worldwide egalitarian change reflects an understanding of 'how the needs of the various communities can be fit together in a way that leaves nobody out, and that also satisfies global environmental requirements'."

In his major opus, Marx's Ecology (2000), Foster showed Marx's development of an ecological perspective that drew from the latest natural science discoveries. These included the discovery of the micro metabolic cycles by the cell theorists, Theodor Schwann and Matthias Schleiden, which Marx linked with the discovery of the grand metabolic cycles of earth and sky by the agrochemist Justus von Liebig. To this one would have to add the influence on Marx of Karl Fraas, an important figure in forest ecology neglected by Foster and most scholars in this country.

Marx's resulting awareness of the ecological care necessary to plan a sustainable socialism was ignored, however, by the Soviet Union under Stalin, as Foster showed, despite profound contributions by scientists like Vladimir I. Vernadsky, whose 1924 book, The Biosphere (1998), has become an internationally-recognized classic of ecology. Critical radicals today, and particularly those in the ecosocialism paradigm, reject the lack of democracy and bureaucratic centralism of such regimes, which
played a key role in the adoption of policies that degraded the environment.

Nevertheless, Foster argues, "Within a socialist framework, the sources of the largest-scale and most severe environmental destruction could be dealt with head-on, in a way that has already shown itself to be beyond the capacity -- not to say against the interests -- of capital."

Foster acknowledges a range of collaborators and rivals in the crafting of his new book. Most important is Paul Burkett, whose
Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective (1999) finally clarified the distinction between the human use of nature and the exploitation of the exchange value of commodities. Foster also cites James O'Connor, author of Natural Causes (1998)as showing that "While there are many variations in economic growth theory, all presuppose that capitalism cannot stand still...that it must 'accumulate or die,' in Marx's words" (p. 80).

Although Foster's new book appeared at the same time as Joel Kovel's The Enemy of Nature (2002), which has the same basic theme, the books are quite different. Foster's collection of articles is intended to deal with specifics, it is "an attempt to intervene directly in contemporary political-economic debates on capitalism and the environment..." (p. 7). Kovel's book is actually an intervention into eco-politics and provides a sustained exploration of Ecosocialism as compared and contrasted with Deep Ecology, Bioregionalism, Anarchist Social Ecology, and particularly with Populism and variants of small-business capitalism.

If Foster's new book is focused on what needs to be undone in an ecological and economic conversion, Kovel's is much more a manual of what needs to be done to build the alternative to capitalism. The books actually complement each other, and both are essential tools for the ecological activist and the open-minded citizen.

Educating The Heart: Standards-Based Activities To Foster Character, Community, And Self-Reflection by education resource specialist Alison Hagee offers an impressive selection of activities for building both educational skills in reading, science, math, arts, social studies, and physical education, as well as building character in young people, while helping them to bond with their community, and learn more about personal self-reflection. Educating The Heart offers a highly recommended wealth of practical ideas and variations, combined to offer "user friendly" curriculum enriching tools for ideal for gradeschool classroom teachers as well as homeschooling parents seeking new ways to bond with their children and help make learning fun.

What a wonderfull book! I applaud you alison on a well writting book. You really poor your heart into this masterpeice!! It has helped me in so many different ways. I hope there is a sequel!! Thank you so much for inspiring me!! Good luck and God bless.

I hated reading growing up but when I was confined to my bed in forth grade, my mother bought me the entire sereies. I developed a love for reading and sometimes would stay up half the night just to read "one more chapter". This series is great. It taught me about loving others and other great lessons from the BIble. I have these books on my shelf just waiting for my daughter to read when she is old enough.

I first read this book, as well as the whole series, back when I was a kid in the 80s. I would highly recomend this book/series for any preteen girl. There is a good mix of suspence along with Biblical principals. This book is a good reminder that God loves everyone, even the kids that no one wants. They are not beyond His care. It also shows the power of prayer and the fact that nothing is impossible for God. This is an excellent book/series.

This is a great "growing-up" book, especially appropriate for girls. When Hattie Knowlton's immediate family dies (parents, brother, and eventually her caretaker Aunt Lydia), she goes to live with her affluent relatives--Aunt Margaret, Uncle Charley, and cousin Soph. Most of the action happens at Miss Bulkley's Seminary for Young Ladies in New York during the late 1800s. Not only does this novel show the reader about daily life in a different era, middle-school teachers should find this an excellent resource to use in conjunction with teaching writing. Sally Warner uses her great-grandmother Hattie's journals to show how writers create "reality" throught the act of writing. Hattie writes, "Soph came a week ago Monday [to Miss Bulkley's] and we four girls have had a jolly time ever since." Hattie actually felt intimidated by her new surroundings. Never mind! The omniscient narrator tells us, "She [Hattie] could create another Hattie, happy, funny, and confident...that would be the Hattie that lived on...." Quite a testament to the power of writing.

After Hattie Knowlton's parents died when she was a little girl, she and her baby brother were sent to live with their great-aunt. But when Hattie is fourteen, both her great-aunt and her brother died, leaving her all alone in the world. Having lived in poverty all her life, she feels awkward and out of place when she arrives at the luxurious New York City home of her Uncle Charley and Aunt Margaret, and their daughter Sophie, an elegant young lady who Hattie feels like a country bumpkin next to. Even though Sophie is kind to Hattie, she is still lonely, grieving for her little brother. When fall comes, Hattie is sent with Sophie to a boarding school for wealthy young ladies. Hattie is ashamed of being a "charity case," and worries that all the other girls will find out. This was a wonderful novel set during the 1880s about a young girl who struggles to rise above her difficult childhood to find her own place in the world. I would reccomend this book to young teenage girls who enjoy historical fiction.