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A comprehensive photographic guide to the orchids of Britain and Ireland, covering the 51 species recorded, including all the varieties and sub-species, as well as 9 species of uncertain or doubtful provenance. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The definitive field guide to Britain's orchids
For several years now, WILDGuides have been setting the standard for small, handy field guides that focus mainly on the identification of neglected groups of wildlife. Their approach is characterised by portability, emphasis on visual utility (the use of computer enhanced photographs) and a significant contribution to conservation. The latter is achieved in two ways: firstly by getting these guides into the hands of the public at very competitive prices (WILDGuides is a non-profit publisher) and secondly by donating all profits to conservation organisations that work on the area or organisms treated by each guide.

This book is a comprehensive photographic guide to the wild orchids of Britain and Ireland, covering all subspecies and varieties of the 51 confirmed species, plus 9 of dubious provenance. Its 59 full colour photographic plates with facing text provide the best tool to identify all the region's orchids.

At the heart of the guide are the photographs, which depict each species of orchid in its natural habitats, as well as showing the flowers up close. The informative text deals primarily with identification characteristics and includes a handy section on similar species as well as information on habitat, pollination and conservation. Distribution is shown on a clear annotated map. The text itself is authoritative and makes for fascinating reading. One is struck, above all, by just how many species are of conservation concern.

Two nice features are the ten page "key" to orchid flowers at the beginning of the book, followed by a comparative bar chart indicating flowering periods.

And since WILDGuides is a non-profit organisation that supports conservation throughout the world, you are helping ensure that the wildlife you enjoy today will still be there for others to enjoy tomorrow. In this case, profits from the book go to the The Wildlife Trusts.

In sum, this is THE handy guide to Britain's orchids, an essential addition to the naturalist's library. Highly recommended for naturalists and horticulturalists alike.

Chris Sharpe, 4 November 2009. ISBN-10: 1-903657-06-7 ... Read more

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Practical in approach, this text focuses on how both pre-service and experienced teachers can demonstrate the attributes, acquire the competencies, and meet the standards essential to effective teaching.  The framework for the text is the “Teacher Competency Profile.” Chapter by chapter, the essential knowledge and skills for effective teaching are presented. Each chapter contains recent research and best practice information with respect to the theme discussed. This is followed within each chapter with guidelines for teaching, practical approaches to information, extensive examples, cases, and activities. The sequential framework guides the pre-service student’s professional development from basic teaching approaches to sophisticated strategies, methods, and skills. By identifying the essential competencies of teaching and providing guidelines for meeting professional standards, this text is also of value for use in seminars, workshops, and professional reading by practicing teachers.

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent Resource for Instructors and Facilitators
The text is very easy to read. It is very informative and provides practical suggestions that will improve the instructional delivery for anyone involved in education. It is a good source for novices as well as the more experienced instructors or facilitators. The models and strategies are very applicable and easily adaptable.

Review of Models, Strategie, and Methods
This book is an excellent pedagogical resource.It is a great reference tool for teachers. ... Read more

Product Description
Written by experienced authors who share academic as well as real-world practices, this text features exceptionally comprehensive yet manageable coverage of a broad spectrum of E-commerce essentials from a global point of view.

Overview of Electronic Commerce; E-Marketplaces: Mechanisms, Tools, and Impacts of E-Commerce; Retailing in Electronic Commerce: Products and Services; Online Consumer Behavior, Market Research, and Advertisement; B2B E-Commerce; Innovative EC Systems: From E-Government and E-Learning to C2C E-Commerce and Collaborative Commerce; The Web 2.0 Environment and Social Networks; Mobile Computing and Commerce; E-Commerce Security and Fraud Protection; Electronic Payment Systems, Order Fulfillment, and Other Services; EC Strategy and Implementation: Justification, Globalization, SMEs, and Regulatory and Ethical Issues     

Perfect for anyone looking for a brief or supplemental text on EC. Ideal for busy executives.

... Read more

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History of American Education Primer depicts the evolution of American educational history from 1630 to the present. The book highlights how ideological managers have shaped society and, because schools mirror society, have thus had a profound impact on education and schooling. Five common areas of study—philosophy, politics, economics, social sciences, and religion—are used to trace the development of both society and schooling in the United States. Readers will identify not only trends and movements in society and schooling, but also how they logically unfold over time. Furthermore, they will gain a keen insight as to why trends and movements in education have occurred in the past and how they connect to the present. This book is a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate courses in educational foundations, social foundations, educational history, critical issues, schools and politics, schools and society, philosophical foundations, and religious foundations of American schooling. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Above the fertile crescent
A really well written volume, even though time has moved on since publication.
Contains very good work on an area which is sadly neglected by most works in this field.

Pottery and more pottery.
A highly detailed book, using pottery, to present the
history of this area.Lots to read, but sometimes boring.
It was an okay book, but try another one before you get
this one. Unless you are looking for something very
specific. ... Read more

Product Description
This casebook integrates a legal assessment of energy resources with economic and environmental issues, thereby encouraging thoughtful analysis of energy policy issues confronting the U.S. and the world. Historical and contemporary legal issues confronting a range of energy resources are surveyed, including water power, coal, oil and gas, electricity, and nuclear power. Particular attention is paid to the need to reduce consumption of imported oil by motor vehicles. The third edition of the book contains considerable material on problems presented by climate change, including legal issues confronting renewable power projects and various conservation measures. ... Read more

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The editors of Clinical Perspectives in the Management of Down Syndrome have compiled a body of research which does more than categorize this historically misunderstood and misrepresented condition. Once believed to signify regression to an ethnic variant of lower cultural standing, Down syndrome has become the subject of interdisciplinary research. This volume approaches the condition from perspectives in fields such as psychology, dentistry, and rehabilitation; issues discussed within these disciplines reveal a wider range of potential understanding as experts examine Down syndrome individuals and the concerns which surround them, from alternative and controversial therapies to sexuality and reproduction. ... Read more

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Tackling head-on the most controversial and debated _what if_ in U.S. foreign policy, this provocative work explores what President John F. Kennedy would have done in Vietnam had he not been assassinated in 1963. Drawing on a wealth of recently declassified documents, frank oral testimony of White House officials from both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and the analysis of top historians, this book presents compelling evidence that JFK was ready to end U.S. involvement well before the conflict escalated. With vivid immediacy, readers will feel they are in the president's war room as the debates raged that forever changed the course of American history_and continue to affect us profoundly as the shadows of Vietnam stretch into Iraq. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

***NOT*** What I Expected.... **Don't** Waste Your $$ On This One..
Ok, I bought this book and dvd, in the hopes that it would be an "What If?" book in the genre of Turtledove and Gingrich, etc.
Boy, was I mistaken.. Instead of weaving a compelling 'alternate history' story using JFK's own words, I was submitted to a bunch of talking heads and pictures of same.
The dvd, while a nice treasury of JFK conferences, was just that - and not what I had expected either.
So, if you're looking for a book to read while paint dries, this is it.If you're looking for another great "What If?" catagory book to add to your collection, this isn't it.

Don't Bother
If anything is clear about the many "mysteries of history" it is this: John F. Kennedy -- had he not been taken out by his own National Security State -- would not have "Americanized" the war in Vietnam. The 60,000 American boys would not have been sacrificed, and (more importantly) neither would have been the 3,000,000 Southeast Asians in what would become the Johnson/Nixon/Kissinger genocide.

So what's the point of this book? No point at all. James Blight has gathered together for a weekend of kippers, strawberry scones, and piping hot Kopi Luwak a bunch of talking heads, some of whom are agenda-setting liars(some with blood on their hands such as the always dull Chet Cooper), passionately devoted to the myth that "Well, heck. It just don't matter who's POTUS. JFK, LBJ, Chester A. Arthur -- Vietnam as we know it was inevitable."

Yeah, sure. As inevitable as that terrible war we fought in Laos, as inevitable as the nuclear war we fought over the Berlin Wall, and the nuclear war we fought over Cuba, and the thousands of troops sent to Indonesia to stop the Leftist insurgents there, and the dramatic expansion of US nuclear arsenals in the early 60s. . .

Oh, wait. You say that none of these things happened? Yeah, that's right, they didn't. And they didn't happen because of one man: John F. Kennedy.

What's particularly obnoxious about this book is what Blight et. al. chooses to ignore. You know who is barely mentioned in this 420-pager?: Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge. Not mentioned at all is Lt. Col. Lucien Conein. Not mentioned: Ed Lansdale(except in passing), Ted Shackley and CIA Saigon station chief William Colby. ('Though George Clooney is mentioned.) Why is this important? (Not the Clooney part.) Because these five men -- among many others -- were traitors and did all they could to sabotage just about all aspects of JFK's Vietnam policy ON THE GROUND. Behind Kennedy's back, for example, they arranged for the murder of the Ngo brothers.

Also repugnant is who was not invited to the Hamptons chat: Howard Jones, Jim Douglass, David Kaiser, John Newman, the great Gareth Porter(whose masterpiece "Perils of Dominance" blows away all the arguments made by the LBJ Fanboys), Lawrence Freedman, among others: all men whose expertise on Vietnam ranges far and wide, much further and wider than this silly experiment was obviously willing to go. Guess that's the price you pay for access to Bill Moyers.

For reality, buy Jim Douglass's "JFK and the Unspeakable"(whose account of the Saigon intrigue through the summer and autumn of '63 is unmatched). And be sure to pick up the excellent DVD "Virtual JFK" to be released here at Amazon next week.

Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived
(To be clear, this is a review of the film adaptation of the book.)


There is an excellent 30-year old BBC series that aired numerous times in the U.S., entitled, "Connections."In it, British journalist James Burke explores how, throughout history, often accidental minutiae ends up having profound impact on humankind.

Such is the premise of "Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived," which asked the question of if the "police action" in Vietnam would have happened if President John F. Kennedy hadn't been assassinated.

The filmmaker, Koji Masutani, distills Kennedy's major Cold War policy dealings of his roughly 1,000-day presidency into six major avoidances of war.From this, he postulates that Kennedy consistently avoided war and would have again in Vietnam if he'd lived.

The film spends a lot of time in Kennedy press conferences, the time when we see our presidents most publicly vulnerable and witness shades of their character as they're peppered with often-unfriendly questions in a sink-or-swim format.With the 20/20 clarity of history, we see how in this kinder, gentler age of journalism, the reporters grill him, but still stay respectful.We also see him charm the reporters with charisma and intelligence, which we now know was a necessary part of Kennedy's maintaining an inappropriate personal life in the face of their knowledge.

Since Masutani is so obviously an unabashed Kennedy fan, the question arises of how much footage was discarded during his research that didn't jibe with his conclusion.Kennedy also consistently spoke out of both sides of this mouth regarding troop escalation in Vietnam, his most salient words repeated by his successor, President Johnson, to maintain support for the war.In Masutani's telling, there is no black-and-white ideology.There are only angels (Democrats) and demons (LBJ for escalating troop involvement and Republicans, but Especially Anything Richard Nixon).When the personal side of Kennedy is shown he's young and flashing a million-dollar smile while hamming it up with his his siblings.Down time for Johnson is footage of his lumbering frame in a pool about to kiss his dog.

Kennedy's press conferences also seem to have been used as a template for President Barack Obama.While we watch Kennedy we hear the same cadences, the same "uhhh"s and similar logical expressions of identical ideologies from Obama.The same "youth and inexperience" claims leveled at Obama give us a sense of deja vu.

The events depicted are fascinating about quite uncomfortable subjects.We are subjected to a patient explanation of domino theory.We see a young Fidel Castro and are reminded of Adolf Hitler.We see Nikita Kruschev at the height of his power and can't help but wince at what he could have been.We watch Defense Secretary Bob McNamara coolly lay out how many Americans would die in a Soviet first strike launched from Cuba.Somehow the tone becomes ever more somber as the inexorable march to assassination overtakes the film.However, we're captivated and are compelled to watch, even with full knowledge of how the events played out.

Perhaps part of the film's worship of Kennedy shows in how it makes it appear that his policies were in now way shaped by his close trusted advisors, to whom absolutely no credit is given, from Robert Kennedy on down.The other major peacemaker in the movie is successor president Lyndon Johnson's VP, Hubert Humphrey, who vehemently disagreed with Johnson on the level of involvement in Vietnam.It's almost as if we're to believe that fully formed peaceful warriors descend from the heavans to help humankind resolve our warlike tendencies before being either cut down or defeated in an election.

A fair amount of time is given to President Johnson, who ends up being extremely sympathetic.The blustery, arm-twisting, greatest legislator-turned-President of the 20th century is shown as a soft-spoken and ultimately broken man who ends up bleeding into history over the thousands of American boys killed in Vietnam.Lady Bird Johnson as well, who actually gets more screen time than Jackie.

In spite of his personal shortcomings and political moral ambiguities, Kennedy was a peacemaker.Whether he would have avoided all out war in Vietnam will probably be forever open to debate.

In the final analysis, we emerge from the film thankful for someone of Kennedy's ilk during an all-too-long international nightmare.

Virtual JFK,Vietnam if Kennedy had lived
This film truly made history come alive for me.I could see direct parallels to our involvement in Iraq.How I wish American national leadership from 2000 to 2008 had the capacity of discernment, policy correction and promulgation displayed in this film.The marriage of professional historical review, film presentation and learned narration was thought provoking and moving.The film is well focused and well paced.I appreciated the relatively long segments given to hear President Kennedy explain at length to the world what his thought process and beliefs were on the great issues before him, our nation and the world.It was clear that the use of concise language based on fact and knowledge was prised by him and, I beleive, was appreciated by the American public.America needs to seek leaders who do not disdain intellect, curiosity (defined as a desire to learn or know)and use of language now and in the future.Film such as Virtual JFK brings us back to an even keel to consider what was past to apply to the now and future.Thank you Mr. Masutani (director) and Mr. Blight (historian, co-producer and narrator). ... Read more

Product Description

Over the past four decades Ruth R. Wisse has been a leading scholar of Yiddish and Jewish literary studies in North America, and one of our most fearless public intellectuals on issues relating to Jewish society, culture, and politics.In this celebratory volume, edited by four of her former students, Wisse's colleagues take as a starting point her award-winning book The Modern Jewish Canon (2000) and explore an array of topics that touch on aspects of Yiddish, Hebrew, Israeli, American, European, and Holocaust literature.Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon brings together writers both seasoned and young, from both within and beyond the academy, to reflect the diversity of Wisse's areas of expertise and reading audiences. The volume also includes a translation of one of the first modern texts on the question of Jewish literature, penned in 1888 by Sholem Aleichem, as well as a comprehensive bibliography of Wisse's scholarship. In its richness and heft, Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon itself constitutes an important scholarly achievement in the field of modern Jewish literature.

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This highly original book draws on narrative and film theory, psychoanalysis, and musicology to explore the relationship between aesthetics and anti-Semitism in two controversial landmarks in German culture. David Levin argues that Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and Fritz Lang's 1920s film Die Nibelungen creatively exploit contrasts between good and bad aesthetics to address the question of what is German and what is not. He shows that each work associates a villainous character, portrayed as non-Germanic and Jewish, with the sometimes dramatically awkward act of narration. For both Wagner and Lang, narration--or, in cinematic terms, visual presentation--possesses a typically Jewish potential for manipulation and control. Consistent with this view, Levin shows, the Germanic hero Siegfried is killed in each work by virtue of his unwitting adoption of a narrative role.

Levin begins with an explanation of the book's theoretical foundations and then applies these theories to close readings of, in turn, Wagner's cycle and Lang's film. He concludes by tracing how Germans have dealt with the Nibelungen myths in the wake of the Second World War, paying special attention to Michael Verhoeven's 1989 film The Nasty Girl. His fresh and interdisciplinary approach sheds new light not only on Wagner's Ring and Lang's Die Nibelungen, but also on the ways in which aesthetics can be put to the service of aggression and hatred. The book is an important contribution to scholarship in film and music and also to the broader study of German culture and national identity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen
What verbiage! Get to the point!
I'm sorry; I read and re-read and still have no clear idea what the author is trying to say.
The author could have saved much paper by writing one clearly stated sentence--and been done with it.
If I see the word inflected one more time--well I already screamed.
It does have some neat pictures from the Fritz Lang movie.
And while I have seen the Verhoeven Nasty Girl movie (and liked it and found it quite interesting), it seems out of place to put its commentary in a book along side Wagner's Ring, Lang's movie and the book Das Nibelungenlied.

Save your money
I heard the author speak at a conference on Wagnerism and Music
overseas, and it contained the gist of this book.Basically the
author is a professional hand-wringer victim, who travels around
the world cadging free meals and lodging by trotting out a very
shop-worn personal rant against Wagner, Lang, and the Nibelung
legend.It reminded me of nothing so much as a very whiny baby
who's grown up to be an equally whiny guy who's found a comfy
living whining at music conferences, and is ultimately a boring,
tiring person who needs to get a real life-and stop whining!

His rant really ticked me off, it is very puerile and boring.

If ya gotta buy the book, buy it used.

The misrepresentation is mainly by omission
David Levin's book _Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang and the Nibelungen_ centers around the allegation that Mime in Wagner's opera _Siegfried_, and Alberich in Fritz Lang's 1920 film _Die Nibelungen_ (both dwarfs), are antisemitic representations.

Levin's arguments for these twin accusations will cause jaw-dropping disbelief in anyone familiar with Wagner's or Lang's work. He writes: "Thus Mime is repeatedly shown to be narrating (a terrible thing in Wagner's eyes and works) while Alberich embodies a version of 'Hollywood' cinema (a terrible thing in Lang's eyes and works)."

Anyone who's seen or heard a Wagner opera knows that far from narration being "a terrible thing in Wagner's eyes", it's a Wagner specialty. All Wagner's important characters are incorrigible narrators, to an extent that's notoriously off-putting for newcomers. (Levin later claims that Mime is unique because he narrates events that haven't previously been represented in dramatic form. Nice try, but so do most of Wagner's other characters, from Senta and the Dutchman to Wotan and Gurnemantz.)

This isn't just a minor error. It's actually Levin's whole argument concerning Wagner: that Wagner's character Mime was a narrator, Wagner hated narrators and thought narration was somehow Jewish, therefore Mime is an antisemitic representation and the _Ring_ is an antisemitic parable.

But if we took Levin's test seriously, all the major Wagnerian characters would be Jewish representations, and Wagner would emerge as the most obsessively philosemitic dramatist in history. (Except that according to Levin's test, everyone in Greek tragedy and Japanese Noh drama is Jewish too.)

Levin's accusation against Fritz Lang is that his _Nibelungen_ film, made in Germany in 1920, was antisemitic in its depiction of the dwarf Alberich. Levin gave two grounds for his claim that Lang's Alberich is an antisemitic representation.

First, Levin said that Lang's biographer Lotte Eisner had claimed that critic Siegfried Kracauer had thought that Lang's depiction of Alberich was antisemitic. Unfortunately for Levin, Kracauer's discussion of Lang's film is in print, and Kracauer made no such allegation. More importantly, Kracauer's opinion would only have weight if Kracauer had actually provided arguments or evidence in support of this reading of Lang's film. So Levin's first piece of supporting evidence is unsubstantiated hearsay; that one critic, Kracauer, may or may not have thought Lang's Alberich was a Jewish caricature, but provided no arguments in support of that interpretation, which he probably did not support.

Well, you can't get much more convincing than that!

And Levin doesn't. His other argument is that Alberich took Siegfried into an underground cave and shone an image on the wall: the Nibelungs mining for gold. Levin argued, essentially, that projecting images on a wall (a symbol of filmmaking) is somehow a Jewish thing to do. Therefore Lang's Alberich is an antisemitic Jewish caricature.

Obviously that's not much of an argument, expressed so baldly. So Levin expressed it hairily. Delving into the works of Freud, Klein, Lacan, etc, he engaged in a great deal of oracular pronouncing and general arm-waving. It's probably fair to describe Freudianism as a dead religion now the Freud Wars are over, and Levin did his case little good by tying so much of it to the Freudian tradition.

But against Levin's psychoanalytic flights of fancy there's just one awkward fact. It's that Fritz Lang was of Jewish descent, and he fled Nazi Germany to America (to Hollywood) partly because of politics and partly because of his Jewish ancestry.

How did Levin deal with that awkward fact? The same way he dealt with the awkward fact that _everybody_ in Wagner is a narrator, not just Mime. Levin simply didn't mention it. But at one point he cited a biography of Fritz Lang, so he can't credibly claim ignorance of the awkward fact.

An intellectually honest academic has to mention facts that hurt their thesis, and argue around them. A book that simply buries awkward facts, presumably in the hope that the readers won't know better, is not an intellectually honest book.

Levin does a lot of omitting awkward facts. For example Levin tells us that when Wagner's Siegfried (_Siegfried_ Act II) killed Mime it was because Mime was sort of Jewish; Siegfried heard Mime narrating, and realised that narrators are aliens who should be killed. Next stop, Levin suggests, is the Holocaust.

But Levin can only argue this by omitting the actual content of Mime's speech. Mime was telling Siegfried, inadvertently but truthfully, that he intended to drug Siegfried unconscious and then decapitate him. Thus Siegfried could not risk sleeping, if he wanted to wake up again. In a forest, unattended by a police service with the resources to apprehend murderous stalkers, Siegfried killed Mime in self-defence: not because Mime was a narrator, but because Mime would kill him the next time he fell asleep. (By the way Mime's threat to Siegfried was not even narration. It was exposition. Since "narration" is such a central concept in Levin's book, he should at least know what "narration" means.)

Here, as with his claims about narration in Wagner, and whether Fritz Lang is likely to have made antisemitic movies, Levin used the technique known as "misrepresentation by omission". He also applied this technique in his discussion of Wagner's prose. But although I'd meant to discuss such things as Levin's claim that Siegfried burnt down the world ash tree in order to forge Nothung (a false claim that suggests that Levin may not have actually read the _Ring_ libretto), and many other things, I'm close to the word limit.

Basically this book is nonsense. Wagner students are used to this sort of thing; Wagner brings out this sort of tin-foil-hatted lunacy in some academics. But admirers of Fritz Lang, in the real world a victim rather than a perpetrator of Nazi bigotry, have the right to be a little annoyed by this mildly misleading piece of work.

Cheers!

Laon ... Read more