Touring the Backroads covers the entire state (don't be misled by the title). The tours are Northwest Georgia Drive, Native American Tour, North Georgia Mountain Tour, Northeast Georgia Tour, Fort Yargo to Tucker's Ferry, Classic South, Plantation, Middle Georgia Ramble, Georgia Capitals Drive, East Georgia Ramble, Southwest Georgia Ramble, Middle Georgia Farmland, Altamaha River Loop, Wire Grass, and South Georgia.

Our favorites: Georgia Capitals, Georgia Mountains (covers the Georgia Gold Rush), Northwest Georgia (takes you from the Tennessee State line to Rome), and the Southwest Georgia Ramble (highlights the Kolomaki Mounds and Providence Canyon, two underused state parks). The Native American Tour covers the Etowah Indian Mounds, the first capital of the Cherokee Nation at New Echota (now a Georgia State Park) and a wall built by Indians that pre-dated the Moundbuilders.

One of the things I like about this book is that Frank and Victoria don't assume you know esoteric facts about Georgia's history. They take you through the whole story, telling what you need to know to appreciate the stop.

In the 10/7/97 New Yorker, Cynthia Ozick's "Who Owns Anne Frank?" notes that the Anne Frank story has been "bowdlerized, distorted, transmuted, traduced, reduced; ... infantilized, Americanized, homogenized, sentimentalized; falsified, kitchified, and ... arrogantly denied."

This book "Understanding Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl" balances some of the distortions weighing on the Anne Frank industry by presenting sources, settings, and historical documents which should go a long way toward smartening-up the discourse with true facts. It deserves a ten on the Amazon.com scale for content, readability, and responsible creativity.

"Children learn about READING...as long as they read" is not only a hypothesis about what Reading Instruction should be and comprise...but what READING is NOT; therefore, what Reading Instruction should NOT be or emphasize. In a "Word": reading is NOT about amassing or applying battle-arrays of Phonics-based RECODING or word-calling skills. Reading is about extracting MEANING from print.

Meaning: COMPREHENSION of printed text(on paper;or On-line)should focus on what Linguists term DEEP STRUCTURE. Deep Structure is essential knowledge-information bearing constructs presented or implied in texts. These convey Meaning when cognitively processed.Word-Calling or excessive reliance on phonetic-RECODING skills actually impedes or even PREVENTS COMPREHENSION by emphasizing what should be ignored: what a specific word sounds/looks like,rather than what entire passages may or must mean...

Smith's theories propose a READING-Acquisiton mechanism similar to the Oral-language speaking/comprehension mechanism asserted by M.I.T. Prof Noam Chomsky. Children learn to speak because this faculty is TRIGGERED by "speech activities". This comprises the speech environment learners are exposed to: Parents;teachers;or the god-awful, electronic TV baby-sitter...TALKING. Similarly, children LEARN to READ BY READING.((Not by watching TV; listening to CD's; playing videos OR learning Decoding/Recoding PHONICS-"translation" rules divorced from effectuating Meaning contexts.))

Frank Smith is supported by vast, reliable research. Experts like Paul McKee, founder of the prestigious Houghton-Mifflin basal series; and Kenneth Goodman; whose work in so-called "Miscue Analysis" consistently demonstrates effective readers rely on(Word-BY-Word)Surface Structures--individual words,sentences, and even(redundant)paragraphs--as little as possible, convincingly assert the tenability of MEANING STRATEGY-READING ACTIVITY over "Hooked-On" Gimmicks, Dialect Readers or weekly visits to tutoring agencies to "do" worksheets (rather than READING).

This is the FOURTH EDITION of this justly reputed book. It's more important today because non-professionals determined to HOME SCHOOL need background to structure instruction and measure effectiveness.Mothers...or fathers if PC police are ready to pounce here...need to go back to reading to their children. Pre-reading/language readiness is SINE QUA NON, an absolute necessity!)

UNDERSTANDING READING:A Psycholinguistic Analysis etc...is also vital to new educators about to be exposed to a "Nuclear-strike" agenda of National Testing.The focus of this enterprise will and must be READING.Ultimately gimmicks will not work. Parents and teachers must face a fact: TO READ or NOT TO READ?is more than an "educational" question. Immense economic-political implications, perhaps viability of American democracy itself, loom in how this QUESTION is regarded. Frank Smith's book offers worthy, practical answers on what Reading is and promoting TEACHING-LEARNING of what educational historian Nila Banton Smith believed when she stated: "READING was the most important subject in our early American schools and it has continued to be the most important subject all through the years of our national growth(N.B. Smith, 1965--not related to Frank)." UNDERSTANDING READING is a 10-star book..........

A throughly enjoyable book.

1. How to apply solid valuation theory. Provides the best treatment of many valuation issues that I have seen. This set of benefits goes far beyond M&A valuation settings.
2. How to value "synergy," which is often discussed but rarely measured accurately.
3. How to avoid mistakes commonly made by buyers, sellers, and valuation analysts.
4. How to value start-up companies, including high-tech ones.
5. How to create and measure value in private companies.

And...the authors communicate their insights and methods very clearly. Most readers will find this book one of the best investments they have made.

Superb teaching, done with love and authority perfectly blended, the book is invaluable to all who've been called to leadership in the Church.

It's not all high praises; it is carefully balanced and clearly voices a clarion warning of the pitfalls of leadership as well as what to watch for in those who purport to be called to ministry but are false teachers (he takes the reader into the book of Jude and gives a clear picture of what to look for).

This book veritably jumped off the shelf at me, and its one of my treasured tomes. I pull it out on occasion to be reminded afresh of the Lord's call for a vanguard of leadership to take His Church forward in victory. Buy a copy for yourself and get one for your church library and/or your pastor/priest. Excellent buy, you'll not regret getting it.

The following text is from the back jacket of the book:

World War II changed everything. For a kid growing up in Kitsap County (Washington) it meant living at the focal point of the war. It was to Puget Sound Navy Yard that the ghosts of Pearl Harbor returned for repair and renovation. It was a time of astonishing unity and common purpose. For Frank Wetzel and his contemporaries, these years were formative. Look back with them as they recall . . . . Victory Gardens and Barrage Balloons. A history of Bremerton and Kitsap County during World War II.

Frank Wetzel was born in Bremerton, Washington in 1926, the grandson of Kitsap County pioneers. He graduated from Bremerton High in 1944 and the University of Washington in 1950. He was an infantryman in Europe in World War II and an infantry officer in the Korean War.

He worked as a newsman and executive for the Associated Press in Salt Lake City, Denver, and Portland, OR. He was editor of the Journal-American in Bellevue, Washington from 1977-1986 and was the ombudsman of the Seattle Times from 1987 to 1990. This is his first book.