Children's Voices From The Trail: Narratives Of The Platte River Road by Rosemary Gudmundson Palmer is an astute collection and interpretation of primary sources, especially letters and journals, of young people who set forth with their parents upon the pioneer trails west and who wrote about their lives. Offering eye-opening insight into what it was really like to grow up in the 1800's frontier, beset by both natural and human enemies, Children's Voices From The Trail is a superb contribution to academic American History Studies reference collections and highly recommended for the non-specialist reader with an interest in the real life conditions of growing up in the American West.

Excellent, accurate book! Impacting and life changing look at China and the work of God.

CHINESE CIVILIZATION AND BUREAUCRACY : Variations on a Theme. By Etienne Balazs. Translated by H. M. Wright. Edited by Arthur F. Wright. 309 pp. New Haven and London : Yale University Press, Sixth Printing 1972 (1964). ISBN 0-300-00013-8 (pbk.)

Arthur F. Wright, in his informative Introduction to this extremely interesting collection of Essays by the Hungarian sinologist Etienne Balazs (1905-1963), tells us that at the time of his death Balazs was a figure of major importance in the international community of Chinese scholars.

Balazs was a very special kind of scholar. His study of the economic history of the T'ang Period (+ 618-906) "remains an astonishing achievement - the Pioneer Western work on Chinese economic history written before this field had begun to be developed by Chinese and Japanese scholars," while the essays collected in the present volume remain essential reading for any student of China.

These essays explore major themes in Chinese history : the role of the scholar official class; the structure of Chinese institutions as they were shaped by these elite bureaucrats and modified as circumstances changed; the distinctive character of Chinese commercial and industrial life; the varieties of protest and dissent, etc. But because Balazs saw the Chinese past, not as mere object of scholarly curiosity, but as "a repository of relevant human experience," his essays have a great deal to teach all of us.

Balazs had seen something that very few wish to see - the staggering importance to us of the longest continuous living civilization on the planet, wealthy with an abundance of cultural treasures, and creator of the most successful and long-lasting bureaucracy in history. We are told that he hoped the isolation of Chinese studies would end, and that "knowledge of the Chinese experience would become accepted as NECESSARY FOR ALL TYPES OF SCHOLARLY INQUIRY" (p.xiii, my capitals).

This is a striking notion, but the rightness of Balazs' position will be blindingly obvious to those who, while knowledgeable about China, have peered into the mist in which Western thought gropes and staggers about in its Cartesian confusion. Few, however, will be prepared to accept, let alone act, on Balazs' premise.

The shift that Balazs wished for could only come about "if Chinese studies became more vigorous, more creative, and more attuned to the major intellectual concerns of the modern world" (p.xiii). Sadly, from his Sorbonne Chair for the economy and society of ancient China, he saw no sign of this happening, and he was highly critical of the preference of sinology for trivial pursuits - "its lack of concern for basic problems of social and cultural history, its penchant for marginalia, which he described as "disquisitions on philological trifles, expensive trips in abstruse provinces, bickering about the restitutions of the names of unknown persons," and the trendy and "immoderate use of academic highbrow jargon"" (p.xiii).

Anyone familiar with Chinese studies will realize the truth of what Balazs was saying, and to his list might be added sinology's current obsession with the restitution of mere puffs of air - long-vanished spoken sounds which could never be recovered with certainty, but whose treatment can be made to look impressively 'scientific' - and its related campaign to devalue the imperishable bronze-cast and stone-cut forms of the Chinese written character.

Sadly, though perhaps predictably, no-one was listening, and academics of all stripes continue to merrily dance their way into an ever-deeper obscurity and irrelevance, concerned only with the approval of a small clique of fellow specialists, while contributing to the society that pays their salaries an ever-increasing flood of superfluous knowledge, and an ever-dwindling quota of truth.

Balazs contribution is very, very different, has a far higher proportion of what might be called 'real content,' and his essays can be studied with profit by anyone, whether specialist or layman. The collection is made up of sixteen essays, divided into three Parts :

PART I : INSTITUTIONS - 1. Significant Aspects of Chinese Society; 2. China as a Permanently Bureaucratic Society; 3. Chinese Feudalism; 4. The Birth of Capitalism in China; 5. Fairs in China; 6. Chinese Towns; 7. Marco Polo in the Capital of China; 8. Evolution of Landownership in Fourth- and Fifth-Century China; 9. Landownership on China from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century.

PART II : HISTORY - 10. History as a Guide to Bureaucratic Practice; 11. Tradition and Revolution in China.

PART III : THOUGHT - 12. Two Songs by Ts'ao Ts'ao; 13. Political Philosophy and Social Crisis at the End of the Han Dynasty; 14. Nihilistic Thought or Mystical Escapism; 15. The First Chinese Materialist; 16. A Forerunner of Wang An-shih.

Balazs' essays are gems, and have that special ability found only in the very best writing, the ability to provide us with a whole new way of seeing. They create a framework in terms of which much that had little meaning for us before becomes so meaningful as to influence one's whole way of thinking.

One of my favorites is Balazs' 'China as a Permanently Bureaucratic Society,' an essay that helps us, among other things, to see Confucianism and Marxism as, in a sense, twin ideologies, and China's current Communist Party as the traditional Mandarinate decked out in new, and somewhat less attractive, clothes.

But I can't really do justice to Balazs' thought here. My advice would be to get hold of a copy of this book, because it will probably turn out to be one of the most rewarding and valuable books on China that you will ever read. Balazs was one of the last real sinologists, and nothing of this quality is ever likely to happen again.

James Legge was a 19th-century Scottish missionary to China. This is his translation of the "Four Books" and three of the "Five Classics." The translations are dated, and Legge's interpretations of the texts are often old-fashioned, but these are still important and useful translations.

Of the "Five Classics," Legge translates the Book of Documents (a collection of historical texts), the Spring and Autumn Annals (another historical work; Legge also includes his translation of the Tso Commentary on this), and the Book of Odes. (The other two of the five are the Record of Rites and the I Ching, which Legge also translated, but which are not in this collection.) The "Five Classics" have been central texts of Confucianism since about the time of Christ.

The "Four Books" are the Great Learning, the Analects of Confucius, the sayings of the later Confucian Mencius, and the Doctrine of the Mean. These texts are all quite old, but they were grouped together, and made the basis of the Confucian educational curriculum, around the 12th century A.D.

Part of what makes Legge's translations so helpful is that he includes the Chinese text, along with extensive interpretive notes, introductions, and glossaries. This can be a little overwhelming for the beginner, but it's fun to have all the information in one place.

One caution: This set is normally in 5 volumes. I assume that this edition has combined the 1st and 2nd volumes (the "Four Books") into one volume, but it is possible that this edition does not include all that I think it does.

I have not yet finished this book, but the study of Joshua was just amazing. There were so many things I forgot from the childhood stories, plus so much I didn't realize. Learning about the start of the Israelites gaining of the promised land was so much fun. I am not working my way through Judges and enjoying it just as much. Great choice, and I love the IIS method!

This book is a must have for every ACW library. Well researched and easy to read. Facts, dates, and places at your fingertips!

Susanna gets the proposition of a life time. If she will marry powerful, rich Davin Sigmundsen, so that he can get custedy of his nephew. He will make sure she makes it in Hollywood, plus she gets to live like a princess for a few years. She'd be crazy to say Yes! but she wants to. She is very attracted to Davin. She decides to take the risk and marry him and ends up wanting to break the bargin because she is in love with him.

...by far his best and most ambitious book to date and one of the best of last year....Vogelsang has found an interrogating voice at once dissembling and direct -- and by direct I mean free of any rhetorical reference that doesn't lead us immediately to his moment. Much of the time the speaker in these new poems is close to Swiftian in his cagey unreliability....Under the surface of the voice, however, is a kind of moral indignation, a menacing anger that is sometimes self-directed. All in all, Vogelsang has created the rare sound of dark, Juvenalian complaint in a lyric sequence whose satiric target seems to be absurdity itself. The tone, in fact -- and this is a power in the best of the poems -- feels barely contained, the ardent big talk almost too big for the imagination asked to hold it. "Big" also applies to the size of the heart in these poems, their ability to find and/or magnify the emotion suddenly, instantaneously.

"Classic Guitar Making", by Arthur E. Overholtze, is a clearly written guide that teaches how to build a classical guitar. The author's careful descriptions will instill confidence in the beginning guitar builder, and plentiful shop talk will interest luthiers. The author's humble anecdotes entertain and warn one of the construction mistakes he has made. The chapters walk the reader step-by-step through every phase of guitar construction, from the choice of wood to the finished guitar. "Classic Guitar Making" is a wonderful book by a wonderful teacher.

This is a funny book but not in a gentle "cheeful" way. The main character, John, is a bureaucrat and a "flunky" for higher-ups, and he is desperate for any kind of social and professional success. The humor comes from his interactions with all kinds of flakes and hustlers in high education (something I've learned about here at Michigan State University) "Flunky"'s style is high energy--it's stylistically one of the most accomplished novels (e-books or otherwise) that I've enjoyed in a long time.

Pam E. East Lansing, Michigan