Teachers College Press has just published a book from the QUASAR Project, intended to help people implement staff development. I've been reading it this week, and it's just about the most useful resource I can imagine in planning on-going staff development to help teachers implement mathematics programs designed around the NCTM standards. (At the high school level, this includes curricula like Core Plus and the Interactive Mathematics Project (IMP). At the Middle school level, this includes programs like Connected Mathematics. At the elementary school level, this includes programs like Investigations in Number, Data, and Space. Many of these curricula have been selected as "exemplary" by the Department of Education.)

The book is called "Implementing Standards-Based Mathematics Instruction: A Casebook for Professional Development". As the title indicates, it contains a number of "cases" for teachers to study and discuss, as they learn to implement high-level mathematics tasks successfully. The strength of the book is that it is organized around QUASAR's "Mathematical Tasks Framework". This framework trains teachers to analyze mathematics tasks as being at any of a number of levels: Doing Mathematics; Procedures With Connections; Procedures Without Connections; Unsystematic Exploration; Nonmathematical Activity.

QUASAR has found that tasks tend to degrade, i.e., they can be designed at a high level ("doing mathematics" or "procedures with connections") but migrate to a "lower" level either when the teacher initially sets up the lesson, or as the lesson procedes (the "implementation" phase). Their data (which I've seen in other studies, not this case-book) demonstrates that student achievement is enhanced when the task is designed, set up, and IMPLEMENTED at a high level. The case-book describes factors that cause a high-level task either to be implemented at a high level, or to degrade. Then, it provides cases (i.e., classroom teaching episodes described in great detail)in which one or the other happens, and helps teachers analyze why. Not only are the cases themselves very useful for learning: the process of analyzing the cases gives teachers the skills they need to analyze their OWN lessons.

I rarely see this book reviewed on juggling sites, where everyone extoles the virtues of books no longer in print. I bought this one on a whim. Turns out it is one of the best juggling books I own. I am a pretty adept, casual 3 ball juggler. So I didn't get too much from the chapters on learnign the 3 ball cascade. However, those same chapters turned my friend an avid anti-juggling maniac into a juggling fiend. The author got past the blocks I never could in teaching her to juggle. (And I have taught more than a two dozen people the 3 ball cascasde.) What intersted me was the chapter on 5 balls (still working on it) and detailed instrucitons on juggling with clubs. I am also working on a 3 ball Mill's Mess.

Definately worth a look see. The pictures are big and bright, the instructions are clear. I liked it.. it never makes it back to the bookshelf in my house... it is always on the coffee table because we are always looking at it for something or another.

PATHWAYS IN JUGGLING will keep you occupied from first, tentative steps in three-ball juggling through more complicated work with diablos and devil sticks. It's appropriate for many different skill levels, from novice to advanced intermediate. After you've mastered all the book's knowledge, you'll be ready to perform impressively before public audiences.

This learning process is made easier by the book's style. It's a very handsome, well-designed volume, whose instructive abilities are greatly enhanced by the use of full-color photographs. In many cases, the imagery is so clear, you don't absolutely need to read the accompanying text to understand how to perform the trick. Even so, each trick is carefully explained, and tips are liberally mixed in to help students overcome common problems.

But for me, one of the best features is simply the book's size. PATHWAYS is a large enough volume to stay flat on a table, so you see the can glance at the photographs while holding your juggling objects. The large format also means the photographs are themselves large and easy to see from a distance. This saves tremendous time, and is certainly one of the strongest reasons I pull this volume before others when I want to practice.

What's in this volume? You get six major sections, covering something on the order of 50 distinct tricks. First is an introduction to juggling three balls, followed by variations on three-ball juggling, club juggling, juggling more than three items, stealing and passing, and, finally, using devil sticks and diablos. The how-to sections are followed by the weakest part of the book: an all-too-brief discussion of equipment and a two-page section on performing in public.

These last sections are almost wholly inadequate, in my view. Though the equipment section does introduce you to the basic tools of the trade, it does nothing to tell you how to get that equipment. While it may have been that the authors were trying to avoid appearing to endorse particular sales outlets, or maybe that they thought that listing specific addresses might have "dated" the book, their lack of specificity is truly woeful. Juggling outlets are not uniformly placed throughout the world, and some ideas of where to go for supplies would've been extremely helpful. Likewise, the equally scant section on performing doesn't go a long way to explaining how to put together an act. As far as it goes, it's a good enough essay, but it, too, is hardly explicit. In future editions, the authors would be well-served by including at least a "further reading/viewing" section to direct their students to examples of fine performance, so as to show ways that individual skills might be put together into a coherent whole.

These two flaws aside, however, PATHWAYS IN JUGGLING is a highly recommendable work. If you have any aspiration of becoming a competent juggler with a deep repertoire, this is the book you want.

Contained the best explanation of Mill's Mess I've found. Easy to read with lots of color, I liked the pictures. Entertaining and useful.

For any one who is interested in the HSCT, this book gives the brief reviews and up-to-date results of clinical trials concerning all aspects of the HSCT. Most of the reference lists are well chose and collected.

It helps me have correct concepts of clinical indications, limitations, adverse effects of HSCT. As far as I know, this is the one of the latest book dealing with HSCT and it might be difficult finding an alternative to this book.

Not so thick, so easy to handle. Not so deep, so easy to read.

Although this book has several limitations as like, shortage of non-myeloablative HSCT, you will be satified with this book.

Try it. Enjoy it.

1/29/03 After scanning through the many pages of illustrations and photographs and portraits of the Harleston family ,I found the book even more intriguing by going to the 'Notes'(pgs 353-371) and the Index(Pgs 375-384) and follwing through on the events in the lives of certain of the Harlestons(e.g.):Eloise"Ella" Harleston and Edwin A."Teddy" Harleston.

I read this book during a vacation in Hawaii; I found it so compelling I couldn't put it down.

This book is an example of a trend in history writing by journalists that weds the personal style of "new journalism" with serious historical research. The book is both a "personal" account of the Ball family ownership of slaves and a well-researched and thoughtful history of slavery in the United States.

Some readers have commented that the book was difficult to read; I thought the writing was elegant and easy to follow - much easier to digest than academic writing. Some readers have felt the book was superficial or self-indulgent on the part of the writer. I didn't find it to be either - the winding of the story made sense and like a good plot led naturally from one part to the next. The research underneath the story was thorough, and the analysis was thoughtful.

This book is a moving and emotionallly powerful exploration and confrontation by one South Carolina-born writer with the moral consequences of the actions of his slave-owning and -selling ancestors. "Slaves in the Family" recounts Edward Ball's painstaking research into the history of his family, the first of whom settled near Charlestion at the end of the 17th century. He learns that his ancestors not only owned slaves,but that 2 family branches were large-scale slave traders, importing human beings directly from West Africa, He searches out descendants of slaves who lived on Ball family plantations, preparing careful geneologies and scrupulously identifying and acknowledging black families as descended from his own white ancestors as well as slave women on the plantations. This is the source of the title; he and these black people are members of the same family.

Ball goes further than any other work I have seen in following the historic trail all the way to Sierra Leone, searching not only for descendants of some freed Ball family slaves who settled there, but for African families whose ancestors were sellers of other Africans. Ball's reports of his meetings with these African families are some of the most moving passages in the book. He is not the only person who must struggle to acknowledge evil done by family members in the past. I highly recommend reading this book,especiallly for white folks,as a major contribution to the attempt to reconcile and heal the scars of Americans' shared racial tragedy.

Cheryl B

This is one of the most interesting and challenging books I have read in a very long time. Kudos to Mr. Ball for undertaking and executing such an endeavor, and for doing it so well.

Edward Ball is a decendant of one of the largest plantation and slave owing families in South Carolina. The book details the arrival of the very first Balls from England and Ireland to the New World and ends with their modern day progeny. In addition to these people's lives he tries to trace the linage of the people they owned as slaves to their their modern day decendants meeting cousins and other family relations along the way. Tracing the slaves' relatives is more difficult since theirs is more of an oral than a written history, but with the meager details he had to go on, Mr.Ball has done a wonderful job.

More than just filling out a family tree (of which there are several highly detailed ones in the back of the book) this book gives insights into the slave trade, daily plantation life and life after Reconstruction. The amount of research that had to have gone into this work is awesome. There are hundreds of dates, names and places which other reviewers have mentioned as being tedious or hard to follow. Considering the sheer numbers of people and the great expanse of time he dealt with, I do not think it could have been done any better.

This book is a wealth of information; anyone who picks it up could benefit from the information found in its pages. While a bit lengthy, Slaves in the Family would make great companion reading for an American History class. I look forward to reading Mr. Ball's newest work and hope that at some point in the future he traces back his mother's family history as they too were plantation owners.

As a genealogist researching my ancestors from South Carolina I felt compelled to read this book. It was fascinating, although I had read Slaves in the Family, I felt like this was a continuation not to be missed. I felt deeply for the members of the Hairston family. It was sad see how Kate lost her inheritance which she deserved. All of the other slights the family is dealt but still some how the family went on. Its an important aspect of American history which you don't always see.

I was dazzled once again by the depth and scope of effort and research put into a book by Edward Ball. I was such a big fan of his first book, Slaves In the Family, I was doubtful he could equal his own work. What a nice to surprise to find that as good as Slaves In the Family was, The Sweet Hell Inside was even better.

The book follows generations of the Harleston family of South Carolina from the early 1800s to the present. Harleston was a white ancestor of the author who took a black common law wife with whom he had five children. Being of mixed blood the Harleston family lived a separate, more priviledged life than other black South Carolina residents, but one that was also very separate from the white residents. The family history is fascinating with members working in various performing and visual arts, participating in the Harlem Reniassiance, and educating some children who would grow up to be pioneers in jazz music. Its astounding that one family could have had such an influence in so many areas and that they have the documentation to prove it. Much of the documentation and oral history come from Edwina Harleston Whitlock a direct descendant of white Mr. Harleston and his former slave/wife Katie. The compilation of material provided from Ms. Whitlock coupled with Ball's narrative talent make this a must read.

I found "The Sweet Hell Inside" to be an illuminating, informative read! Being an African-American especially interested in the black/white dynamics of American history, I found Edward Ball's story of the Harlestons of South Carolina hard to put down!

The in-depth story of how the black Harleston family began, prospered, endured, and survived;the digressions Ball made re African-American parts in jazz, art, the funeral-home industry;the "Harlem Renaissance";and the very human traits of all the various characters, combined to make "The Sweet Hell Inside" a voyage of discovery and enlightenment for me. I think most other readers will find it likewise! This book is a treasure-trove of family, racial, and American history.

I especially liked this book because the author allowed the characters to "speak" through their papers, records, and other memorabilia, and via his sixth cousin,Edwina Harleston Whitlock!

Instead of "The Life of Lucille Ball" perhaps a better subtitle would be "Some Things about Lucille Ball". If you're looking for an in-depth bio on her, this is not it. However "Forever Lucy" would make a fine second book to read about Lucy, to fill in some cracks others have left room for.

The book reads fast and does hold your interest. In most areas there is simply not enough detail. Perhaps this was intentional. But when we get to the part of Desi's death, we do expect more than a small paragraph stating that "in recent years his health had deteriorated rapidly".

The many interviews given by Lucy & Desi over the years the authors use may make this an important resource material for Lucy researchers/fans if those sources are not readily available elsewhere. The authors do go into more detail than is usually done on the accusation in the '50s of Lucy's supposed communist activities. Also the business side of Lucy when she took over as head of Desilu are more detailed than other books on her.

Read it? Yes. But make it second on your Lucy bio list.

It started in her early years and took you straight through to her death in 1986. Around 200 to 250 pages. It explained a lot of things that I had been wondering about AFTER "I Love Lucy". It talked about her kids a lot too. It explained in deep detail about her kids' trials and tribulations while managing at the same time to link everything to Lucille Ball and continue talking about her life. A must buy for all Lucille Ball fans.

I have read many books on Lucille Ball. She is my idol and I love her with all my heart.This book is so good. It's very informative. It covers her life from her birth to her death in 1989, not 1986, as another reviewer put it. Someone said it didn't give much detail, which is not true at all. The end moved me to tears. Not just water in my eyes tears; real tears running down my face. I sobbed like a little baby. It doesn't go into specifics of Lucy and Desi's deaths. It tells how they died, but it leaves it at that,and in a way that's good.Lucy believed in privacy, as you can tell from her autobiography. This book is not an expose on the tabloid marraige of Lucille and Desi. If all you're looking for is gossip, then this is not for you. If you want an entertaining, informative outlook on the life of Lucille Ball, and I guess Desi Arnaz, then read this book. It's a real page turner. You won't want to put it down.

The plot of this historical mystery lurches from one improbable point to the next: Confederate women in drag, badly characterized famous people from Lincoln to Rose Greenhow to Oliver Wendell Holmes, and dei ex machinae up the wazoo. Timing and pace here are severely flawed, leaving the reader wondering what just happened and why it matters. The "who did it", when we find it out, is too obvious. Yet characters' behavior and motivations, throughout, are not well founded. The essential theme, that of the Southern Unionist (described by the author as "neutral", inexplicably) who works as a secret agent for the North and whose loyalties are torn, is an interesting one, but it's not enough to keep this rusty ironclad afloat.

Harry Raines is finding life in Washington during the Civil War difficult. A Southerner opposed to slavery, he tries to stay as neutral as possible, even with his new job in the Secret Service. But trouble seems to find him. Someone's shooting at him on the street. Then he's assigned to guard Colonel Edward Baker, one of President Lincoln's best friends. This is a nearly impossible task in the midst of battle, but when the Colonel is killed in cold blood, Harry finds himself accused of the crime. Escaping from jail, he must stay one step ahead of his former co-workers to clear his name.

This novel, like its predecessor, provides a fascinating look at life during the Civil War. Real people are liberally sprinkled throughout, and I greatly enjoyed meeting their fictitious personas. I especially like the way Lincoln is portrayed in his few appearances. The fictitious characters are interesting as well. The plot itself seems to loose its way at times, but all the pieces to come together for a climax that includes some interesting twists.

With the characters being agents and counter-agents, the book takes on the feel of a spy novel at times. Yet, the plot includes enough interesting twists to make it a good mystery as well. Anyone interested in this time period will greatly enjoy this series.

In 1861, the initial encounter of the Civil War is fired at Fort Sumter and the South wins the first real encounter at Manassas. Harrison Raines, son of a Virginia plantation landholder who owns slaves, broke with his family and now resides in the federally controlled Washington DC. Area. In order to prove his loyalty to the northern cause and his anathema towards slavery, Harry allows Pinkerton to induct him as a captain in the newly formed Secret Service.

Few know what Harry does for a living as he acts as if he is a southern sympathizer. When he is almost killed, Harry retreats to his horse farm to wait safely for further instructions, which comes from his friend Templeton Saylor. Harry must go to Ball's Bluff to guard Colonel Baker, who dies anyway in the heat of battle. Harry is accused of treason and jailed, but escapes. He knows he is a man without a country neither the Union nor the Confederacy wanting him unless he can prove his innocence or guilt.

Although this novel is labeled a "Harrison Raines Civil War Mystery," the tale is really more a spy thriller than a who-done-it, though detective elements are in the tale. The plot contains agents, double agents, traitors, and an assortment of support cast abetting the spies. Actions run the gamut with dishonor not uncommon. Michael Kilian's novel contain some of the most fascinating war drama scenes, vividly and authentically described so that the audience can picture Spielberg saving Harry Raines.

Harriet Klausner

Great for nature educators in California. Short, consise and nice graphics.

I picked this up wondering what the number of the beast of the apocalypse was. I was suprised to learn that indeed, as Iron Maiden said so many years ago, 666 is the number of the beast. Who'da thunk?