The focus of their book is how "advocacy networks", as opposed to the traditional government agencies, effect change. These advocacy networks work alongside and often against governments in often non-traditional methods to achieve a desired result. In the case of timber harvesting, for example, advocacy networks were unsuccessful in persuading governments to alter their poicies so the organizations within that network focused on the consumers of timber. They successfully exposed the objectionable timber harvesting practices of various companies and enabled consumers to exert pressure on timber harvesting companies to change their practices.

I want to thank the author for giving me my travelling jones.

Children and adults all face tragedy and sorrow at some point, and at those times we're left completely to our faith to help us get through. This little book teaches a lesson in love and trust.

I liked this story and feel it would add great value to a child's library. I know, had it been around when I was young, my sweet little Polish Mother would have read it to her children.

When Lacey Cartwright--the publisher's granddaughter--puts her own dynamic career on hold to come help her grandfather run the paper--she is challenged by Seth and her old friend Cassie to look at the "rest of the story," to quote Paul Harvey. What she discovers about the school and the man who keeps it running could change her life forever.

Like "Cop of the Year," this is more than just another romance. It's a reminder that teachers and newspaper reporters touch lives in ways that they may never know about, and they do make a difference. This one also has inspired me to look for more ways to connect with the university students I teach, and to pass on good things I hear about my colleagues to them, so they can keep fighting the good fight another day, week, or year.

Seth is the best kind of sexy man there is--responsible, a good father, and one who cares about the people around him. The testimonial dinner--like the farewell party in "Cop of the Year"--had me in tears. I had to keep reminding myself, "this is fiction." Kathryn Shay is one heck of a writer!

This is a good one to read in December, when the semester is winding down at school and you're burned out with classes and just want to get to the celebrating and relaxing. Enjoy it. . .

Bayview Heights is a small town just outside New York City. Like many small towns today, the townsfolk struggle with teen problems. However, led by the efforts of the high school principal, Seth Taylor, the educators have taken an active role to divert youthful energy into productive endeavors. This has not stopped the local newspaper from a non-stop critical barrage on Seth and his school due to increases teen violence.

The current editor of the Bayview Herald is Lacey Cartwright, who took over from her beloved grandfather when the senior citizen suffered a devastating heart attack. Both Cartwrights have a personal vendetta towards Seth, who they blame for the incarceration of Lacey's younger brother Kevin. After the latest assault on his school, Seth challenges Lacey to come to the high school to observe the full picture. She agrees and is amazed with what she sees. She agrees to partnering with Seth to oversee a student task force. As the duo falls in love with one another and Lacey realizes how biased her editorials have been, her grandfather increases the pressure on her to destroy Seth, which, if accomplished, will kill her in the process

BECAUSE IT'S CHRISTMAS is a super, modern day retelling of the classic "It's a Wonderful Life". The lead protagonists are a charming duo and the support characters add the depth to the two opposing camps. Kathryn Shay's tale is a beautiful Christmas story due to the burned-out Seth, who believes he has had no positive impact on his community until his former students stand up and are counted. Readers who peruse this novel will understand that it is in deed a wonderful life when one reads novels like this one.

Harriet Klausner

This gives you an idea of the information available to us through the good biographer Lindskoog. She does not fail to support herself with endnotes, and one of the 5 appendices gives a calendar of how you could read a Lewis book every month during the year (with suggestions based on the season). I might have to try it myself, though I've already read most of what is suggested. (Nothing wrong with rereading Lewis!) To fully cover a man who authored more than 50 books, Lindskoog has done a wonderful service by writing this book.

Here Mills focuses memorably on the qualities and uses of the sociological perspective in modern life, how such a scientifically based way of looking at, interpreting, and interacting with the larger world invests its user with a better, more accurate, and quite instrumental picture of what is happening meaningfully around him. For Mills, the key to understanding the value in such a perspective is in appreciating that one can only understand the motives, behavior, and actions of others by locating them within a wider and more meaningful context that connects their personal biographies with the large social circumstances that surround, direct, and propel them at any given historical moment. For Mills, for example, trying to understand the reasoning behind the sometimes desperate actions of Jews in Nazi Germany without appreciating the horrifyingly unique existential circumstances they found themselves in is hopelessly anachronistic and limited.

On the other hand, one invested with such an appreciation for how biography and history interact to create the meaningful social circumstances of any situation finds himself better able to understand the fact that when in a country of one hundred million employed, one man's singular lack of employment might be due to his persoanl deficiencies or lack of a work ethic, and be laid at his feet as a personal trouble, it is also true that when twenty million individuals out of that one hundred million figure suddenly find themselves so disposed and unemployed, that situation is due to something beyond the control of those many individuals and is best described in socioeconomic terms as a social problem to be laid at the feet of the government and industry to resolve. To Mills, it is critical to understand the inherant differences between personal troubles on the one hand, which an individual has the responsibity to resolve and overcome, and social ills, which are beyond both his ken or control. Indeed, according to Mills, increasingly in the 20th century one finds himself trapped by social circumstance into dilemmas he is absolutely unable to resolve without significant help from the wider social community.

Thus, for both psychological as well as social reasons, a person using the sociological perspective, or invested with what he called the "sociological imagination", is more able to think and act critically in accordance with the evidence both outside his door and beyond himself. Fifty years later, such a recognition of "what's what" and "who's who" based on the ability to judge the information within the social environment is as valuable as ever. This is a wonderful book, written in a very accessible and entertaining style, meant both for an intellectual audience and for the scholastic community as well. While it may not be for "everyman", any person wanting to better understand and more fully appreciate how individual biography and social history meaningfully interact to create the realities we live in will enjoy and appreciate this legendary sociological critique and invitation to the pleasures of a sociological perspective by one of its most remarkable proponents some half century ago.

The unmarked edits only occurred in the Tovarich letters, those that were written to an imaginary Russian correspondent. Mills "made it clear [to his agent] that he wanted the Tovarich writings to be edited before they were published . . . his marginal comments included these instructions: 'very good, use it,' 'can't use this,' 'cut somewhat.'" And so, unlike for the rest of the letters, the editors "did not mark deletions with ellipses and occasionally changed the location of paragraphs, shortened a heading, or relaced a heading with a phrase that Mills had written in the text. Although we usually left the original references to men, boys, women, and girls in these essays, we occasionally changed 'men' to 'people.'"

In the rest of the letters, the only editorial changes were spelling corrections and occasional deletions (the latter are always marked with brackets).

Informed hobbits have known for quite some time that there have been serious issues of legitimacy and integrity surrounding the writings and literary legacy of CS Lewis, close friend and fellow Inkling of our own great Professor. In this volume, Mrs. Lindskoog traces the history and lineage of Lewis' literary legacy and demonstrates that there has, in all likelyhood, been a great deal of fraud and deceit practiced upon lovers of Lewis by a number of individuals who should have known better.

This hobbit can only hope that Mrs. Lindskoog's book quickly returns to print and is widely read and disseminated among those of our fellows who truly loved Mr. Lewis and respected his legitimate work.

Lindskoog pins down, through incredible academic detective work, what many of us suspected for some time, but were unable to voice or prove, namely, that Lewis's "literary executors" have tried (and in many cases succeeded) in pulling the wool over our eyes!

Lindskoog has demonstrated that many of the quaint little stories about bonfires, lost manuscripts, personal secretaries, etc. have, in many cases, been outright fabrications foisted on an unsuspecting public. It's a shame that in the confusion following Lewis's death, a better executor could not have been found; perhaps, if this had been the case, much trouble would have been averted.

Well, it's all water under the bridge now. The truth is out there, and real Lewis scholars know what it is. Dr. Hooper and his cronies have been thoroughly discredited. Now if only he would quit writing introductions. . .

Predictable results occurred. This person wielded power over publishers who made huge profits from the books. He had the power to say which academics had access to certain Lewis archives and which got permission to quote Lewis. The publishers had to include this person's book introductions in which he rewrote himself in a favorable light into history. Ambitious specialists needed to agree with the claims. One such claim was that this person was Lewis' live in, full time, private secretary for several years. This person also "discovered" many unknown Lewis literary works and revisions of existing works that were significantly lower in literary quality than the original, known Lewis literature and in some cases contained religious and ethical themes that were the exact opposite of Lewis' adamantly held views.

In this book Kathryn Lindskoog does a thorough job of investigative journalism in deflating much of the rewritten history and "new" Lewis works with documentary evidence and eye witness accounts. This book reads much like a Chapman Pincher espionage expose. This book attracted much attention, and further eye witness accounts and leads to more documentary evidence and was followed by a second book, "Light in the Shadow Lands," five years later.