The Transformation Of The Southeastern Indians 1540-1760 edited by Robbie Ethridge (Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Southern Studies, University of Mississippi) and Charles Hudson (Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History, University of Georgia) is an impressive and wide-ranging selection of contemporary essays presenting and showcasing the latest discoveries and interpretations of how the Native Americans of the Southeast once lived, and their interactions with settlers prior to the establishment of The United States of America. A scholarly, seminal text featuring work by a diverse collection of learned authors, The Transformation Of The Southeastern Indians 1540-1760 is a welcome and strongly recommended addition to Native American Studies supplemental reading lists and academic reference collections.

Into the Woods...How can you forget the name and all of its characters if you've seen it before, and if you have not, then it includes such timeless fairy tale names as: Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack (of Beanstalk fame), Little Red Riding Hood, and many others. James Lapine's brilliant script and Stephen Sondheim's astounding score are all in this book! Don't miss out on reading this fantastic book with your kids or for pleasure! This book is great for pleasure reading or if you are looking for an amazing musical to put on. Once you start reading this book, you won't be able to put it down! And if you liked the book...you won't hesitate to buy the video of the original Broadway cast and the CD or cassette! Having all 3 mentioned items and watching, listening, and reading over and over still isn't enough! You will love it too.

This is a wonderful play to introduce students to music, theater, Sondheim, and fairy tales. In my class we read many of the original Grimm Fairy Tales (Dover Ed.) and the Perrault Fairy Tales (Dover) discussing the tales, but also color symbolism, different forms of magic, totems, threshold creatures, etc. Pretty heady stuff for sixth graders, but they LOVE it! Finally we read this wonderful interconnection of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, Baker and His Wife, Little Red Riding Hood, and more while they are on a quest tale to get things to undo spells. Everyone takes parts and it is AWESOME!! The book is certainly not just for kids, there are very dark themes underlying all of the "fun". These can be discussed and its great to see kids find more to a story than its literal meaning. The VHS tape is then shown, which can be ordered here. This is a taping of the Broadway stage production and is mesmerising. Students think it's awesome. (I do suggest previewing, though. The wolf certainly is "untamed nature" and his coat stops just above what probably should be hidden in a mixed group of sixth graders. :) We just fast forward those three minutes.) This is a great unit. If you would like more info, please contact me via e-mail. This is wonderful stuff, though certainly not Disney!!

This book is great to have before seeing the show or listening to the soundtrack... you'll completely understand what's happening in the story. I should also say, just in general.... Into the Woods is back on Broadway now, and I just saw it yesterday on its opening day with front row seats in the orchestra. I was worried the new production might not surpass the original, and that I would be disappointed since I love love Bernadette Peters and all... but it really blew my mind! The set and costumes were so much more appropriate, more fairytale-esque. There were lyric and staging changes, a little more dancing around, and Milky-White was alive this time which made her like another character. The musical has a lot of catchy tunes but also a good storyline, and though there is a lot of symbolism that if seen literally might not be appropriate for kids, they usually are too young to notice or understand it at all. So anyone can see it, and everyone finds it funny, everyone likes it. And the current production is better than you could have dreamed.

This book is BASIC in its context...don't expect any major revelations except, of course, if you haven't read anything about the Native Americans of the Southwest. It is beatuifully illustrated with some color photos, many excellent charts & maps, and many many turn of the century photgraphs of the area. I live in Phoenix so many of the places are familiar to me. It is amazing to see a freeway going over a Hohokam ballcourt or to note that many of the canals in use TODAY in Phoenix began as Hohokam irrigation canals. All in all, a nice book. The publishers could have cut costs a little, though, if they had used regular paper instead of the heavy glossy paper, but the photos look so great on the heavier paper it is worth the price.

I enjoyed this volume because I lived briefly in Arizona and saw some of the ruins (Montezuma Castle and Tuzigoot National Monument) mentioned. I had read a book on Monte Verde as a child but other than this modest brush with SW archaeology, I knew little or nothing about the prehistory of the area. This volume was a good place to start for information about the material data available and the way it has been assembled to create a clearer picture of the settlement of Native Americans across this part of the continent. I found particularly interesting the notion careful custodianship of available resources of an entire area allowed a fairly large population to thrive without agriculture. The author also points out clearly that even at the stage of nomadic existance, when little material evidence is available, the cultural differences attendant upon a lifestyle of wide range migration following animals as opposed to intensive plant use within smaller areas are still distinguishable and can be seen in material remains--or relative lack thereof--over a region under study. Of interest too was the concept that farming, far from being the panacea for mankind it is often seen as being in the modern world, was actually a double edged sword. It encouraged increased population density--with an increase in food and fewer problems for sedentary mothers raising children and an increased demand for labor creating population pressures for which a natural environment would not be able to provide in emergencies--which left the farming peoples much more vulnerable to weather changes and episodes of famine. Schooled as I had been in 1960s and 70s anthropological concepts of "better life through agriculture," it was a novel notion that the hunter-gatherer forbears of early farmers had actually been better nourished and that their mobility and understanding of a larger range of countryside actually had left them less vulnerable to environmental mishaps than agrarian people. The volume also does an excellant job of describing some of the better known and publicized settled cultures of the SW, such as the Hohokam and Anasazi with which I was somewhat familiar having lived in the Phoenix area, and the less well known Mogollon and Mimbres (known more for their lovely pottery) cultures. The book is well illustrated with maps, drawings and photographs that will help give the reader a fuller understanding of the written information. It also sticks to the interpretation of the data described rather than going into elaborate detail regarding actual excavation in the region, which would probably lose the average reader on the subject. I found the book very informative on the subject, and wish I'd had it to read before I lived in the area. I would probably have gotten more out of my stay.

Hudson is a wonderful writer, and this is a first hand account of his childhood in gaucho land, with invaluable glimpses of Buenos Aires at the setting of Rosas dictatorship and after.

We badly need to have this book once more available. Full of insights into the meaning of human life in nature, it also chronicles the passing of a virgin landscape in S.America with the coming of a predatory civilization. Hudson came of age with little schooling but endless hours of observing life (especially birds) and reading. His friends in England, where he went in his 30s, often wondered why he was habitually sad. This profound reminiscence explains why.

"When I hear people say they have not found the world and life so agreeable or interesting as to be in love with it...I am apt to think they have never been properly alive nor seen with clear vision the world they think so meanly of...".

The author says it all. I picked up this book in a little Gloucester bookshop a few years ago, but I've finally just had a chance to read it in its entirety. What a Joy! It reminded me that the stresses and travails we encounter in our daily lives are so trivial at best, compared to the world we pass by everyday. The author's recollection of his boyhood on the Argentinian pampas and his adventures with snakes and birds and vizcachas made his words come alive, and I felt I was there with him. A treasure and one I would read to kids who have the gift of spirit in them, and to remind them that all of what he wrote is disappearing.

This is not a "self help" book or an easy reading book, but it is very good. It is extremely detailed and reads more like a textbook. As a professional who works with child abuse victims and perpetrators, I found this book to be very helpful in understanding the dynamics of juvenile sex offenders - a rapidly growing problem in our community.

Why is the Red Badge of Courage so hard to read until about the middle of the book? I think it's because Crane throws us into the world of fear in the first half - fear, cowardice, panic, the confusion and disorganization of war. We're not used to being treated like this, either by books or the real world. I can identify with Crane because the first half of my life was like that. It's OK to be afraid. You can even start reading from the middle and eventually go backwards if it's frustrating. As for life, at some point in life, if you really keep trying, fear gets tiresome and repetitive. You begin to despise yourself as a coward, and you only see images of cowardice around you. The uselessness of following the crowd and some of the fairy tales you learned hit you like a brick. You see too much destruction, whether in hot wars or cold wars, industry or the academic world. One day, when you have nothing left to lose, you try a new strategy called courage. You might feel a lot of anger when doing it, but you have to eventually learn to act out of calmness and yes, even love. You fight back because of the things and people you've lost. You become a Veteran, whether in war or in peace with illness like Crane himself. You learn that there are things more important than your own life. Then you're like Audie Murphy, Mahatma Gandhi, Stephen Crane, Galileo Galilei, Saint Thomas More. And the strangest thing of all is that they're right. There are things more important than your own life. One of them is called Courage.

I have been thinking about what it would be like to be fighting in a war; leaving home, family, and friends. The amount of physical and mental strain on your body would be unimaginable. The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, is a book written during the Civil War. Crane presents the meaning of courage through the eyes of a young soldier, Henry Fleming.

Henry Fleming expressed several emotions throughout the book, which correlated to many of the things I would feel. In the beginning he wanted to join the army, but his mother wouldn't allow him. He finally disobeyed her and enlisted. I'm sure my mom would not want me to go either, however if I felt strongly for the cause, I would also leave.

Crane presented the psychological aspects of war to his readers with precise detail and clarity. Before being sent into battle for the first time, most people would wonder if they had enough courage to fight. Henry Fleming constantly struggled with this idea. My favorite part of the book was when Henry threw a pinecone at a squirrel to see if it would take the hit, or run away. After the squirrel ran from the pinecone, he felt justified for running away from the battle.

Although the Civil War was the bloodiest battle in American history, Crane presented the mental struggles more than the physical ones. The Red Badge of Courage expressed many different emotions such as pride, honor, and courage. I strongly recommend this book because of its vivid depiction of the American Civil War. Every young adult should read this book, so they have a better understanding of war.

The Red Badge of Courage by stephen Crane is one of the most spectacular books that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Throughout my life I have een completely anti-war. I didn't want war, I didn't want to read about it,...nothing. Over the summer I took the time to read Red Badge which was suggested to me by a few friends. I was blown away. Never have I received such a compelling impact from a book as from that novel. (I even cried with the characters.) The imagery that Crane creates is absolutely moving. You are not only put in the middle of the Civil Wat, but you become a part of the Union Army, fighting fot the unity of your country. A belief that you would die for. You will feel the anticipation of a soldier right before a battle, as well as the terriffying moral dilema of whether or not you should run away once being fired upon. Crane's characters, although having no direct names, pull you into their lives through their strong diolouge. He who reads this novel will learn so much about themselves, and human nature through just two pages of the wounded man's speech to Henry Fleming, the main character. Who knew that the simple imagery of a wound as a "Red Badge of Courage," would be able to move so many people? the Red Badge of Courge is simply a masterpiece. A book that will forever be capable of sharing the horror's of war to generations far into the future. I strongly recommend that you open your curiosity, heart, and mind, and read the Red Badge of Courage.