Spider Spins a Story connects Native American tribes together with 14 various tales, all involving a spider. Preceding each legend is a brief history and description of the tribe associated with each story. Muskogee, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Hopi, Cherokee, Navajo, and Osage tribes, as well as others, are mentioned in the book.

Full of colorful, gorgeous illustrations by 6 Native American artists, the book is also endorsed by tribal authorities.
It appeals to both children and adults with its wonderful storytelling of Native American customs and lore. It is also a great reference to the past history and beliefs of Native American life.

The brilliant colors used in the illustrations are particularly appealing and remind the reader of fine Native American art. The Gilcrease Museum, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was an excellent choice for the detailed research needed to write this spectacular book. Spider Spins a Story is a perfect gift for all ages.

I used this book in statistics classes while working on a BS in accounting. This is a very good textbook. My instructors also compiled their own notes for the students which complemented the book perfectly. Many real-life and thought provoking examples in this book.

Sumner-Gearing Class Destroyers by Robert Sumrall

Try: www.batsford.co.uk/brassey/maritime [search] Title = Sumner Seems to still be available

This is a complete review of almost all syndromes affecting the face, with complete information about the most important conditions and very good references until june 2001. Congratulations to the authors for their great effort to put together a lot of information very useful to phisicians, dentists and many other specialists.

Compiled and edited by Harry Thomas, Talking With Poets comprises unique selection of interviews with five very different, but highly notable poets: Robert Pinsky, Seamus Heaney, Philip Levine, Michael Hofmann, and David Ferry. A deep and moving examination into lives, motivations, and how life experiences flow into written words on the page, Talking With Poets is an enthusiastically recommended look into what goes into the making of elegant and expressive verse, and of these five men who are particularly gifted in such creations.

I'm anxious to see this new animated '90s Tarzan on the big screen. You gotta have this book if you own the soundtrack. I'm immediately buying it when it comes out.

The Educational Testing Service and other institutions have for over 50 years done important research in testing methods,designs and analyses for a variety of purposes including (1) determining eligibility for university enrollment (2) competency for specific jobs and (3) trend information for public policy. Many of the advances have been described in the psychometric literature and the techniques described in this book are used to compare scores on different tests such as SAT tests taken at different times.

On an elementary level most university professors have done a form of test equating with their own exams since the appropriate difficulty is sometimes hard to gauge. So-called curving a test is a form of adjusting scores by transforming to the standard normal curve.

Unfortunately there are many better techniques that have been ignored and many psychometricians are not properly trained. These authors are among teh leaders in the field and have taught test equating. They found a need for a book of this type and they filled it.

Many prominent statisticians have contributed to this research including Paul Holland, Don Rubin and Henry Braun. Much of this work was done by statisticians during their tenure at ETS and research continues at the ETS and at academic institutions.

The authors provide a thorough treatment of the methods and the literature. This is good for a graduate level course, for a reference guide for practitioners and researchers in test equating.

One important aspect of the problem is estimating the standard error of the test equating estimates. The delta method and parametric and nonparametric bootstrap methods are all described.

An entire chapter is devote to item response theory and its application to test equating. The final chapter provides a very practical discussion of issues in the implementation of test equating methods and includes discussion of the choice of statistical procedures, determining the sample size, data collection, test specification and design, quality control and calibration.

Why doesn't anybody know about this book? Why has it been out of print for over 20 years? Why do the few people I know who own this book cherish it like they do? Unfortunately, Therapeia has been the best-kept secret in Plato studies. My professor was so delighted to see this book back in print, that he immediately planned a seminar focused entirely on Cushman's interpretation of Plato's philosophy. Cushman is someone who not only has thought deeply about Plato's writings, but he also seems to have experienced some of what Plato says about true education, not as the mere acquisition of data, but of the awakening of a different part of oursselves, by which we can truly understand the world in all its goodness. By Cushman's view, philosophy for Plato is the only THERAPY for human suffering, all of which is caused by our forgetting who we truly are. This book is not only for specialists, but for anyone who wants to learn what ancient Greek philosophy meant to its original practitioners. Here we also see the philosophical roots of modern psychotherapy. I will end with Cushman's own words, from the beginning of his preface:
"Plato's philosophia, as a method of education, represents the supreme and most influential attainment of classical Greek thought respecting the way of human salvation. For Plato, salvation presupposes a profound and well-nigh universal distortion of the human soul, entailing a whole range of disastrous consequences for man's social and political existence. Plato's diagnosis of the plight of man as well as his therapeia, his provision for its remedy, form the central preoccupation of this study."
The reprinting of this book is truly an event.

After "The Tourist", by Dean MacCannell and Valene Smith's edited book titled "Hosts and Guests", in the mid-1970s, the field of the Anthropology of Tourism was flung wide open. A large number of writers focussed their attention on this topic which rapidly increased in importance. In this 'new wave' of anthropological writing, Picard and Wood's edited volume on tourism, ethnicity and the state in various societies in Asia and the Pacific stands out for its quality. Wood's introduction is followed by seven well-written, informative chapters, each written by different authors. There are a number of maps, charts, and even black and white photographs, all of which enhance the text. The areas covered by the book include Guizhou in southwestern China, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bali and Sulawesi Selatan in Indonesia, and Hawai'i /Western Samoa. The authors chose their own directions and followed their own interests, but unlike many other such compilations that I have read, this one really hangs together in excellent fashion.

In China, Singapore and Indonesia, "ethnic tourism" both reflects state policy towards national ethnic groups and is used by the state to further policy. Tourist development does not operate outside state controls, so we read about showcase visions of ethnic diversity in which ethnicity itself is commodified according to government guidelines. In Bali, tourism has become so much part of the culture that it can no longer be considered an outside force. The author can write of the "culturalization" of Balinese society in which the arts emphasized by cultural tourism have become crucial to Balinese identity. In Thailand, neglect of national minorities and their culture reflects the state policy of trying to 'iron out' differences between small ethnic groups and the large Thai majority (to the detriment of the former). The Malaysian case reflects not so much on ethnic policy in the country as on using tourism and tourist 'precincts' to foster a particular view of national history and culture. The study of Hawai'i and Samoa may be the most diffuse of the seven, plus, the capitalist environment of the "50th State" precludes the state interference found in China and parts of Southeast Asia. Thus this final chapter does not mesh so neatly with the others, yet the author also introduces useful points to show how tourism is intimately linked with ethnicity and how the state used a certain image to foster both tourism and domestic harmony (despite the patent untruth of that image). In short, this is a most useful book for those interested in the anthropology of tourism, in politics (state interference in tourism, state manipulation of ethnic images, ethnic rivalries over tourism receipts), and in the constant revision of what "culture" and "history" really mean in any one society. If I were teaching a course that touched on any of these issues, I would definitely use this book. If I were writing a paper on some aspect of tourism, I would have no qualms about turning to this book for its excellent case studies.

Featuring selected works from over 50 studios, Trigger does a fine job showcasing cutting edge graphic design. All the pieces featured are afforded the luxury of a full page each, as written content is mininimal. So minimal, in fact, that the three editors do not write a single introduction, review, or synopsis. This showcase serves more as a collection of visual ideas and process. The work is varied, each studio presenting both finished, client ready work, and experimental exploration into form and content.

Trigger is no less than an outstanding collection of design trends and pieces. Yet another worthwhile release from the DVG (Berlin) publishing camp.