As a history teacher, I think it is essential to continue to tell the story to future generations of Americans. The many diverse tribes of Native Americans that covered North America all have vastly unique and incredible stories to learn from and share.

I am an expatriate manager & teacher, researcher in cross-cultural business issues, and teach international marketing and management at a university undergraduate level, in English, to students in non-English-speaking countries. This book is particularly useful to me personaly in assisting in my understanding and interactions with my studens, university colleagues & administration, and my neighbors. I have waded through many dense, poorly- written tomes in this area of study; however, the Smith and Bond book is refreshingly interesting, well-written and useful, with helpful inserts, cartoons, and comment boxes adding to one's insight. I exerpt and adapt frequently from the book in my courses in Managing the International Enterprise and Cross-Cultural Issues in Management. The book is useful for both university education, training exptraite managers, and for reading and reference by thoughtful expatriates.

This is not your standard coffee-table photo book. Rather, it's a window into the heart of a unique college... one so totally unlike any other college in America (the world?) that it's almost mind-boggling.

I came across it while getting obsessive about my older son's college search. (He's a high school junior and totally blase at this stage; I'm going blissfully insane pouring through the 3-inch-thick college guides.) I kept reading in the college guides about Deep Spings, and every description impelled me to look for more information.

Imagine: A huge cattle and alfalfa ranch in the middle of nowhere (the California high desert near the Nevada border). A student body of 26 young men with average SATs of 1500 who literally run the place and do most of the ranch work. A faculty of a half-dozen or so (essentially hired by the students), some just stopping by for a semester; none tenured. Two years of an intense combination of studying and discussion, physical work, and incredible community spirit. Students finish their undergraduate work by transferring to a "regular" college (typically Ivy League and Ivy-quality).

The book is mostly just pictures of the students, with a short commentary by each of them. There are also a couple of good essays, one by the college's president. The black & white photos are of high quality, though nothing extraordinary. But the combination of the students' images and their own words is amazingly effective in conveying who they are and what they feel about the school and about life.

Immensely cool, but only for a select audience. Five stars if you are in that audience. Not worth the money if you are just curious.

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Noted author and scholar Rabbi Jacob Neusner wrote, "this book brings to synagogue song the discipline of the musician, the learning of the scholar, but most important, the aesthetic sense of the pious person who serves God in the beauty of holiness. Teaching us what has been and what can be, Levine promises to turn what is into something better:musically a service to God through aesthetic beauty consonant with the musical tradition of Judaism. A book of enormous value to the life of Judaism today."

In addition to giving Jews everywhere a key to unlock the secrets of their traditional chant, the book is also a practical guide to one branch of a universal musical tradition: liturgical chant. It's a must read for anyone interested in what makes the cantorial art so compelling to listeners and so important to worship.

This book was very well read and the storyline was remarkable. I honestly couldn't put it down. The flow, the characters - all very true-to-life. Extraordinary writing by Smith. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good mystery and dwells on suspense.

This book brings agency back into the discourse on globalization in urban theory. This is a particularly welcome addition to a field that has been dominated for two decades by unconvincing narratives of city life as an inevitable byproduct of capitalism's structural logic.

After almost a century of modern-style research, the world is not exactly short of ethnographies. You can find works on everybody from Indiana town dwellers to Sri Lankan fishermen. Papua New Guinea, as an area where a wide variety of cultures, some with Stone Age technologies, endured well into the 20th century, attracted the attention of anthropologists right from the start. There are a very large number of books on the country, starting with Malinowski's seminal works on the Trobriand Islands during and after WW I. Most, but not all, of them concentrated on investigations of what are often referred to as 'traditional cultures', if not 'primitive'. Anthropologists, not unlike Western tourists, have often been lured by the 'exotic' parts of the world where cultures extremely different from their own could be found. Bateson, Burridge, Glasse, Heider, Hogbin, Mead, Pospisil, Rappaport, Reay, Schieffelin, and Wagner to name a few, gravitated to Papua New Guinea, drawn perhaps by the chance to study people whose cultures were 'untouched' by the West. 'Untouched' is no doubt a relative word. A few others, especially Lawrence and Worsley, delved into the cargo cults, an aspect of Melanesian religion that sprang up in the wake of colonial pressures on traditional beliefs. Modern Papua New Guinea, with its Christianity, bureaucracy, development projects, education, corruption, urban crime, and population explosion, has not received so much attention. Until now. Michael French Smith's VILLAGE ON THE EDGE is a delightful new ethnography based on work in the same village in the mid-1970s and then in the late '90s. Based on the idea of observing change, because Kragur village, on Kairiru island, off the north coast of the country, has been changing rapidly for many decades, Smith succeeds brilliantly. To my taste, he strikes just the right note between popular writing and professional investigation. In a clear, jargon-less style, he covers many areas usually found in ethnographies, such as village structure, family structure, the economic and political system, and religious beliefs, but focusses on how all these things have changed. It is a down-to-earth, non-exotic picture of present dilemmas for the Kragur villagers who still, after over twenty years of independence, remain poised between a sharing, cooperative society based on personal ties and the money-based, more individualistic one introduced as a correct model by the West and emulated by educated, town-dwelling locals. Smith puts himself into the picture, admits to his predilections and difficulties. Refreshingly, he does not hide behind some false 'objectivity', but shows how he accepted certain privileges (and dealt with some problems) that came with being a 'whiteman'. This honesty, coupled with a sense of humor and nice introduction of the flavor of Pidgin English or Tok Pisin, a national language in the country, made the book all the more appealing.

Melanesian societies often believed that knowledge'-of magic or ritual'-held the key to success in any endeavor, would be the best guarantee of prosperity. Those who had the best knowledge grew the best crops, caught the most fish, or had the most successful trading relationships. But, if many people in the village had that knowledge, then the whole village would be prosperous and successful. Thus, Kragur villagers, like most Melanesians, saw Western education as the way to go if they wanted to raise their standard of living, to obtain money and an easier life. Get Western education, prosper like the Westerners. In a way, Smith points out in the heart of the book, they have been proven right, but the results challenge the whole belief system that underlay their society. For them, if individuals prosper, but the village does not, the new knowledge has failed to produce the desired result. But as time goes by, as more individuals prosper, will not the old ideals completely fade, will not the old cooperative society vanish ? The village is on the edge.

I urge everyone interested in knowing what Papua New Guinea is like today to read this book. It should be on every reading list dealing with the modern Pacific, modern Melanesia, or 'dilemmas of development'. If you are trying to attract students to the field of anthropology or to draw their attention to the process of writing ethnographies, you can hardly go wrong with VILLAGE ON THE EDGE.

This is one of the latest collections of papers dealing with the global spread of English and thus offers some interesting papers by the most notable scholars in the field. Particularly interesting is Kachru's collection of resources for teaching and research which I used extensively for my own work.

Worship is Food For The Soul

Worship, a book and enhanced CD combination by multi-award-winning singer, songwriter, author, and pastor Michael W. Smith, is a fresh collection of ideas and prayers enriched with down-to-earth thoughts and photographs about how Worship should be an integral part of an individual's life.
This book is a compliment to the platinum-selling Worship CD released on September 11, 2001, the historical day of the 21st century Pearl Harbor style attack on New York. An enhanced CD is included with this book and contains a first class recording of Breathe, a Michael W. Smith Video documenting the Worship tour, screensavers for both Windows and Macintosh, and computer background wallpapers...a nice finishing touch to a simple yet elegant and powerful book.
Smith, known by many as the "real deal" in his walk with the Lord, obviously has deep rooted passion for his relationship with the Creator and that shows through brilliantly in this book. He cites the example of being in concert and becoming aware "that something far more profound than a performance is going on...an incredible sense of worship will settle over the arena...At that moment, I realize that I am no longer the performer. I've joined with the audience, and together we are in awe of His presence." This writer has experienced this personally at a 1999 Florida concert by Smith and a review of this concert is online...
The writings in the Worship book provide a brief glimpse into Smith's personal walk with the Lord and relates several key scriptures. Many times it's easy for well-known people to get caught up in the arrogance of fame, but one thing unique about Smith is his dedication to the premise of living the life you preach about and that one should remember "it's not all about you."
I can easily see Worship, the book, as a permanent fixture on my living room coffee table, for everyone to pickup and browse. As Smith says toward the end of the book, "Worship sustains us. Our spirits need Worship like our bodies need food." Worship, the book, is truly Food for the Soul.

The book is well organized and easy to use and is a very good reference book, especially for teachers of Hatha Yoga.