Robert Taylor: Air Combat Paintings Volume II is a dazzling spectacle of an artbook, filled with black-and-white as well as full color images of aerial combat paintings, especially those related to World War II air battles. An extensive, in-depth commentaries and history adds a special depth to the origin and moment captured in these heart-stopping works of art. Robert Taylor: Air Combat Paintings, Volume II is a recommended treasure trove of great air combat illustrations for aviation and military history buffs. Also highly recommended is the companion compilation, The Air Combat Paintings of Robert Taylor: Volume 1 (0715314300, £20.00).

Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate

by Charles E. Glassick, Mary Taylor Huber, and Gene I. Maeroff

(San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc., 1997)

In the Carnegie Foundation report, Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate, authors Charles E. Glassick, Mary Taylor Huber and Gene I. Maeroff create an even more inclusive vision of scholarship from the late Ernest L. Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, the Foundation's 1990 report. With the blessing of Boyer, The Carnegie Foundation's past president, these authors suggest standards and applications by which the entire range of an institution's scholastic endeavor (research, writing, teaching, etc.) can be documented and evaluated. The new report will greatly benefit institutions of higher education desiring to define and evaluate the academic performance of faculty.

The authors are impressively credentialed and each has been, or is currently, associated wit! ! h The Carnegie Foundation. Charles E. Glassick served as interim president of the Foundation between January 1996 and July 1997. Mary Taylor Huber is presently serving the Foundation as a senior scholar, and Gene I. Maeroff served the Foundation between 1986 and 1997. Presently Dr. Maeroff directs the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The report is remarkably thorough and extremely well done. In every respect it supports the paradigm Boyer proposes in his initial work. Therein is both its strength and weakness. One has only to read Boyer's work in order to predict the logic of the new report. This is not to question the merit of the new work, but rather to suggest that as much effort seems to have been spent in reconciling the two reports as in the stated purpose of formulating standards of assessing scholarship and evaluating the professoriate.

The report responds to what it considers to be a major societal transition! ! that requires higher education to keep pace and even facil! itate change. At stake, according to the authors, is "the capacity of higher education to meet its responsibilities for teaching, research, and service to society" (p. 5). The mission of higher education must be current, and the activities of faculty must relate "more directly to the realities of contemporary life" (p. 6). The authors link the evolution of higher education with historical precedents and key events from the educational philosophy of colonial days to its pragmatic role in the present. Within that philosophical shift, the priorities of faculty are established. While virtually all institutions continue to address education on the undergraduate level, some enjoy distinction in the areas of research, publishing, and service through the application of knowledge. The report observes that the performance of the professoriate is most often determined by the reward structure of their institution.

At the conclusion of the report, the questionnaire us! ! ed for the survey and the survey results are presented in table form. Responses are reported collectively and broken down per institutional classification. The results profile research, doctorate granting, comprehensive, and liberal arts institutions in an impressive manner. An institution should be able to compare its own policies with others, and, at the same time, determine progress in addressing critical issues in higher education. The survey is as much a report card on higher education as an effective tool for the construction of the report.

Scholarship Assessed discusses the strengths of Dr. Boyer's suggested definition of scholarship, specifically, "the scholarship of discovery, the scholarship of integration, the scholarship of application, and the scholarship of teaching" (p. 9). Thereafter, however, it begins to construct a timely system of evaluation intended to recognize, assess, and even link the contributions of the professoriate in its broadest sense! ! in a uniform and equitable manner. The results are both lo! gical and practical. It proposes six shared standards, comprising 1) clear goals, 2) adequate preparation, 3) appropriate methods, 4) significant results, 5) effective presentation, and 6) reflective critique. This methodology reflects the thinking of a broad range of higher education and para-educational systems. With little adaptation the standards can be applied to the evaluation of the professoriate.

The versatility of Boyer's system of standards is best demonstrated by its application to specific tasks such as teaching assessment. The system can potentially provide uniform evaluation of teaching performance when it is administered by administrators or students or by faculty during self-evaluation. Results might prove interesting when three vantage points are combined into a single profile. The system is a powerful diagnostic tool for identifying strengths and weaknesses in teaching. If applied in this way it can potentially influence faculty behavior and in a larger sen! ! se, provide focus for remedial attention.

Boyer's system might also be applied to learning assessment, providing certain adaptations are implemented. His fourth standard, "significant results," requires stronger definition. Specifically, it requires a clear means of learning measurement in conjunction with planned goals. His final two standards, "effective presentation" and "reflective critique," should be sufficiently defined to differentiate learning styles. An ultimate determination as to the system's suitability to assess learning would be its application to different learning theories.

Scholarship Assessed inseparably links itself to Dr. Boyer's initial report. While the first twenty-one pages of the work serve as interesting background, they are essentially unnecessary, other than to recognize the vision of a distinguished scholar. Initially, the tone of the report is reminiscent of a family mourning the loss of a loved one. Perhaps the ! ! report would have been even stronger and more credible if t! he authorship had extended beyond family members. The report could have very easily eliminated the tribute portion and stood on its own merit. Still, Scholarship Assessed is certainly worthy to be recognized as a stand-alone work. It will undoubtedly assume a place as a valuable resource of institutions of all classifications. It will almost certainly inspire further study for many years to come.

William G. Sunday

Two admirals, one Soviet, one American, are on the opposite sides of the Cold War. Admiral David Charles is
a graduate of Annapolis. He joins the crew of the USS Bagley, a World War II destroyer, in 1961. The Bagley's sent to cover the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The Bagley's orders change to no support. Twenty-two years later, Charles and
his Soviet counterpart, are in the Mediterranean. They're
commanding carrier battle groups on the eve of World War
III. They eventually end up sharing a lifeboat.

Professor Taylor combines remarkable theological insight with equally remarkable understanding of what's needed in real-life pastoral situations: theory and practice are interwoven. Taylor's main thesis is "The way to help persons deal with their problems is to help them change the beliefs that contribute to their distressing feelings and behaviors. Thus, the goal...is to help people change through hearing and responding to the gospel." (p. 137) Taylor presents three types of pastoral skills needed to accomplish this goal, and presents information on specific techniques that undergird each skill. His underlying theology is centered on the gospel. For the student pastor trying to serve God and his/her fellow humans, Taylor's logical, step-by-step analysis of pastoral encounters and appropriate helping strategies can be invaluable. Although the book is remarkably clearly written, this is not easy material to put into practice, and you'll benefit from practice with a peer group, supervisor, or classroom teaching.

Recently in an interview with Charlie Rose Meryl Streep spoke of women needing a dream that portrayed them as powerful, particularly as they age. Helen Luke's autobiography is just such a dream. It is a carefully woven tapestry of her dreams, her thoughts, her readings (the wide range of her reading & interests included Lord Of the Rings by Tolkien, Dante, T.S. Eliot, C.K. Williams,& Larry Dossey's Shamanic books), and the encounters that she had in her life (which included Robert Johnson, Carl Jung, Dr. Meiers, Toni Sussman,Dr. Kunkel). The patterns of this tapestry speak to us of a life that followed the Way of individuation, as she refers to it in the autobiography. What most impressed me was the way in which she lived the path, risks and all, that Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell taught, despite her Christian Scientist upbringing. This straightforward autobiography & her journals model The Way. Her courage to leave her mother behind while she was dying in order to follow her "dreams" was inspirational. Her discussion in her diary entry about C.K.Williams work Descent Into Hell (which she refers to frequently, reminding me of how good a book it was) and it's demonstration that "a 'daughter's gift to an injured mother' through language, even many years after a mother's death, may be valid" fed many beliefs that I have had about how healing can occur and ones role in it. The book read like a road map to a fulfilled life, well marked by the signposts of the numinousities, synchronicities, and struggles encountered by a thoughtful individual. It is hard to put down, I read through it almost at once, and will be studying and thinking about the lessons it holds for a long time. I am quite confident that most men and women will not regret studying this book.

Cap is my grandfather--he is the best! Since the early 1980's he has been doing extensive research on the Kierulff family and has brought together hundreds of Kierulffs together in several family reunions. This book is beautifully bound in red leatherette with a golden embossed family tree on the front cover, and golden embossed title "Twentieth Century Kjaerulfs" on the spine. You can order this book by emailing capk@juno.com.

United Mind Workers is a very stimulating and important book. It is the first book to discuss how to organize teachers and their work differently, and the first book to capture the attention of both major American teachers unions. Already widely influential, it seems destined to play a major role in the current reform movement. I highly recommend it to all interested in the improvement of American education. -- William Boyd, Penn State University

Taylor took two years to write this book; it took me nearly as long to read it! It is a five-part tome of 525 pages of text and 71 pages of footnotes. In this entire collection I cannot remember a single section that could be read without my complete concentration. Quiet and solitude are minimal prerequisites before tackling this book - a good grasp of the history of philosophy wouldn't hurt either.

The sources to which Taylor refers are the moral ideals, ideas, and understandings that have dominated in various historical eras. Taylor's basic premise is rather simple, "we are only our selves insofar as we move in a certain space of questions, as we seek and find an orientation to the good (p. 34)." His purpose is not to specify the good, that is, he does not seek to set normative definitions or qualifications. His purpose is to show that self-definition requires a framework in which to be understood.

The historical course of his narrative begins with the classical perspective. In this view, self was dependent on a vision of the True or the Ideal. The hierarchical nature of reality presupposed in classical thought meant that self-definition was subservient to the whole. Traditional Christian thought embraced the classical perspective and the preference for self-definition by externals.

Obviously, this short sketch of classical thought seems to be absurdly irrelevant in our contemporary world. Self is definitely not defined in relation to externals, but by an extreme interiority, complete rejection of hierarchical schemes, and the assumption that reality is defined empirically rather than conceptually. This book traces the transformation of the classical perspective through history in each of these areas: the movement toward inwardness, the affirmation of ordinary life, and the voice of nature.

I found Taylor's historical analysis of more value than his contemporary application; however, I have to admit that the latter was quite difficult for me to follow due to my lack of exposure to the material. In essence he claims that the near universal adoption of benevolence and justice as our predominant ethical values have insufficient foundation. Radical subjectivity, radical equality, and radical acceptance of nature do not provide a horizon capable of defending contemporary values.

Even though Taylor stops short of offering an external standard, his thorough critique of contemporary inconsistencies is excellent. I cannot really recommend this book to everyone because it is clearly written to a graduate audience. If you are not well-read in philosophy, theology, or psychology, it may not be worth your time.

Taylor offers us an invigorating critique of the Western individualist tradition since the 17th century. His work focuses on how the Judeo-Christian tradition has been dismantled bit-by-bit as rationality has taken its place. This dynamic has left us with a "desiccated" self (e.g., no role for spirituality or grace). Taylor tells us that what is missing are powers of creative imagination and the substantive goods of ordinary life, but he does not reconcile these with the developments he critiques. Instead of sending us back to our religious roots or offering a new perspective, he leaves us asking the question we had on page 1: what gives life meaning in the 21st century.

With 'Sources of the Self' Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has written a seminal work along the lines of Ernst Cassirer's classic 'An Essay on Man'.

Deploring the minimal ethics of modernity and dissatisfied with post-modern nihilism, Taylor positions his moral theory in the Aristotelean tradition of 'ethos'. But Taylor does not embrace a pre-defined, teleological destiny. Rather, his premise is that in articulating 'the self' we will discover who we are, what we are supposed to do and where we are going.

Taylor's quest into what made man into what he is, is traced back to classic Greek thought and Augustinian theology. Subsequently the author takes us to early modernity: from Locke, via Neoplatonists like Shaftesbury, to the period of Romanticism. Eventually this odyssee of the mind is germinating into present-day man as a self-expressing creature.

The richness of Taylor's argumentation is often dazzling; here speaks a man of wide and deep erudition, an authoritative voice of intellectual history, seemingly equally at home in science, history and the arts.

In the post-modern wilderness of de-construction, Taylor's articulate and subtle history of mentality is an intellectual joy.

As one of the poets featured in Will Work for Peace, one might expect me to be a bit biased, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Most poets work in a virtual vacuum, only tenuously connected to each other by the occasional workshop or shared membership in a 'poetry society'. When Brett Axel first approached me for a submission to an anthology he was considering, the names Marge Piercy, Lyn Lifshin, Moshe Bennaroch and so many others were abstractions to me as a fledgling poet. I knew these tremendous writers were 'out there' somewhere, beating down doors with their words and keeping a struggling artform alive. But to think that someday I would ever share a credit with these dynamic modern poets would be a pipe dream at best. It is through the sincere efforts of Brett Axel that many newer voices like mine have an extraordinary opportunity to appear with Pulitzer Prize winners and other poetic heavyweights. By way of an honest review, however, I will say this- not everything in this book will be to your particular liking. I myself came across some works that did not move me in the way the author may have intended. Some imagery can be raw and visceral, using shock value in place of craft at times. But to ignore those voices would be an even more shocking turn of events, so praise be to the editor for not sacrificing his vision to a senseless conformity. As Pete Seeger so aptly put it in his quote, trying to read all these poems at one time would be like trying 'to swallow Manhattan whole'. I say to you- buy this book, read this book, but understand that it's what you do after reading this book that will ultimately define who you could be. Poetry is alive and well, and lives in the blunt pages of Will Work for Peace.

Brett Axel visited my Church and I bought a copy of Will Work For Peace from him, not for poetry, but because I care about working for peace. I started reading through it thinking It'd just go on my shelf and that'd be the end of it, but the book grabbed me and kept me rivited. If I had known that poetry was this alive I'd have been into poetry. I've been reading some of the poems to my friends who also didn't think poetry was important and they are saying the same thing. Fantastic! There's no way to get through this book without having your old mindsets challenged. It's funny, powerful, sad, and uplifting. A book that deserves to be read by everyone. A book that really can make the world a better place!

Just amazing start to finish! I like the disregard for fame used in putting the book together. That great poems got in even if they were writtenby nobodys. Look at Roger Bonair-Agard's poem on page 74. Shortly after Will Work For Peace came out he won Slam Nationals, becoming Slam Champion of 1999, which will be getting him lots of offers. But Zeropanik Press didn't need to be told he was good by an award. They could tell by his writing! Good for them and good for all of us because Will Work For Peace is a literary milestone. It's a new standard for all future anthology editors to try to live up to. Thumbs up to Brett Axel and Thumbs up to Zeropanik Press for their guts and integrty.

Just having read Kathleen Winsor's magnum opus Forever Amber i must say that I was astonished at the sheer magnitude of the volume. Some small municipal phonebooks pale in comparison. I wish that I could say that I was equally amazed by the story even though I am glad that the Chicago Review Press published an affordable version of this now classic romance novel.

The story is predictable enough, country girl rises from prisoner at the infamous Newgate Prison to mistress of CharlesII, King of England by whatever means necessary. Through a succession of lovers and husbands she remains "faithful" to the one personthat she can never have.

The book is very well researched and the reader gets a picture of the many strata of Restoration society. Winsor has a habit of dropping the right names at the right times but after 56 years the novel seems a little dated and the characters a little flat.

A key problem is that there are no real characters that I could identify with. I found myself hating everyone equally. Amber comes off bad as does her principal love, Bruce Carlton. The feeling one gets is not of the decadence of Restoration London but of the despair engendered by the Court as a whole.

I'm somewhat sad to say that I did not enjoy this novel so much as read it to get to the end. The end itself is somewhat disappointing also. It is as if Ms. Winsor simply ran out of things to say and just ended it. That being said the novel is overly repetitious to start with and even though it may have started scandals and been banned in Boston in 1944 it is rather tame and mild now.

I first read this book when I was 14. It captivated me then and still does. I've lost count how many times I've read it; I read this first copy literally to shreds!

The historical accuracy and detail interwoven with the story of Amber St. Clare is astounding...Ms. Windsor's research is impeccable. This book made me love all things English and awakened in me an interest in the British monarchy throughout history. My dearest wish is to visit England and London some day and to visit the sites mentioned in the book.

I do have to admit I was severely disappointed with the ending of the book. If there was a sequel, I would appreciate knowing the title because I would love to read it. And for those who may be interested in viewing the movie, don't bother. This book cries out to be made into a mini-series!

Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys historical fiction.

Amber St. Clare is my all-time favorite romance character--even moreso than Scarlett O'Hara. Sure, Amber's unscrupulous at times, but she's not afraid to go after what she wants. She is definitely not a wimp, unlike so many modern-day romance heroines. Never, EVER did Amber really cave to a man's will. She might do it for a while, but only for as long as it suited her (or to ultimately gain the upper hand).

The historical detail in this book is astounding. No history book has ever made the period so gloriously alive, warts and all. Few books provide a better understanding of the Restoration, of the way its people thought, lived, dressed, ate--everything.

One other thing that I liked about the book was the sexuality without the gory details. I read this book nearly 20 years ago, and I can STILL remember the veiled reference to a night Amber spent with the Duke of Buckingham. No details were provided, just that even Amber was disgusted with what happened (which means it must have been really perverted). It was left to the imagination what really happened, which is much more effective than spelling it all out. I can't say that I remember ANY sex scene from a modern romance novel, not even the one I finished this morning. After a while, they're all pretty much the same--and they're boring.

For those who clamor for a sequel, one was written, but I can't remember the name of it (I found it in a South Dakota library about 15 years ago). Amber followed Bruce to America, and I believe she finally got him. The main problem with the book, as with Winsor's other subsequent efforts, was that it just didn't live up to Forever Amber. There is something about this book that is simply magical.