While reading Christy, I couldn't help but wish I could be as bold and courageous as this nineteen-year-old missionary teacher. Christy, a young woman beginning her journey in faith as she moves from a well-respected town into a mountainous chaos, has always felt she was more than just a nice dress at fancy tea parties, and proves herself true in this inspirational story. Defying her parent's wishes, Christy leaves her home and moves to Cutter Gap, a crude community in which the children are in deep need to learn. The people of Cutter Gap are extremely proud of their heritage and wonder about this new woman from the city coming to teach their children. Ms. Alice Henderson, a woman who helps with the mission, is Christy's inspiration to keep going even when she believes failure has beaten her. David Grantland, the preacher of the town, is immediately drawn to Christy's courage and independence. Dr. McNeil, the only doctor in the community, is also drawn to Christy and the light that shines through her as she finally becomes an accepted part of Cutter Gap. As she teaches a classroom full of encouraging young faces, she also learns herself that you have to keep trying and never give up on your dreams. When tragedy hits her with all its might, the love for one man will bring her back to the world, to him. This tale of courage and love will pull at your heart!

And that's saying something! :)
I'm definitely not saying it's anything *similar* to LotR, because it's not, I'm just saying that it's *almost*
as good. It's about a 19-year-old girl named Christy Huddleston who goes to teach school at a mission
in a place called Cutter Gap in the Great Smokies of Tenessee. The year is 1912. This is an incredible
book about a citified girl who finds adventure, hardships, challenges, maturity, God, joy and (of course)
romance. It's very wonderful to find such perfect balance of all elements. It's quite rare to find a book
that actually mentions, (gasp!) *GOD* that is not way overboard and in the preachy department. In fact, I
think the way that religion was tied in was just perfect. Then, my favorite part would have to be the
romance. A very frustrating one, one of those where she thinks she's in love with one, but is actually in
love with the other. Not too frustrating though. I've read plenty of those (Anne of the Island, cough
cough!). My brothers, who are adamantly against romance, and always bury their heads in pillows when
anything romantic comes up anywhere. In Christy's story, they are fascinated, and my youngest brother,
who at first really didn't like Christy, says that "I only keep going to see who Christy marries," :)
The thing is, the romance is only a big thing if you make it so. There just happens to be a cute young
preacher and a hot doctor with a sexy Scottish brouge in the vicinity, both of whom have a major crush
on Christy! :)T his is by no means a romance novel. I just personally am a fan of one of Christy's
admirers, (who is, dare I say it, hotter than Aragorn:)
But more than the romance, this is an incredible story and the characters are so real to me now. I'm actually now doing some research on Catherine because I'm so interested in this whole story.
A must-read!!!...

Christy
By Catherine Marshall

Christy, by Catherine Marshall, is about nineteen year old Christy Huddleston, who gives up her life of comfort in Ashville, Tennessee to serve as a teacher in the impoverished community of Cutter Gap, Tennessee in the early nineteen hundreds. In this book, Christy Huddleston learns to love the people of Cutter Gap unconditionally, and to serve others around her. Christy also struggles to sort through the romantic feelings she has toward the doctor and the minister.

After hearing a presentation by Dr. Ferrand, a non-denominational Christian missionary, Christy was challenged to move to Cutter Gap to teach at the mission. After packing her bags, Christy moves to Cutter Gap, Tennessee to find herself surrounded by the superstitious, poverty stricken, and illiterate people of the cove. Christy is determined to improve their way of life.

While struggling to gain respect from the school bullies, and dealing with the unsanitary ways of the people, Christy finds herself looking at her new life in discontent. She is overwhelmed by the duties and responsibilities she encounters. Christy questions if she made the right decision by coming to Cutter Gap. Miss Alice, a Quaker woman who is there to help run the mission, is always filled with advice and encouragement and helps Christy realize that she did not come here seeking a better life for herself, she came to serve others so that they might have a better life and also have a chance to be eternally redeemed. She learns patience by waiting for opportunities to serve, and develops a sense of victory every time she knows she is useful to someone.

Besides gaining a friendship with Miss Alice, Christy also gains friendships with the stubborn minister, David Grantland, and the prideful, Scottish-Irish physician, Dr. Neil McNeil. Christy expands her insight and gains clues to the destitute mountain people through the minister and the doctor. As Christy learns more, and knows more about the two men, she begins feel affection for both of them, and Christy must sort through her feelings to see if she is in love with either of them.

Christy Huddleston's faith is severely tested when Fairlight Spencer, Christy's closest friend, dies of typhoid and pneumonia. Christy can't understand why God can let there be so much pain and suffering in the world. She questions God about how He, the creator of the universe, can let Fairlight die. Christy struggles with her belief in God, but when she seeks Him in the words of the Bible, those words speak straight to her heart. Christy is assured that God is real, and that He works in mysterious ways.

This book also shows how God can use something negative to bring others to Him. Birdseye Taylor, a cold-hearted man who lives in the cove, and several other men, become mixed up in illegal distilling of whiskey. While a typhoid epidemic spreads through Cutter Gap, Birdseye is accused of murdering a man who was also tangled in the bootlegging. Birdseye retreats into hiding. When he finds out that his son, Lundy, is ailing with typhoid, he returns to the cove to see him. Lundy Taylor, dies, but through the tragedy, the Lord uses this situation to change Birdseye's heart and to eventually bring Birdseye to Him.

I recommend this book because it shows, through the eyes of a young teacher, how God can work mysteriously to turn something negative into something positive. It also shows how someone can unconditionally love even the unlovable. I'm convinced that this book will change your outlook on life. I was challenged to be a more unselfish, humble person.

No matter how hard I search, I've yet to find the "perfect" book on herb use and herb growing. This book isn't perfect, but it does have some real strengths.

Rodale's ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HERBS is organized in a strange way--everything, and I mean everything--falls into alphabetical order. For example, "Gardening with Herbs falls between "Foxgloves" and "Garlic" and "Growing Herbs" falls between "Grindellia" and "Hawthorn."

The book is printed on semi-gloss paper so it will stand up to use and not crumble in a few years. Each entry contains line drawing illustrations and a few sections of the book are highlighted with color photos.

The plant profiles are succinct, covering topics such as 'history', 'cultivation' and 'uses.' Many entries contain material from other sources such as Maud Grieves' A MODERN HERBAL Vols. 1-2. Some information is repeated without attribution or verification. I always find "They say" and "It is thought" offputting, while I appreciate direct citations of which there are many in this book.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA covers some topics not readily found in other books. The most useful of these is a compendium discussing the "Dangers of Herbs" (located between "Dandelion" and "Deadly Nightshade." The editors have compiled the FDA listing of "tricky" herbs (could kill or cure depending on use) from PREVENTION magazine, as well as similar ratings from James Duke's CRC HANDBOOK OF MEDICINAL HERBS, Jean Rose's HERBS AND THINGS, and Varro Tyler's THE HONEST HERBAL. You realize on reading this section that everything is relative.

The biggest problem with the misuse of herbal remedies is the misclassification of plants by the practicioner. To be an herbal healer one simply must understand botany. The second biggest problem is conflicting information about what a plant will or will not do based on singular accounts (which could be the result of a misclassification of plants or a misapplication of the plant extract). The third problem is idiosyncratic plant and human interaction. One man's poison can be another man's elixer. As with synthetic drugs, each individual has a unique chemical compostion and the herb in question may or may not be effective, or in some cases may provoke an allergy. Of course, there are some herbs that are downright deadly as every mystery reader knows.

This wouldn't be a Rodale book with out a section on "Pests" and "Pest Control" or the synergistic and conflicting effects of various plant combinations in the garden. This information and the sections on poisonous attributes make the book worth it's cost. All I can say about plant combinations can be summed up to this...plant catnip. You'll have to read the book to find out which kind.

This book has *fabulous* illustrations of the plants it details - something usually lacking from herbal books by way of plant identification. The plant descriptions and suggestions for use, as well as the old lore associated with each one are all very useful, and well formatted for easy lookup.

The only thing it doesn't have is the same thing most herbal books lack: complete and comprehensive information on the dangers of certain herbs - although I understand that the reason is that since this isn't a licensed medical text, they're not allowed to present thier information as actual medical advice, and so some of the precautions fall under that umbrella. As with any book on herbs, the reader must remember that the information, especially the warnings, are not necessarily complete.

That said - this is a really useful book with lots of great information, that you'll be glad to add to your herbal library at home.

Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs is the best herb resource I have ever found, and that is saying a lot, since I own over twenty, and have checked many others out from my local library. It is thorough, interesting, more complete than any other text (no herb book can be complete - it would be thicker than a telephone book!), and always enjoyable to read. Reading it as a child was the initial inspiration for my love of herbology. Most entries start with stories about the plant, or a short talk about it's particular history. Some of those stories are better than most I see in print.
If I could, I would give this book a ten star rating. If you are starting out in this field, this is the place to start. This book is my bible

This book established the notion of Zero Tolerance policing and is probably one of the more influential books on policing policy. Zero Tolerance policing is however a different concept from what the plain meaning of the words would suggest. The book basically argues against the techniques of policing developed in the 60's and argues for a more community based approach.

In the 1960's the structure of cities had changed from that of the thirties. Suburbs had increased the physical size of cities and made old policing techniques such as street patrols difficult due to the lack of sufficient police officers. To deal with this a form of policing based on rapid response to emergency calls was substituted. That is a central control room would receive telephone calls from the victims of crime and they would have power to send a squad care to deal with the emergency.

The authors of this book suggest that such a strategy has failed. They quote a number of reasons for that but broadly what they say is that by the time police arrive the person who has committed the crime has left. In previous years crime detection would occur because police had links with a community. People would tell them what happened and they could investigate crimes with the cooperation of communities. The rapid response policy had the effect of severing contacts between police and communities. Especially in black and immigrant communities police seem to be outsiders.

What the book suggests is that the key to combating crime is to prevent the sort of decay which allows the development of a criminal culture. The absence of police from an area allows people to start committing minor crimes. These can be fare evasion or breaking windows. The existence of broken windows acts as a signal to criminals that they can move in.

The book uses as a proof of this thesis the work of William Bratton who headed the Transit Police in New York. His technique was to try to remove all forms of petty crime including fair evasion and illegal squatting on the underground train platforms. As his officers arrested fair evaders they found that they were arresting people who had warrants out for their arrest or who were carrying firearms. The realization of the risk of arrest meant that serious offenders tended to stay clear of the subway system. This in turn led to a collapse not only of fair evasion and graffiti offences but of robberies and assaults. The book thus suggests that by a zealous approach to preventing all offending the prevention of more serious crime follows.

It is actually interesting to read Bratton's autobiography Turnaround to have him recount what happened on the subways. He describes the situation when he took over the Transit Police as a force in chaos. The officers simply had stopped arresting people. They were dispersed in such a way that it was easy for fare evaders to avoid them. The officers also had a sense of being an inferior part of the police because their weapons and cars were different from other parts of the police force.

Bratton organized to give them bigger guns and cars to rebuild their morale but he also insisted that they arrest people. The mechanics of arrest prior to Bratton taking over were that if an offender was arrested he would have to be taken to a court and charged. This mean that an arrest would take hours. What Bratton told his officers to do was to arrest one offender handcuff him to a fence and then arrest more. This meant that each officer could increase the rate of arrests by about eight times what had previously been possible. As the police started to find the people they arrested had warrants out for serious matters or that they possessed firearms their morale improved as they felt they were doing something important rather than raising ticket revenue. When Bratton moved on to run the New York Police he did similar things. That is he used labor saving techniques to maximize the availability of police on the streets and used neighborhood crime reports to concentrate them in areas where they were needed.

The reality is that Bratton rather than using a particular strategy or technique has in the case of the Transit Police taken over a unit that was very poorly run and from an objective point of view on its last legs. With such a poorly run unit it is not surprising that the subway system had such crime problems. From this point of view the book is somewhat flawed as it suggests a rather over simplistic solution is available to problems which are complex. Still and interesting and readable book and one that has generated much debate.

Disorderly behavior damages communities, so goes the central theme of Kelling & Coles's Fixing Broken Windows, a book about "restoring order and reducing crime". Kelling & Coles proceed to back this assertion up with both logical argument and evidence from a small but impressive set of studies of community policing. Their arguments tend to be rather persuasive, and will likely resonate with anyone who's fond of Etzioni's Communitarianism.

Disorder, Kelling & Coles argue, breeds many things in a community: fear on the part of residents; further disorder; and eventually "serious" crime. Disorder promotes decay as streets cease to be areas where community standards are enforced, or where those standards are to the detriment of the majority of the members of the community.

From Kelling & Coles perspective, before the 60's, police were far more integrated with the communities they served, in part by virtue of regular contact with residents as they walked beats. This enabled them to have a much better understanding of the particular needs and standards of the communities they work in. Even more importantly, it allowed them to prevent crime, rather than simply respond to it.

The police of today, Kelling and Coles argue, are not only not efective at reducing disorder, they are ineffective at preventing crime, and not terribly good at responding to crime. The 911 model limits police contact with the general citizenry, and prevents them from developing the kinds of relationship that allow them to intervene effectively without resorting to overtly coercive or threatening behaviors.

One particular study cited by Kelling and Coles stands out to me, in which they looked at fear, one of the crucial factors in their model. Robert Trojanowicz(1982), they report, found that officers alone on foot patrol were less fearful that officers patrolling two to a car in the same areas.

Kelling & Coles supply not only examples of what they consider successful and unsuccessful attempts at order maintenance proograms, they also review the legal foundation for such activities, as well as the legal challenges to such efforts as "aggressive panhandling" ordinances. Their analysis helps a lay reader understand different burdens that a law might come under in order to show that it is attempting to meet a compelling government interest, as well as how limitations on personal behavior may be legally justified in the interest of preserving safe & orderly public fora.

The main weakness of the book, and the argument, in my opinion, is the lack of adequate examination of how community power struggles and class issues will likely play out in the development of community standards of behavior for an area. It is a very significant concern that the order police may have helped in the past, while they were more integrated into their communities, was a much more segregated one, where being the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood was disorderly enough to merit attention. This is not a fatal flaw in the book, nor in the idea of community policing, but establishing adequate internal controls and external oversight deserves much more attention.

In 1982, Wilson and Kelling proposed a link between disorder and crime that they expressed through the metaphor of the "broken window." Leave the broken window unrepaired and soon the rest of the windows will be broken as well. Leave all the windows broken and the building becomes a signal to offenders that this place -- this street, neighborhood, city -- is a place in which disorder is accepted, or at least tolerated. Victimization and crime take root in such places. Malcolm Gladwell has more recently expressed this as the power of "context." (Tipping Point)

"Broken windows" over the intervening 18 years has become a commonplace of public policy. Most writers neglect even to cite Wilson and Kelling as its creator. However, as is the case when an attractive idea migrates from the terrain of scholars to the public marketplace, the notion has come to mean many different things for many different commentators.

IN FWB, Kelling & Coles set the definition stratight, in lucid, concrete policy analysis and writing. Most importantly, the book serves as a highly-readable manual for practitioners. The power of the idea is expressed through the success stories it has spwawned, from the NYC subways to the streets of Seattle. All serious students of public safety policy and the policing process must read it.