Reference Books - Page 2

Building Powerful Community Organizations: A Personal Guide To Creating Groups That Can Solve Problems and Change the World

Michael Jacoby Brown

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Best book available on the subject 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Author Michael Jacoby Brown has created a book with very detailed information on how to organize, create, and lead a community organization. In it he clearly explains all the steps necessary to create an effective organization that can resolve problems. The various areas discussed include the theory of how a group should work, the chemistry involved, the seven basic steps for building an organization, developing a mission statement, goals, and objectives, designing the organization to last, recruiting others, mobilizing, raising money and taking action. Throughout the book are case studies and exercises to help you not only understand how it all works but also to help you work through developing your organization correctly. If you want to change the world and know you need help to do it then you will appreciate this book. Building Powerful Community Organizations is easily the best book on the market today on this subject.

Editorial Review:

A practical and personal guide to creating groups that can solve community and workplace problems. Using lessons learned, exercises and stories from the experience of the author and others, this book brings alive the process of community organizing and community building. It is for anyone who wants to start or strengthen a commuity group, a congregation, a neighborhood association, a civic group, or any other group that deals with the many problems and concerns we all face in our everyday lives.

What's Wrong With The World?

G.K. Chesterton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great Edition 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This is a wonderful edition of What's Wrong With the World. If you have read much of Chesterton's social commentary or essay work, you know that he makes many allusions to people, places, and ideas that were common to him in the early part of the 20th Century. Ignatius Press did a great job footnoting many of these references, which makes this amazing work of Chesterton's much more accessible to the common man, whom he loved so much.

What's wrong with the world? I am. 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I think the collection of essays are generally well written, but there are some issues. Before I start, yes; I know WWWtW was written nearly 100 years ago for a primarily British audience. There are parallels with today's culture, but the book was written for quite a different population facing similar evils.

This may be petty, but the use of the "n" word really bothered me. I know Chesterton was a wordsmith, and was not a racist, but the use of that word really offended me. I know...different age and different culture, but I live in 21st century New York, not 20th century England. Is the use of the word meant to be offensive? I don't believe offense was Chesterton's motive. Chesterton even calls poor East Enders "guttersnipes", but this is his way of wordsmithing and even here the euphemism is not meant to be offensive, but clever. However, in spite of Chesterton's love of euphemisms and cleverness, I find the "n" word to be a huge stumbling block.

Chesterton's idea of the fundamental difference among the sexes is accurate. However, the whole objection to women not voting is rather unsettling. I know...different age and different culture, but it still bothers me. However, the notion of the Industrial and Post Industrial age forcing women into the workplace so that families can survive is an acute assessment.

What's not to like about Hudge and Gudge?

I think Chesterton is the Epitome of an age long since past. He chose not to pursue formal education, but the man was a generalist, and that suited him. There are too many specialists in the world, with large student loan debts, who cannot figure out why pulling on a push door will not open the door. If we had more Chestertons, I think the world would be a better place; there is always the need for generalists in a specialized world.

Editorial Review:

Originally published in 1910. Author: G.K. Chesterton Language: English Keywords: Social Sciences Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth

Carol Rose

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

We have always conjured up creatures never seen in nature, from flying horses and two-headed birds to fire-breathing dragons and enormous killer skunks, as well as fantastic distortions of our own image, from giants to nubile maidens. In these pages you will meet extraordinary beings from Hindu and Navajo religions, Scandinavian tales, Russian folklore, Lithuanian stories, Irish oral history, American tall tales, and Aztec myth. Just some of the monstrous entourage:

• Baku, a benevolent Japanese monster with the body of a horse, the head of a lion, and the legs of a tiger, who helps people by devouring their nightmares.

• Kurma, the giant tortoise of Hindu myth, whose upper shell forms the heavens and lower part the earth.

• Missipissy, the feared fish serpent of North America's Great Lakes region.

This illustrated encyclopedia not only identifies and describes individual beasts in their cultural context but also groups them together across cultures and discusses common mythological strands and conceits. 60 b/w illustrations.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design

Jonathan Wells

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 93 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Clear thinking, or Moonie brainwash? You decide 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Wells pokes holes in Darwinism (defined as macro evolution, not microevolution, of all species from a common ancestor, by natural selection of random processes) and defends Intelligent Design as legitimate science, and clearly revels in the task. The writing is understandable, the examples are enlightening, and the control of Darwinism on the scientific establishments in government and universities is examined in numerous cases.

A scan of reviews on Amazon shows about a 60/40 split between 5 stars and 1 star, averaging 3 stars with a standard deviation of two!. In other words, there is no middle ground. Wells was accused of being a brainwashed Moonie, and the Discovery Institute for which he works a Moonie front, and he was praised as a clear thinker and defender of academic freedom, but never by the same people.

Read and judge.

Editorial Review:

You think you know about Darwinism and intelligent design, but did you know: *There is no overwhelming evidence for Darwinism; *Intelligent design is based on scientific evidence, not religious belief; *What many public schools teach about Darwinism is based on known falsehoods; *Scientists at major universities believe in intelligent design; *Scientists who question Darwinism are punished --by public institutions using your tax dollars. Battle-hardened veteran with doctorates in biology and theology sets the record straight in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwin and Intelligent Design.

Escape from Freedom

Erich Fromm

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A provocative dead end 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book, initially published in 1941, provides an invaluable framework for understanding the rise of Fascism in the 1930s. Fromm argues that the German masses (especially the lower middle class) were not tricked into supporting Hitler and his cohorts; they willingly succumbed to gain powerful psychic benefits. In brief, by surrendering themselves to the great leader, they escaped the dilemma of surviving in a world that seemed threatening and beyond their control.

Having come to the United States in 1934 to escape the Nazis, Fromm wrote with first hand familiarity of the political situation in his native country. In addition, he was an accomplished psychologist, well versed in the theories of Sigmund Freud et al. No wonder his analysis of the appeal of Nazism to the German population rings true, even though this development might seem of primarily historical interest at this point.

But there is much more, because Fromm postulates a similar lack of comfort with individual political and economic freedom to the populations of other nations under widely varying circumstances. He also describes a variety of coping mechanisms, from accepting religious belief systems (which he obviously does not set much store in) to giving up one's own autonomy and buying into the conventional wisdom of the society as communicated by the mass media.

While it is suggested that people can learn to live authentically in accordance with their own ideas, converting freedom from a threat to a benefit, Fromm sets so many obstacles in the way that one is inclined to doubt whether he truly believes in such a vision. Note also his sense of comfort with society in the Middle Ages, when people knew what fate held in store for them based on the accident of their birth, and with the lot of animals (e.g., wood chucks) that can make their way in life based on instinct.

Ultimately, Fromm makes clear what he really thinks: most people are not qualified for freedom after all and someone (hopefully infused with benevolent intent) must do their thinking for them.

On the one hand, he says, "progress for democracy lies in enhancing the actual freedom, initiative, and spontaneity of the individual, not only in certain private and spiritual matters, but above all in the activity fundamental to every man's existence, his work."

On the other, "the irrational and planless character of society must be replaced by a planned economy that represents the planned and concerted effort of society as such. *** Only in a planned economy in which the whole nation has rationally mastered the economic and social forces can the individual share responsibility and use creative intelligence in his work."

In holding up a planned economy as part of the solution, it seems to me, Fromm is basically conceding the bankruptcy of his central premise - that there is some way to have certainty and freedom at the same time.

What is to say that a planned economy works better than the free market, or that people will really have more outlets for their individual aspirations and abilities in such a system? Also, come to think of it, the Fascists (and Communists as well) were big on centrally planned economies.

Editorial Review:

If humanity cannot live with the dangers and responsibilities inherent in freedom, it will probably turn to authoritarianism. This is the central idea of Escape from Freedom, a landmark work by one of the most distinguished thinkers of our time, and a book that is as timely now as when first published in 1941. Few books have thrown such light upon the forces that shape modern society or penetrated so deeply into the causes of authoritarian systems. If the rise of democracy set some people free, at the same time it gave birth to a society in which the individual feels alienated and dehumanized. Using the insights of psychoanalysis as probing agents, Fromm’s work analyzes the illness of contemporary civilization as witnessed by its willingness to submit to totalitarian rule.

Antigone (Greek Tragedy in New Translations)

Sophocles

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Total reviews: 64 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Based on the conviction that only translators who write poetry themselves can properly recreate the celebrated and timeless tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the Greek Tragedy in New Translations series offers new translations that go beyond the literal meaning of the Greek in order to evoke the poetry of the originals. The series seeks to recover the entire extant corpus of Greek tragedy, quite as though the ancient tragedians wrote in the English of our own time. Under the editorship of Peter Burian and Alan Shapiro, each of these volumes includes a critical introduction, commentary on the text, full stage directions, and a glossary of the mythical and geographical references in the plays.
This finely-tuned translation of Sophocles' Antigone by Richard Emil Braun, both a distinguished poet and a professional scholar-critic, offers, in lean, sinewy verse and lyrics of unusual intensity, an interpretation informed by exemplary scholarship and critical insight. Braun presents an Antigone not marred by excessive sentimentality or pietistic attitudes.
His translation underscores the extraordinary structural symmetry and beauty of Sophocles' design by focusing on the balanced and harmonious view of tragically opposed wills that makes the play so moving. Unlike the traditionally gentle and pious protagonist opposed to a brutal and villainous Creon, Braun's Antigone emerges as a true Sophoclean heroine--with all the harshness and even hubris, as well as pathos and beauty, that Sophoclean heroism requires. Braun also reveals a Creon as stubbornly "principled" as Antigone, instead of simply the arrogant tyrant of conventional interpretations.

The Social Work Dictionary

Robert L. Barker

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Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The dynamic vocabulary of social work, like the profession itself, continues to grow and become more complex. Since the first edition of The Social Work Dictionary in 1987, this essential reference work has been recognized as the definitive lexicon of social work. Now in its fifth edition, The Social Work Dictionary captures more than 9,000 terms, cataloging and cross-referencing the nomenclature, concepts, organizations, historical figures, and values that define the profession. A special historical section represents a chronology of the significant developments in the United States and the world toward social welfare policies, practices, and the betterment of humanity.

Used extensively in schools of social work, social service agency libraries, and in social work offices worldwide, The Social Work Dictionary, 5th Edition is a staple in professional libraries. It is unequaled as a study tool for preparing for licensing and certification exams. Every social worker-from professor to student, from novice to experienced professional-should own this unparalleled resource for understanding the language of social work and related disciplines!

SPECIAL FEATURES:
Terms and definitions evaluated and edited by an expert editorial review board
Terms that social workers have adopted for use from sociology, anthropology, medicine, law, psychology, and economics
Definitions of symptoms and diagnostic labels for various forms of mental disorders as they are understood by social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals

Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

John Monaghan, Peter Just

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"If you want to know what anthropology is, look at what anthropologists do," write the authors of Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction. This engaging overview of the field combines an accessible account of some of the discipline's guiding principles and methodology with abundant examples and illustrations of anthropologists at work.
Peter Just and John Monaghan begin by discussing anthropology's most important contributions to modern thought: its investigation of culture as a distinctively human characteristic, its doctrine of cultural relativism, and its methodology of fieldwork and ethnography. Drawing on examples from their own fieldwork in Indonesia and Mesoamerica, they examine specific ways in which social and cultural anthropology have advanced our understanding of human society and culture. Including an assessment of anthropology's present position, and a look forward to its likely future, Social and Cultural Anthropology will make fascinating reading for anyone curious about this social science.

Conspiracies and Secret Societies

Brad Steiger, Sherry Steiger

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

I'm worried about Brad and Sherry 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

That's right I'm worried about Brad and Sherry. Why? All they do is research and write darn good books. Good thing for those of us who want to read them! When I got this book I could not put it down. Be prepared to spend some time reading it. Fascinating reading. Go take a vacation guys, you deserve it.

GET THIS BOOK!!! Nuf said. 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book is great. If you have even the slightest interest in conspiracy theories, get this book. You won't be able to put it down (You may also not be able to go to sleep after reading this book). This book covers some of the lesser known conspiracy theories and secret socities such as Heaven's Gate, the Mothman, and many others. It also covers many of the classic conspiracy theories, such as men in black, roswell, area 51, and of course, the new world order. One thing I like about the book is that it gets to the point. It doesn't start out with "It was a clear day in Roswell, New Mexico. The wind was gently blowing, the kids were out playing, and the grass was greener than ever." Instead, it jumps right to what happened, starting out with something like "Something crashed in Roswell New Mexico. The goverment says it was a weather balloon, but many others think it was a UFO." Also, this book is very reliable, listing ALL its sources of information. So get this book!

Why are you still reading this review? Go to the top of the screen, and click the order button! Then, when it arrives, read it, then lose three days of sleep because this book WILL creep you out as well as entertain you for hours.

Oh my gosh, you're still reading this review! What part of push the order button don't you udnerstand?

Editorial Review:

Shedding light onto the darkest and most enduring of stories, this book is a compelling encyclopedic overview of 300 individuals, organizations, and events where official claims and standard explanations of actions and events remain clouded in mystery.

Theogony and Works and Days (The World's Classics)

Hesiod

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Ian Myles Slater on: West's Hesiod Translation 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 23 people found this review helpful.

Some of the other reviews offered with M.L. West's translation of Hesiod's "Theogony" and "Works and Days" for the Oxford World's Classics actually refer to Dorothea Wender's verse translation of the same works, plus a charming version of the collection of lyrics attributed to Theognis, published in the Penguin Classics. That is a worthwhile version -- although the joining of the peasant-oriented Boeotian Hesiod to the mainly aristocratic, and partly Athenian, "Theognis" corpus is a little odd.

West's version of the two main Hesiodic poems is, however, in prose, and offers the latest in textual and historical scholarship -- although this is not very obviously on display. West, who has edited much (perhaps by now all) of the "Hesiodic" corpus, with substantial technical commentaries (along with a good deal of Homer and the "Homeric Hymns"), offers here his best reading of the two long poems which seem most firmly attributed Hesiod. (Although some, including Wender, would prefer two poets, in addition to the problem of interpolations).

West's commentary, although useful, is surprisingly sparse, given what he could have offered; a lot of detailed argument has been converted into the translation itself.

"Theogony," for those not familiar with the work even by reputation, is the story of the origins and struggles of the gods of Classical Greece. Although the meter and basic style are those of the Homeric epics, and the gods are mainly the same, many details are different (Zeus is a younger son, not the eldest, for example), and the struggles between various generations are the foreground story, not a long-concluded background to the reign of Zeus. We meet Heaven, and his sons and daughters, culminating in the rebellion of the Titans, then the Olympians, who wage war against their father and his fellow-Titans, and so on. It is an extremely violent story, full of abusive parents, mutilations inflicted by rebellious offspring, divine cannibalism, and a whole succession of other behaviors the Greeks themselves considered repellent. The philosophers had real problems with this work -- one can understand from it why Plato wanted to ban poets from the ideal state.

Interspersed through the action are a number of catalogues of nature-deities, which are variously regarded by critics as interpolations or key structural elements. Many readers simply find them boring; it helps if you are using a translation which interprets the Greek names, which are usually charmingly appropriate for the natural element being personified.

"Works and Days" contains several important mythological passages, expanding and altering "Theogony," but is in the main a sort of sermon on how to be prosperous and righteous. It is packed with details of daily life, which readers will find either fascinating or tedious. and are sometimes rather opaque. West does a good job in making readable this combination of a sort of pagan equivalent of an Old Testament prophet with an Iron Age Farmer's Almanac, and his notes do help with some of the knottier passages. (Note that there is one recent translation-with-commentary of the "Works" which is dedicated almost entirely to making detailed agricultural and ethnographic sense of it; West clearly offers a more literary approach.)

The latter part of the twentieth century has seen a number of translations of the main Hesiodic poems, by Apostolos N. Athanassakis, R.M. Frazer, Richmond Lattimore, and, as noted above, Dorothea Wender (Penguin Classics), to join the old Evelyn-White bilingual edition for the Loeb Classical Library edition, with numerous attributed fragments. (A new Loeb edition has announced). There are also translations of single poems, by Norman O. Brown and by Richard S. Caldwell (both of the "Theogony") and Tandy and Neale ("Works and Days"). West offers a substantial alternative to the others, based on an exceptionally close knowledge of the textual problems.

Editorial Review:

This new translation by a leading expert on Hesiodic poems combines accuracy with readability and includes an introduction and explanatory notes on two works by one of the oldest known Greek poets: the Theogony, a systematic genealogy and account of the struggles of the gods, and the Works and Days, a compendium of moral and practical advice for a life of honest husbandry.