Product Description
Between 1922 and 1924, the young Canadian anthropologist T.F. McIlwraith spent eleven months in the isolated community of Bella Coola, British Columbia, living among the people of the Nuxalk First Nation. During his time there, McIlwraith gained intimate knowledge of the Nuxalk culture and of their struggle to survive in the face of massive depopulation, loss of traditional lands, and the efforts of the Canadian government to ban the potlatch. McIlwraith’s resulting ethnography, The Bella Coola Indians (1948), is widely considered the finest published study of a Northwest Coast First Nation.

This volume is a rich complement to McIlwraith’s classic work, incorporating his letters from the field as well as previously unpublished essays on the Nuxalk. Vivid and lively, the letters show the human side of the anthropologist, and provide a fascinating insight into the famous Northwest winter ceremonials and potlatch -- events in which McIlwraith was one of the few white men privileged to participate as a dancer and partner.

Extensive editorial annotations and striking photographs make this book a pleasurable read that will appeal to anthropologists and historians, as well as those with interests in Northwest cultures and the history of anthropology in Canada. ... Read more

Product Description
FORTRAN 77 PDQ is a quick and accessible guide to programming. All the traditional topics of an introductory course in FORTRAN are covered, but they are presented from the perspective of their utility in problem solving rather than providing a theoretical introduction to computer science or engineering. This text assumes no prior programming experience and teaches FORTRAN as a tool for problem solving with emphasis on practical problems displaying practical solutions. This second edition includes numerous new problems and examples and contains a practical reference guide to FORTRAN commands. This book should be of interest to students taking introductory courses in FORTRAN. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very sobering, man's inhumanity to man
I went to the Apartheid Museum in Jo'burg and there were lots of pictures from the apartheid era. I looked at the plaque on the wall and saw that most of the pictures had been reproduced from this book so I decided to buy it.
It was sobering to say the least.
This book has good quality pictures taken by Mr Cole. He was able to take close & upfront pictures because he had been erroneously given a colored ID card. A lesson in history and a reminder of the evils of segregation and racism; be it in Africa or America. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Improve yourself with help from this book!
An excellent book to help you understand sinfulness! This book is really aimed at priests and seminarians, but is very useful to lay people who are searching for holiness. It makes the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas much more accessible to the average person. If you want to know more about the seven deadly sins and how to overcome them, this is the book to read! Concise and not boring.

A Guide to Strengthen the Lives of Priests
This book is a very insightful read in which Father Basil both outlines the unique identity of the priesthood and also looks at how the struggles with different vices apply to it. He draws heavily from the Catechism as well as papal documents in fleshing out his understanding of the priesthood and he draws also heavily on the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas in looking at the different vices. Many Thomistic themes, such as the need for contemplation are prevalent throughout the work and what emerges is a very pastoral guide for understanding human nature and stocking up the spiritual arsenal for those times when one faces various temptations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Beautifully Sad
Full Moon at Noontide is a beautiful book about a woman who loses her parents and uncle, and the trials they go through along the way.This wonderful look at the end of life, is a beautiful tribute to her parents and a stark reminder to all of us who live in the "Sandwich Generation" of what is important, our family and the love we all share.Ann Putnam was able to put into words exactly what it's like at the end, when you're having to take care of your parents and make sure they have those they love around them, and leave this world with dignity and grace.

I remember when my grandparents passed away.The years building up to it, the hospital visits, the surgeries, the pain, both physical and emotional that my mom and our entire family went through.Those were tough times, and I was just a teenager.Now, my own mother is turning 70 this year, and her health isn't as good as it once was.I worry about her all the time.Reading this book made me feel just a little better, knowing that I'm not alone in dealing with these issues as my mother gets older, and that we will be able to get through it, no matter what happens.

This book is beautifully written and will make you cry in many spots.It will also make you smile as you see some humor and a lot of love within these pages.Whether you have already lost your parents, or are taking care of them now, this is definitely a book that you'll want to read.It won't necessarily be easy to read, but it's worth it!I highly recommend this book to anyone with parents.Although it's this is definitely a book for the more mature reader, college age and above is who I would say this is best for.

Disclaimer: This book was provided to me by Pump Up Your Book Promotion for review purposes only.All opinions are 100% my own.

A GREAT MEMOIR
My grandmother passed away when I was twelve years old ( I am sixteen now) and I had many fond memories of her. My grandfather is still alive and is eighty years old. When I had the chance to read the book, I was a little reluctant and my mother said that it was good for me to read it. I enjoyed the book and my favorite twin was Henry. Boy, was he a character and he made me laugh. I read the book on vacation and I had difficulty putting it down. I volunteer weekly in a local nursing home and I can see how hard it can be to care for the elderly and all the emotions that go along with caring for them. The author is an excellent writer and she gave me a different insight into life. I have learned that even the most independent person may need some assistance in their lives when they grow older and may have to rely on a nursing home to care for them. I recommend the book to everyone not to make them depressed but to learn a little about aging.

A must-read for anyone who has witnessed firsthand the passing of a loved one
For anyone who has walked side-by-side in the culminating steps of the life of an elderly person, Ann Putnam's Full Moon at Noontide is a healing balm. She understands. She's been there three separate times. Her Uncle Henry. Her father. Her mother. Being with someone in their final years, days, hours is both a hardship and a privilege. She explains, "... pure love becomes when it is distilled through such suffering and loss - a blue flame that flickers and pulses in the deepest heart."

The shared episodes are poignant. They involve handicapped seating, Maalox glasses, falls, and catheters - "the fragility of it all." The three senior citizens begin to function as one unit. While backing the car out of the driveway, her mother drives, her uncle looks left and her father looks right while shifting gears. Yet their teamwork is not enough against Mother Nature. During a winter blackout, they are without heat and electricity for five days. Safety in numbers is no longer a guarantee.

The house is sold and the trio is uprooted to University House, an upscale retirement community near where Putnam lives. It is considered a "dangerous business" to make friends when "death was a fall, a sneeze, a heartbeat away" so they "kept their attachments light." Putnam is honest about her role in their lives. When her uncle nearly loses her father's wheelchair into oncoming traffic while leaving church, Putnam feels guilty about not making the effort to take them herself. However, she knows that it will tie up her entire day serving as chauffeur and running errands. She presents a realistic picture by admitting to her own shortcomings.

Uncle Henry was also difficult - "the evil twin." When Putnam's daughter describes him as "another grandfather." He responds, "But then that would mean I'd have to have had sex with your grandmother." He had a high appreciation for shock value. Putnam goes on to say, "My uncle was so difficult those last years, and my parents gave up so much to have him there. It had seemed so anguished at the time, but in fact it has left no bitterness. For the last twenty years, my uncle came along everywhere they went, how they couldn't bear to leave him behind."

Putnam's memoir beautifully chronicles their final moments. While Uncle Henry is dying in the ICU, her father is being treated above him on the sixteenth floor. She is comforted by the words of the ICU priest, Father Bill when asked how he can stand working in a hospital: "Oh, but this is a luminous place. It shimmers, if only you can see it. There's a thin membrane separating the physical and the spiritual. We should walk with one foot in each place always. This place reminds me to do that. It's a thin place."

Putnam recounts witnessing Uncle Henry's final moments. "Now his breathing changes. Two little puffs of breath, then a long, breathless silence that stretches out between one world and another until he catches it up again and pulls himself back into this life. He's emptying the body of air. But there is no gasping, no death agony, just little puffs of air, little commas of breath, the sweet, soft sound of the spirit going someplace else. His eyes are open. The light has not gone out. All the times I had left him, and gone home to eat or sleep, to take up the threads of my life as best I could, and I thought please let go, please let this all be over, please just slip away softly into the night. Now I am grateful to be here and think how easily I might not have been."

Putnam is also there when her father enters the death fugue as explained by a nurse - "What you see when you look at him is not what he's experiencing. He's not really in his body like you think. He's someplace else now and doesn't want to be called back." Terror drives Putnam from the nursing home during the death vigil. She has a failure of nerve and panics. Upon her return, the hospice chaplain arrives. "Go away! I want to scream, but polite to the end, I hold my tongue. They think I need company for this final stretch. They don't know I've been here already. They don't know how strong I've grown. I didn't know it myself until now. This is sacred space, and I want it all to myself. I have no need for interpreters now. Father Bill is all I need, and he's hidden safely inside. 'We are not our bodies. We are not our minds. We are not our emotions, though they are all part of us. Our truest self is a spirit place that has always been there. He's going toward it now. Everything else is falling away."

She is also witnesses her mother's death. "After my father died she took to studying the obituaries in the paper. 'When I read that someone died after a short illness, I think how lucky that person is. I'd be grateful for those words after my name.' I know she's thinking of how long my father took to die. Just after midnight, my practical, no-nonsense mother dies. I watch her spirit leave her body within moments, watch her face change into a death mask before me and become someone else. It's all right. She'd wanted to be out of her body for so long - no ambivalence here, not a moment wasted going where she wants to go. Come on up, the twins say. It's great up here. My father reaches down to give her a lift."

Overall, this is a must-read for anyone who has witnessed firsthand the passing of a loved one.

Not many books can move me the way that this book di
Full Moon at Noontide is a memoir of Putnam's cherished moments with her family. Putnam is an English professor whose writing resonates with you. Aside from the fact that the material is touching, her writing just helps to push you over the end until you do either one of two things: you laugh out loud or you just start crying.

The theme of this story was the issue of getting older and the little things that people do when they get to that stage in their lives. I found that the story was an attractive read simply because of the nature of it. There were times that I simply just could not put down this book. It reminded me of the fact that nothing lasts forever and that you should appreciate the elders in your life. At the same time, the story also made me become aware of the little signs of growing older and how these traits become more pronounced later on in life.
Hands down my favorite character was Henry. He provided most, if not all of the comic relief in the story. He made no apologies for the things that he said, he just did. I think that perhaps this trait was always a part of Henry and I could imagine him being a very brave, opinionated man in his youth.

There were several things that stood out for me in this story, more pertinent is the fact that no matter how independent you are in life or what profession you were in, at some point or another old age gets the better of us and we are forced to seek the help of nursing homes and private nurses to take care of us. Personally, I am not looking forward to that moment for myself or for my loved ones, but seeing that in the story and how Ann dealt with it makes you want to prepare mentally for the moment.

Not many books can move me the way that this book did. It was a great read and I would recommend it to everyone ... Read more

Product Description
This text is an easy-to-understand, application-oriented guidebook for learning the basic principles of epidemiologic investigation. Numerous opportunities are presented to apply and test learning through problems and application exercises. Answers are provided. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
Volume: 1General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1829Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or an index.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description

What do you want to know about sex?

Customer Reviews (3)

Covers the basics
Not very long and needs more pictures. But--it is a good book to use to start the sex subject.

Comprehensive and Realistic
Out of the huge pile of "sex ed" books that I scanned through, this one was the best for my family's needs.
It is comprehensive: it hits almost every sex-related question that a kid could think of.
I also liked that it was realistic--kids hear about things like homosexuality and masturbation and "the pill", etc. and I liked how she addressed them.
(But the previous reviewer is correct: if you are very conservative in your views, you probably will not like her coverage of the more controversial items.)

I also liked that it's for both boys and girls, because I'm sure they wonder about what the other gender is experiencing as they mature.
Also, it has some illustrations, but there aren't lots of silly cartoons.A pre-teen isn't going to think this is a "kids book"--they'll take it seriously.

Bottom line: if you are terrified about having "the talk" with your kid, this book does a nice job of covering "the facts", then you can encourage questions and discussion afterwards.

Liberal views of Homosexuality and Sex
This book does not support my Judeo-Christian values. It directly advocates homosexuality as a natural choice for sex.It also encourages promiscuity by suggesting waiting to have sex until you have a close relationship with someone.I did not give this book to my child because it would not correlate my Biblical interpretation of "safe sex" or moral values. ... Read more

Product Description
Armed with a camera, Thomas Roma spent 14 months prowling the halls of the Brooklyn Criminal Court Building, documenting lives transformed by the workings of the law. From within the confines of the oppressive atmosphere, Roma has created affecting portraits of people whose fates will be decided by the fall of a gavel. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

beyond art or document
thomas roma's photographs represent some of the most challenging, enlightening work of the past few decades. each of his books is worth whatever price they ask, but this project i find particularly brilliant and powerful, as he photographs victims, criminals, family member of both, employees, lawyers - the whole world of a new york city courthouse which must be one of the most intriguing mixes of people and all their telling details. this is just a great book.

AN EMPTY SHELL...
It is hard to believe that it took Thomas Roma fourteen months, roaming the grimy corridors of the Brooklyn Criminal Court Building,to take the eighty black and white photographs that appear in this book. There is nothing special about them. On any given day, one can see faceslike these in the Brooklyn Criminal Court Building, which is located at 120 Schermerhorn Street in Brooklyn, NY. Perhaps, this is what the photographer intended.I am only surprised that it took him fourteen months to capture what should have been all in a day's work. As a practitioner in Brooklyn, I am disappointed that the portraits are, for the most part, so very ordinary, but, perhaps, that is his intended silent commentary.

The foreword byNorman Mailer is ridiculous, as he talks about the ubiquitous attorney who "...charges more than you can afford while all the while he emanates his profound dissatisfaction with what he is being paid." In Brooklyn Criminal Court, the majority of defendants are assisted by public defenders or court appointed attorneys who do not charge the defendants for their services. It is taxpayers who are footing the bill. Moreover, Mailer also assumes in his foreword thatlawyers and judges are men. He would be shocked to discover that many are women. He also further assumes that defendants are all men. Although, the majority are men, women are also increasingly appearing as defendants. I do not know whether his perceptions are born from an inbred misogyny or from simply not having done his homework before writing this foreword. The introduction by Robert Coles is much better written, as it is more substantive and seemingly better informed, though he, too, assumes, as does Mailer, that all the photographs in the book are those of defendants in a criminal case, as well as those of their families.

As to the photographs themselves, the problem is that it is not clear whether they are photographs of just defendants and their families, or whether the photographs include police officers, victims, and witnesses, as well. From the book cover flap one would think that it was inclusive, but the text from the foreword and introduction would lead the reader to think otherwise.There is no text accompanying the photographs that clarifies this issue. The photographs themselves are divided into two parts. Other than part one presents predominately male portraits and part two presents predominantly female portraits, I do not really understand the bifurcation or why it was necessary, as it does not add to the cohesion of the book. The problems inherent in this book may be chalked up to poor editing but, considering the price of the book, that is really no excuse. The end result is that the book is merely another overpriced art book that is nothing more than an empty shell. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A first-rate narrative!!!
I curled up with this book shortly after I moved to San Fran (1993) and found it impossible to put down. Tom Cole ably illumines the life and times of America's oddest city. His research is exhaustive - we are early in the book given a lesson on the geologic origins of the Bay itself; which turns out to be as engrossing and ironic a tale as any from the Barbary Coast!! This is also one of the few works about San Francisco that gives the plight of Ohlone natives the attention and consideration it sorely merits. It is a mark of Cole's considerable talent that he can tell one story with such sensitivity and, just pages later, transport us quite heart-poundingly into the throes of 'one of the most rip-roaring events in human history: the California gold rush.' If you like history, or travel, or California, or San Francisco, or plain ol' good reading, 'A Short History of San Francisco' delivers exponentially more than its $12.95 pricetag's worth. Super-recommended!! ... Read more