Product Description
This second volume in Kevin Starr's passionate and ambitious cultural history of the Golden State focuses on the turn-of-the-century years and the emergence of Southern California as a regional culture in its own right."How hauntingly beautiful, how replete with lost possibilities, seems that Southern California of two and three generations ago, now that a dramatically diferent society has emerged in its place," writes Starr.

As he recreates the "lost California," Starr examines the rich variety of elements that figured in the growth of the Southern California way of life: the Spanish/Mexican roots, the fertile land, the Mediterranean-like climate, the special styles in architecture, the rise of Hollywood.He gives us a broad array of engaging (and often eccentric) characters: from Harrision Gray Otis to Helen Hunt Jackson to Cecil B. DeMille.Whether discussing the growth of winemaking or the burgeoning of reform movements, Starr keeps his central theme in sharp focus: how Californians defined their identity to themselves and to the nation.Amazon.com Review
California seems to have been the source of almost everycultural trend that defines modern America--often in contradictoryways. Consider the waves of conservative and progressive politics,self-love and selflessness, sushi and Big Macs, great literature, andbanal films. Inventing the Dream traces this extraordinarystate through the early years of the 20th century, when Americansbegan to flock westward and Los Angeles grew from a town of 50,000 toa large city of 320,000 in justa couple of decades. By 1926, Starrwrites, Hollywood was the United States' fifth-largest industry,grossing $1.5 billion a year and accounting for 90 percent of theworld's films--and, of course, changing the values of wholecultures. This is a fine work of historical reconstruction, joiningStarr's other well-regarded works of Californiana. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Cultural History emphazing the Southland
This is the second volume in Kevin Starr's ongoing cultural history of California.It focuses the ideas of California - as an Eden, a health center, a place to get rich quick and leave, and all the others - and shows how they emerged, grew, interacted with each other and with reality and how they affect us today.This volume is from the post-Gold Rush era to WWI, approximately 1870-1920.

This volume focuses heavily on Southern California, in my opinion too heavily, especially since the next volume Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (Americans & the California Dream) is also about Southern California.The population of Northern California was significantly larger than Southern California until about 1920.Apparently the reason for this disproportion is that Starr is focusing on the 'American Dream'.Northern California had more immigrants, especially Catholic ones.Mostly white, Protestant, Americans moved to Southern California, and these are the ones that generated the 'dreams' Starr is interested in.Although Starr does look at Northern California (especially the agricultural community) it would have been more interesting to me if he had done more comparing of the two cultures.However, Starr is upfront about his focus from the beginning, although not so clear about why.

Another area Starr has difficulty with is geography and natural history.Ice plant is not native to California,The Pacific Current, coming from Alaska, is rich in nutrients but not warm, and the Pleistocene (post ice age) ecology of California evolved with humans as an integral part.Also, the second chapter is about books and paintings.If you have not read the books or seen the paintings, this can be heavy going, so you may want to skip this until later.

However, these are relatively minor issues.The writing is lyrical (perhaps a bit too much) and he clearly loves California and its history.Starr is perhaps the greatest living expert on California history.Reading his works is necessary to an understanding of California today, even if you disagree with him on some issues.

Southern California through WASP eyes
I love Kevin Starr's books.His multi-volume history of California deserves a Nobel Prize (for Literature) in my opinion, but there is something unique about Kevin Starr that potential readers should know:His heart may be in California (he was born in San Francisco), but his razor sharp mind is clearly in New England (he's a Harvard Ph.D.).Dr. Starr writes California history through the eye lens of a Boston Brahmin.Just like his first book in the series, he's very much concerned with the geographic, religious and (especially) academic pedigree of the important California founders he discusses.He mentions that Charles Fletcher Lummis is a "Harvard Man" what seems like a hundred times in the text, and his very East-coast interests are revealed in the topics he concentrates on the most:the founding of cultural and academic institutions, architecture, literature, religion and geographic origin.This book, as is the case with the absolutely marvelous AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM, is very much about transplantation of European civilization from East to West.

Now, if you like that sort of thing, you'll love this book.Being a transplant from the East myself, I happen to like it, and I think this book is to Los Angeles what his earlier book is to San Francisco:The story of how restless, eccentric and talented Easterners came to the harsh, beautiful West and, in the process, disrupted their European sensibilities and invented a new type of civilization.It's a fascinating story, told with brilliant insight by this remarkable historian, with a truly profound lack of political subjectivity.It's rare to find this type of history being written today.

Dr. Starr's narrative skill is unmatched.Really.He has the pen of an Arthur Schlesinger or a Gordon Wood, without the political agenda and with a somewhat more plodding interest in dates, names and places akin to Henry Adams or Daniel Boorstin.His knowledge of the entire range of California history, from geographic formation to "The Governator" is so complete that Daniel Boorstin seems like an Amateur in comparison.Pun intended.

Read the 'Dream' and weep
I read this book 20 years ago.It has held up remarkably well.California is the victim of its own utopian dreams.

Should Be Called a History of Southern California
... Not that I have a problem with that.This is the second volume in Starr's definitive six volume history of California.Starr writes history that combines straight forward "who, what, when" facts with digressions into literary criticism and pyschologlogical speculation.This is a blend that is quite apt for California, and I have found volume one and two to be rewarding.

Starr (who is also the state librarian for California) also includes excellent essays on his sources for each chapter, which makes further reading a snap!For example, after reading his first volume "Americans and the Californian Dream", I read "The Octopus" by Frank Norris and "Two Years Before the Mast" by Dana.

This book covers roughly the same time period as the first volume, and there is some overlap.After all, there wasn't THAT much going on in California from 1850 to 1900.However, while the first volume focuses almost totally on Northern California, this volume focuses almost totally on Southern California.

And by Southern California, I mean Los Angeles, with a little bit of Riverside thrown in.As a native of San Francisco and a current resident of San Diego, I simply couldn't believe at how little San Diego county came in for mention.Again, I'm hesitant to label this as a criticism, since I did love the book, but I just wonder what San Diego did (or didn't do) to get left out.

Starr spends ample time covering pre-American Southern California history.He charts the development of California agriculture, talks about the "Craftsman" movement and, as his wont, spends entire chapters talking about the artists and boosters of the time.Personally, after reading this book I have resolved to read atleast one book of Mary Austin.

Towards the end of this volume Starr dishes out a hefty dose of the history of the Progressive movement in California.His essay on sourcing for this chapter reveals a penchant for the works of more traditional political history writers, and I felt like this chapter was kind of "eh."

His final chapter is on the growth of Hollywood.I don't feel like he adds anything to the voluminous literature on this subject, but hey, this is a survey of California history, and I suppose he had to include it.

Overall, I highly recommend this book.If you are more interested in Southern then Northern California, you may want to skip the first volume and proceed directly to this one. ... Read more

Product Description

Sure to take its place alongside the literary landmarks of modern feminism, Elaine Showalter's brilliant, provocative work chronicles the roles of feminist intellectuals from the eighteenth century to the present.

With sources as diverse as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Scream 2, Inventing Herself is an expansive and timely exploration of women who possess a boundless determination to alter the world by boldly experiencing love, achievement, and fame on a grand scale. These women tried to work, travel, think, love, and even die in ways that were ahead of their time. In doing so, they forged an epic history that each generation of adventurous women has rediscovered.

Focusing on paradigmatic figures ranging from Mary Wollstonecraft and Margaret Fuller to Germaine Greer and Susan Sontag, preeminent scholar Elaine Showalter uncovers common themes and patterns of these women's lives across the centuries and discovers the feminist intellectual tradition they embodied. The author brilliantly illuminates the contributions of Eleanor Marx, Zora Neale Hurston, Simone de Beauvoir, Margaret Mead, and many more.

Showalter, a highly regarded critic known for her provocative and strongly held opinions, has here established a compelling new Who's Who of women's thought. Certain to spark controversy, the omission of such feminist perennials as Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Virginia Woolf will surprise and shock the conventional wisdom.

This is not a history of perfect women, but rather of real women, whose mistakes and even tragedies are instructive and inspiring for women today who are still trying to invent themselves.Amazon.com Review
"From Mary Wollstonecraft on, the great feminist icons were anything but saints," writes this literary critic, chair of the Princeton English Department, and '60s feminist activist. Choosing from her personal list of heroines, Elaine Showalter illuminates the lives of American and English female intellectual notables from the 18th century to the present, and demonstrates the timeless division in the feminist psyche between the need for independence and the need for love. She begins with Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, who was the first to call for political, emotional, and sexual liberation. Wollstonecraft's own life anticipated all the contradictions between theory and practice that would challenge women, as she extolled reason and independence over passion, then became suicidal over the abandonment of her lover. Olive Schreiner was the chief spokeswoman for the New Women of the late 19th century, a group that felt compelled to sacrifice love or motherhood in the interest of women's future freedom. Another feminist mainstay, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, was the first to find both work and love on her own terms, but only after a severe depression brought on by internal conflicts over mothering in the Victorian era.

Showalter doesn't limit herself to traditional feminist icons, however. Her book also explores the lives of Mary McCarthy and Hannah Arendt, who scorned feminism, and more recent feminist critics such as Katie Roiphe and Camille Paglia (with an emphasis on the latter's egomania). She reveals the enmity between Simon de Beauvoir and Mary McCarthy, as well as their similarities, and the unbalanced bonds between de Beauvoir and Arendt and their philosopher lovers (Sartre and Heidegger, respectively). As she moves into the 21st century, the effort to combine independence, adventure, and love is embodied in Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and Princess Diana, who was killed exactly 200 years after Wollstonecraft died in childbirth. It's an idiosyncratic but entertaining list, with its revealing and refreshing focus on these women's risk-taking and rule-breaking lives. --Lesley Reed ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Compact , Creative Insight intoLives ofImportant Women
In case you don't have the time to accomplish the very important task of reading every single book written by influential women, this book is a wonderful way to become at least familiar with their philosophy, and where they stood in the context of their times.The accounts are lively and readable, and can serve as a reference for later on you when you might have time to explore more deeply the writings of the individual women who interest you.

There's No "There" There
If these are indeed biographies of feminist intellectual icons, you certainly wouldn't know it from this collection of shallow, rambling essays. After reading this book, I have no sense of these women as feminists or intellectuals, nor of their ambitions and accomplishments. However, I'm overly informed on other aspects: About 10% of each mini-biography is devoted to an overview of the subject's life. The other 90% deals with their looks, fashion choices and the cads and Ken-dolls they slept with. How disappointing that "Inventing Herself" seems to mean "Defining Herself Through Men."

There's No "There" There
If these are indeed biographies of feminist intellectual icons, you certainly wouldn't know it from this collection of shallow, rambling essays. After reading this book, I have no sense of these women as feminists or intellectuals, nor of their ambitions and accomplishments. However, I'm overly informed on other aspects: About 10% of each mini-biography is devoted to an overview of the subject's life. The other 90% deals with their looks, fashion choices and the cads and Ken-dolls they slept with. How disappointing that "Inventing Herself" seems to mean "Defining Herself Through Men."

Strong Women and Men who adore them will Love this
The one reason I got this book was because Chapter 14 was all about a hero of mine, Professor Camille Paglia whose works a dear man Dr Jonathan got me hooked on back in 1990.And since I was so damn impressed with the authors fair handed treatment of Prof Paglia I opted to not sulk, and go ahead and read the rest of the book and am glad I did.

And I must admit I was terribly impressed that the authors has longer than is usual, chapters and the book if shy 400 well written and attention holding prose and thoughts. With Chapters that range from Adventures in Womanhood; Amazonian Beginnings: Mary Wollstonecraft; Radiant Sovereign Self; Margaret Fuller; The New Woman: The Feminine Predicament; Transition Woman; A Feminist Tribe; Heterodoxy in Britain; The Dark Ladies of New York;Zenobia on the Hudson; The Lost Sex and the Second Sex; Simone de Beauvoir (a favorite of mine). Writing Well Is the Best Revenge; Susan Sontag; The Inner Revolution of the 1960's: Before the Revolution; Talkin' Bout My Generation; The 1970's; Divas: Germaine Greer and the Female Eunuch; Feminist Personae: Camille Paglia--Woman Alone; and the Epilogue: First Ladies: The Way We Live Now.

Personal and Political Feminism
....P>She is also the author and editor of a number of books. In March of 2001 her newest book, Inventing Herself : Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage was published, and it is also an examination of the personal and political realms of Feminism. In it, she illustrates the lives of some of her personal heroines, women who have lived from the 18th Century on and whom have contributed to women's rights. She starts out with Mary Wollstonecraft, whose revolutionary book Vindication on the Rights of Women was one of the first pieces of feminist writing, and ends with modern heroines like Hillary Clinton, Princess Diana, and Oprah Winfrey. With each woman's story, she not only shows what they did to change politics and society, but also how their personal lives had an effect on those of other women living during that time.

Elaine Showalter, whether writing about Janis Joplin or Germaine Greer, always draws similarities between the public importance and personal apprecation of feminism. It is obvious to the reader of her words that she has treasured feminism in her own life and wants to share it with others. Her book will inspire and motivate you.... ... Read more

Product Description
Today the term "Japanese literary classics" implies such texts as the Man'yoshu, Kojiki, Tale of Genji, Tale of the Heike, Noh drama, and the works of Saikaku, Chikamatsu, and Basho, which are considered the wellspring and embodiment of Japanese tradition and culture. Most of these texts, however, did not become "classics" until the end of the nineteenth century, in a process closely related to the emergence of Japan as a modern nation-state and to the radical reconfiguration of notions of literature and learning under Western influence. As in Europe and elsewhere, the construction of a national literature and language with a putative ancient lineage was critical to the creation of a distinct nation-state.

This book addresses the issue of national identity and the ways in which modern European disciplinary notions of "literature" and genres played a major role in the modern canonization process. These "classics" did not have inherent, unchanging value; instead, their value was produced and reproduced by various institutions and individuals in relation to socio-economic power. How then were these texts elevated and used? What kinds of values were given to them? How was this process related to larger social, political, and religious configurations?

This book, which looks in depth at each of the major "classics," explores these questions in a broad historical context, from the medieval period, when multiple canons competed with each other, through the early modern and modern periods. Throughout, the essays focus on the roles of schools, commentators, and socio-religious institutions, and on issues of gender. The result is a new view of the transformation of the Japanese canon and its intimate connection with the issue of national and cultural identity. ... Read more

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The story of modern Japan, from first 'opening' to the West with Admiral Perry's Black Ships in 1853, through World War II, to Japan's emergence as a Western-style democracy and economic power at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. ... Read more

Product Description
For millions of Americans, young and old alike, Christmas is a fat jolly Santa Claus with a bag full of presents, carolers singing Yuletide hymns, and a lovingly decorated tree glowing with the joy of the season. But where did the best-loved traditions that make Christmas America's favorite holiday originate?

With charming vintage illustrations by famous artists such as Thomas Nast, Everett Shinn, Al Hirschfeld, Arthur Rackham, and many others, Inventing Christmas explains how most of our cherished traditions evolved over the 25-year period from 1822 (when Clement Clarke Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas was published) to 1848. The author, who has been collecting Christmas ephemera for over 50 years, shows how Santa, the Christmas tree, gift-giving, and Scrooge all came to signify Christmas-in what is surely the ultimate gift book and stocking stuffer for lovers of this holiday, its customs, and its collectibles. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Fun History & Beautiful Pictures
The most wonderful thing about this book is all the photos. Jock Elliott has an amazing collection of Christmas books. I'd be salivating to actually see and browse the real collection. This book is really fun to read. As soon as I saw the actual letters that he wrote to Santa as a little boy I was hooked. One thing I learned was how people used to give each other Christmas/New Year books. I had never heard of those before. Too bad the tradition stopped!

Wonderful insight into the traditions that make up our holiday.
Jock Elliott captures and relates all of the building blocks that went into making our Christmas holiday what it is--in terms of the way in which we celebrate.

As an ad man, he's got a unique perspective.

Fascinating reading.

Fabulous color!
Saw this book when it was listed with a book I wanted to buy about Christmas and the history of our American traditions. It is a beautiful book with lots of pictures- not alot of written information. Still find it interesting and informative.

FUN AND FASCINATING!
Almost all Americans celebrate Christmas but so few of us really know its deep-rooted and ancient origins as well as the origins of so many of the traditions we hold so dear.

In his wonderful book called, Jock Elliott has charted all of this story (and more) with care and good cheer. He reminds us of how recent the Christmas "tradition" is, and how ancient. He tells us, for example, that the Christmas tree is basically a product of the second half of the American 19th century, and can be traced to England. The British royal family - themselves imports from Germany - first pitched such trees in their palatial homes. But the trees, and the rituals of winter celebrations, could themselves be traced all the way back to pagan times and the celebrations of the winter solstice.

We learn about the men who defined Santa claus Including Clement Moore who wrote the "Night Before Christmas", and Thomas nast.Nast was the greatest political cartoonist of the 19th century, perhaps of any American century.During the holiday season of 1862-63, Nast put visual flesh on the poetic bones provided by Moore.In the Jan. 3, 1863, issue of Harper's Weekly, he showed Santa Claus cheering up the battered Union troops. He's wearing striped pants and a shirt spangled with stars. Nast would do a year-end drawing of Santa Claus for each of the following 25 years.

From giving gifts to misletoe, Elliots great book fills us in on the origins of Everything Christmas.Highly Recommended

A Real Christmas Gem
This book is such an amazing find! It tells the whole celebration of the Christmas holiday, from it's pre-Christian pagan celebrations, through the 20th century. Particularly interesting is how it became a Christian Holiday a few hundred years after the birth of Christ. But the book also covers how Santa Claus came to be, the history of the Christmas Tree, carols, and a pretty extensive article on Charles Dickens 'A Christmas Carol.'
The author, Jock Elliott, is probably the foremost collector of Christmas memorabelia, and through many color photos has shared some of his extensive collection with us. The man even has his letters to Santa from the 1920's! But, most impressive of all (to me!) is his 'A Christmas Carol' collection. He has a copy of the original first edition from 1843, as well as the original newspaper advertisement for the book from that same year! And, yes, Mr. Elliott shares this with us, too.
I've compared his history of the holiday with other books I own and I feel I can safely say that Mr. Elliott has done his research. His writing style is very entertaining and easy to follow, so the younger set can enjoy this book, too.
All in all, this is one of the most entertaining books I've read on the Christmas holiday. I guess if I had one complaint it would be for Mr. Elliott to maybe add a bit about the Reason for the Season - Jesus Christ.
Very highly recommended. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Fine beginner's text
Ruth's book is an interesting introduction to gangster movies and their function in American Culture. Although Ruth's writing is somewhat dull, the way he reveals deep connections between gangster movies (e.g. The PublicEnemy) and contemporaraneous cultural anxieties is remarkable. A fineintroduction to ways of discussing the political implications of popularculture; recommended for high schoolers and early college readersinterested in the subject. ... Read more

Product Description
Vanessa Ochs invites her readers to explore how Jewish practice can be more meaningful through renewing, reshaping, and even creating new rituals--blessings for newborn daughters, Miriam's cup, becoming an elder, and more.

We think of rituals -- the patterned ways of doing things that have shared and often multiple meanings -- as being steeped in tradition and therefore unalterable. But rituals have always been reinvented. When we perform ancient rituals in a particular place and time they are no longer quite the same rituals they once were. Each is a debut, an innovation: this Sabbath meal, this Passover seder, this wedding -- firsts in their own unique ways.

In the last 30 years there has been a surge of interest in reinventing ritual, in what is called minhag America. Ochs describes the range and diversity of interest in this Jewish-American experience and examines how it reflects tradition as it revives Jewish culture and faith. And she shows us how to create our own ritual objects, sacred spaces, ceremonies, and liturgies that can be paths to greater personal connection with history and with holiness: baby-naming ceremonies for girls, divorce rituals, Shabbat practices, homemade haggadahs, ritual baths, healing services.

Through these and more, we see that American Judaism is a dynamic cultural process very much open to change and a source of great personal and communal meaning. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Accessible and lively!
Vanessa Ochs has done scholars, ritual innovators, and activists a wonderful favor.Not only does she write analytically and ethnographically in clear, jargon-free prose about the movements, ritual transformations and people that have reshaped American Jewish life.She has also provided useful road maps and ideas for people seeking relevance and meaning in Jewish life.I am definitely assigning this in my sociology of American Jewish culture courses!

Sara Harwin, Judaica artist
Ochs' view from standing in the stream of Jewish time is one of observer and enthusiastic participant. The new rituals she describes come from the full range of Jewish practices-from Orthodoxy through Jewish renewal. Her "boxed" explanations of how to perform the new/evolving rituals are great directions for trying something new. ... Read more

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Product Description
Charlie and Marv have to create an invention for school. But it’s due tomorrow! Lola thinks she is an amazing inventor, and she keeps pestering Charlie and Marv with her ideas. But just as the boys are about to give up, Lola has a brilliant idea that saves the day! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Little Sister
Charlie and Lola are lovable characters the author makes real to little people with real-life situations. Excellent illustrations. ... Read more

Product Description

This major study offers a broad view of the writing and careers of eighteenth-century women poets, casting new light on the ways in which poetry was read and enjoyed, on changing poetic tastes in British culture, and on the development of many major poetic genres and traditions.

Rather than presenting a chronological survey, Paula R. Backscheider explores the forms in which women wrote and the uses to which they put those forms. Considering more than forty women in relation to canonical male writers of the same era, she concludes that women wrote in all of the genres that men did but often adapted, revised, and even created new poetic kinds from traditional forms.

Backscheider demonstrates that knowledge of these women's poetry is necessary for an accurate and nuanced literary history. Within chapters on important canonical and popular verse forms, she gives particular attention to such topics as women's use of religious poetry to express candid ideas about patriarchy and rape; the continuing evolution and important role of the supposedly antiquarian genre of the friendship poetry; same-sex desire in elegy by women as well as by men; and the status of Charlotte Smith as a key figure of the long eighteenth century, not only as a Romantic-era poet.

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Customer Reviews (2)

Unique approach, comprehensive and well-researched
This is a book everybody interested in Eastern Europe should read. I pretty much liked the approach of the author and his general idea of revealing the historical sources of information that led to the present image of the Balkans. All the basic patterns, the prejudices, everything that makes you think what you think nowadays about the Balkans, Central Europe and Russia.

It's obvious that Wolff is well travelled and has went through numerous sources. This book's strong side is the unique approach to analyzing texts written by travellers during the Enlightenment and showing their sometimes shockingly naive conclusions. It's not only educational and academic, but also fun to read. Recommended.

Enlightenment on the Enlightenment
All too often people think of the Enlightenment as a group of smart people thinking about why we are so wonderful.The flip side of Enlightenment thinking is that to make Europeans seem so wonderful, the Philosophes described themselves against an Other, who possessed all the undesirable traits not accepted by the "Enlightened" people.Wolff shows how the Philosophes, with limited actual knowledge of Eastern Europe, used the civilizations east of Germany to show the benefits of living in the West.During the Enlightenment the language used to describe Eastern Europe ascribed barbaric qualities to the people and offered little faith that the people could ever "evolve" as Western Europeans had.Wolff uses maps and traveler's accounts to show the influence the philosphes had on perceptions of Eastern Europe.It is rather disconcerting to note that many of these same perceptions persist today. ... Read more

Product Description
This paperback addition to our Photobiography series, Inventing the Future,documents the life of Thomas Edison. This prolific American is recognized as one of history's greatest inventors. His 1,093 patented inventions include the light bulb, the phonograph, and the microphone.

Young readers learn why Edison believed that "genius is one per cent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." An inspiring lesson in the rewards of dogged perseverance, Inventing the Future also illustrates how Edison's greatest legacy is the research laboratory, where constant experimentation remains the necessary prelude to discovery.

Marfé Ferguson Delano's portrait of this quirky original includes clippings from Edison's notebooks and images of the inventor at work—and occasionally at rest.

Awards include: Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People—NCSS/CBC Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children—NSTA/CBC American Library Association Notable Book James Madison Book Award—Honor Book ... Read more

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Schlechty shows both educators and parents how to envision reform and design quality educational systems. He explains how the visioning process must be rooted in real shared beliefs, how mission statements must unpack visions into concrete goals that are connected to action, and how the results of reform can be usefully assessed. Drawing on the author's vast experience in the day-to-day work of implementing school reform, Inventing Better Schools offers new approaches for setting standards and ensuring accountability--and includes samples of actual mission statements and strategic plans of successful school districts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A clear explanation why municipal schools will not survive
Lest make things clear form the start, I am from a beautifully country (Chile) that have over 90% of students in voucher schools, some private, some municipal, the proportion in Municipal schools is going down year to year, parents are moving to private-held schools, and municipal students numbers goes down, from overt 75% some years ago to below 50% now, and continues to shrink. It looks like that parents, if they have the possibility; they move to better-performing schools.

The simple power behind the general success of U.S. is the ability (and liberty) of persons to walk-out and obtain the service elsewhere, it puzzled me that a so simple, and sensible, idea has a significant part of the educators against it. When people spoke of liberty, in general, is fine, when people spoke of liberty to choose school is bad.

This is why I bought this book; I like to understand the position of anti-vouchers, maybe I got convinced, but I don't, the book is a compelling list of thinks going bad in municipal school today, and shows a supposed path to improve things, by developing an action plan to have better municipal schools, the tool to convince of the necessity of change is fear, fear that if they don't improve the vouchers are coming!

The book is a starling list of things that make for underperforming municipal schools, from School boards managed by conflicting interest groups, to curricula reform (that that author suggests is not working)and a hope that this time they have a working plan to improve municipal schools, the necessity of making system changes, but the author also recognizes than this are the kind of changes more difficult to obtain. The chapter "Changing the system" start withalong list of difficulties to change, including to assess than "Structural changes that is not supported by cultural changes will eventually overwhelmed by the culture" after such strong expression one a the right to think that Mr. Schlechty is on a vain trail, as cultural changes are the most difficult to do.

Well, they have plenty of time to try this path or another or another, in the mean time they will keep children chained to his local municipal school, simply, by negating the possibility that they move with is tax money elsewhere.

No Hyperbole Intended ~ Schools are Dinosaurs!
First and foremost this book is so well organized it made it a pleasure to read.Schlechty clearly outlines and summarizes all 12 chapters in the Preface. Don't miss it!This book is not a light topic ~ so focusing the reader where the author was headed was greatly appreciated.

Schlechty claims that American public schools are in urgent need for dramatic improvement or they take the risk of becoming extinct. And the key to improving the schools is the quality of the work students are provided. Students need to be engaged in their learning and their work should reflect relevance to their needs to become socially and academically prepared for the next century. He says all students are entitled to a high quality of education. I couldn't agree more!

Here are two other aspects that I found powerful about this book (besides the organization style). 1) Schlechty clearly states what he perceives the problem is with American public schools and how he came to that conclusion and 2) he then provides the reader with an aggressive cookbook style solution to the problem (the action plan).

The author lives up to the title, Inventing Better Schools An Action Plan for Educational Reform.

I recommend this book to anyone who cares about our children's future: parents, students, educators, administrators, community leaders, superintendents, business leaders, etc. because it takes ALL of US to make the changes needed to Invent Better Schools and this book is a great starting point.

A Must Read for Public School Reformers
Inventing Better Schools, An Action Plan for Educational Reform, by Phillip C. Schlechty, is a must read for those interested in educational reform in the public schools including teachers, administrators, schools boards, and local educational leaders. Any district wishing to make systemic changes may wish to use this book to provide a common starting point for reform dialogue.

Schlechty presents his case as to the urgent need for public school reform and challenges educators to redefine what their role is in providing quality education for students. His two basic tenants for the urgent need for reform is the fear that public education could be lost to a voucher system and the increased need for people to have adaptive skills to be successful in an information based society.

The starting point for educational reform is the basic mission of schooling. Schlechty states, "The aim of schooling is an educated citizenry, but the core business of schooling is engaging students in work that results in their learning what they need to learn to be viewed as well educated in American society (page 31)." In his philosophy, if schools are looked at as a business, students are the primary customers.

Inventing Better Schools emphasizes that reform efforts in the past fail because the changes are not embodied by the whole organization and the culture that surrounds the schools. All stakeholders need to be involved in the reform process. To enable systemic change, four key questions need to be answered before by educational leaders:
1. Why is change needed?
2. What kind of change is needed and what will it mean for us when the change comes about?
3. Is what we are being asked to do really possible? Has it been done before? By whom? Can we see it in practice?
4. How do we do it? What skills do we need and how will they be developed (page 208)?
In the appendix, two districts provide examples of what goals and action plans they have by answering key questions like the ones above.

Take the time to read Inventing Better Schools, An Action Plan for Educational Reform before spending enormous amounts of energy on efforts that may only have limited lasting impact on education. Schlechty sums up his mission when he writes, "...great leaders are needed if real change is to occur. My hope is that this book will find such leaders and that they will find this book useful (page 185)."

A rare opportunity to engage in educational reform debate
Inventing Better Schools provides a rare opportunity for school administrators to to 'look over the shoulder' of a successful practitioner of educational reform.

Schlechty (pronounced Schlek-ty) predicates the teaching program on the belief that it is the teachers' jobs to actually ENGAGE students in meaningful learning.A radical idea!

He states: "Viewing students as a customer places the the school in the position of accepting the proposition that the school's obligation is to invent work sufficiently attractive that the students engarge in it voluntarily.(Coercion may gain compliance, but it does not produce engagement and commitment.

It is the obligation of the school and the teacher to invent work that attracts the attention and compels the energy of students, for it is in inventing products that customers will buy that a customer- focused business creates the conditions of its own survival."

Across the world the public school system is under threat and Phil Schlechty provides the most practical scenario for its survival that I have read.

** We are starting a school administrators' reading group/ discussion forum in our district and this text is our starting point.Over 30 principals nominated to be in this program in two days.

A stirring book for those who want to make a difference!
Few authors have been able to writea more practical and informative guide to reforming the American educational system than Phillip Schlecthy. He explains both the postive and negative aspects of education today and provides strategies for redesigning schools to become focused on producing high quality, engaging work for students. Thought-provoking questions are included as tools to help districts transformas well as cases studies which exemplify effective educational reform. Inventing Better Schools is revolutionary, thorough and bound to make an impact on anyone who is serious about revitalizing American schools ... Read more

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Ken and Yetta Goodman are renowned and revered worldwide for their pioneering, influential work in the field of reading/literacy education. In this volume major literacy scholars from around the world pay tribute to their work and offer glimpses of what the future of literacy research and practice might be.

The book is structured around several themes related to research, practice, and theories of reading and literacy processes that characterize the Goodmans’ scholarship. Each chapter reveals how the author’s scholarship connects to one or both of the Goodmans’ work and projects that connection to the future – what are the implications for future research, theory, practice, and/or assessment? This milestone volume marking the hugely significant work of the Goodmans will be welcomed across the field of literacy education.

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An inside look at the ad industry's reigning hot shop captures the volatile process of ad making, discussing power struggles, brainstorming sessions, the creative process, setbacks, integrity, and success. 60,000 first printing. ... Read more

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In 1920, as its population began to explode, Los Angeles was a largely pastoral city of bungalows and palm trees. Thirty years later, choked with smog and traffic, the city had become synonymous with urban sprawl and unplanned growth. Yet Los Angeles was anything but unplanned, as Jeremiah B.C. Axelrod reveals in this compelling, visually oriented history of the metropolis during its formative years. In a deft mix of cultural and intellectual history that brilliantly illuminates the profound relationship between imagination and place, Inventing Autopia shows how the clash of irreconcilable utopian visions and dreams resulted in the invention of an unforeseen new form of urbanism--sprawling, illegible, fractured--that would reshape not only Southern California but much of the nation in the years to come. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Sprawl ...and how it got to be that way
As a former resident of Southern California who has often wondered how the L.A. area got to be so congested, so disorganized, and so bogged down with freeways, Jeremiah B.C. Axelrod's fascinating new book, Inventing Autopia:Dreams and Visions of the Modern Metropolis in Jazz Age Los Angeles provided me with some answers.

Contrary to popular belief, the sprawl that characterizes the L.A. area did not just spring up in a haphazard fashion.Instead, as Axelrod argues, this pattern of development resulted from the process of conflict over competing visions of possibilities.Going back to the early 20's, planners in L.A. were divided between two camps.One group sought a concentric model of L.A. with a downtown business zone and outlying areas devoted to suburbs (think of a target with the bull's eye as the downtown region and the series of circles spreading out).This model dominated the major Eastern metropolis such as Chicago and New York City.

The other model, based on utopian visionary Ebenezer Howard's notion of "the garden city", offered a different view of urban development.Howard proposed the garden city as an alternative to the alienation of the modern city "to disrupt and debunk the concentric emphasis on the city by replacing it with an ideal of self-contained towns ordered on a more human scale."In this way, "the garden city would be tailored to promote social familiarity and community interaction instead of alienation and impersonality endemic to the metropolis."This vision of L.A. sought to provide residents with a more humane balance to the onward march of modernity.

Axelrod's analysis traces how the social and political clash of these competing ideologies resulted the establishment of Southern California as a "postsuburban region."Rob Kling, Spencer Olin and Mark Poster characterize this pattern of development as "the fundamentally decentralized spatial arrangement...in which a variety of commercial, recreational, shopping, arts, residential, and religious activities are conducted in different places, linked primarily by private automobile transportation." (p. 221) For a detailed analysis of this phenomenon readers are encouraged to check out their book, Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County since World War II.

The impact of these changes are still being experienced today, not only in Southern California, but across the country. Axelrod has provided us with a highly readable and informative analysis to help us better understand how "postsuburbia" became the dominant model for communities.Recommended for those who struggle each day with lengthy commutes, congested roadways and rampant growth.If you've ever wondered how did it get this way, this is the book for you.

Learning from Los Angeles!

This is a truly groundbreaking book.Los Angeles is always taken to be the epitome of urban sprawl, yet as Axelrod shows with immense learning and panache, that "sprawl" was actually the result of careful planning.It didn't just happen.I found the discussion of horizontal versus vertical cities especially useful, and book's treatment of racial and class factors that transformed LA is even-handed and enormously helpful.This book belongs on your shelf next to Reyner Banham and Mike Davis, but Axelrod is more learned than either:with his help, we watch the city change and grow and its current geography and culture begins to make perfect sense.AUTOPIAS is also immensely readable!

Fresh insight to recent history
For one who has lived through the transformation of Los Angeles from a charming semi-tropical small city to a megatropolis I found the careful development and charming style of the author to be engrossing.There is a wealth of information and crucially placed photographs that illustrate the author's reasoned conclusions that the growth of Los Angeles was not random but planned at every stage and still approaches the dreams of the millions who moved there.

That other cities across the U.S. have emulated Los Angeles in their growth and decentralization is not surprising after reading this book. It makes me view the current urban landscape and its attendant problems with fresh vision.

... Read more

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American public history—in magazines and books, television documentaries, and museums—tends to celebrate its subject at all costs, even to the point of denial and distortion. This does us a great disservice, argues William Hogeland in Inventing American History. Looking at details glossed over in three examples of public history—the Alexander Hamilton revival, tributes to Pete Seeger and William F. Buckley, and the Constitution Center in Philadelphia—Hogeland considers what we lose when history is written to conform to political aims.

Questioning the resurrection, by both neocons and the left, of Alexander Hamilton as the founder of the American financial system—if not of the American dream itself—Hogeland delves deeply into Hamilton's brutal treatment of working-class entrepreneurs. And debunking recent hagiographies of Pete Seeger and William F. Buckley, Hogeland deftly parses Seeger's embrace of communism and Buckley's unreconstructed views on race.

Hogeland then turns his attention to the U.S. Constitution Center in Philadelphia (the location of Barack Obama's speech on race), comparing its one-note celebration of the document to the National Park Service tours of nearby Independence Hall. The Park Service tours don't advance any particular point of view, but by being almost purely informative with a kind of hands-on detail, they make the past come to life, available for both celebration and criticism. We should be able to respect the Constitution without being forced to our knees before it, Hogeland argues; we can handle the truth about the Framers' intense politicking and compromises. Only when we can ground our public history in the gritty events of the day, embracing its contradictions and difficulties, will we be able to learn from it.

Praise for William Hogeland:

"For William Hogeland, thinking about history is an act of moral inquiry and high citizenship. A searching and original voice."
—Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland

"Hogeland writes like a novelist, reports like a newsman (he is one,) and makes [the] historic judgments of a man who has done his homework."
—Blue Ridge Business Journal

A Boston Review Book ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fascinating and Intriguing Reading
These essays all exhibit erudite scholarship, imaginative insights, a passionate involvement in American history and culture, and superb writing.Hogeland makes every page dramatic with telling details and little-known facts.Who would have imagined that two charismatic figures as disparate as William F. Buckley, Jr. and Pete Seeger had anything in common, but Hogeland's account of their often intentionally obscured early years elicits important similarities. And a walk with him through The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia is eye-opening and somewhat disturbing.
I considered withholding one star from my rating only because I was frustrated that there were only three sections in this superb book.I wanted more! ... Read more

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Organized around common rhetorical situations that occur all around us, INVENTING ARGUMENTS, Fourth Edition, shows you that argument is a living process rather than a form to be modeled. Through the text's prominent focus on invention, you will learn to recognize the rhetorical elements of any argumentative situation and apply the tools of argument effectively in your own writing. The basic layers of argument are introduced in early chapters, with material arranged into increasingly sophisticated topics beginning with the most obvious or explicit layers (claims) and moving to more implied or "hidden" layers (values, beliefs, ideology). By the time you finish Chapter 4, you will have a thorough understanding of argument--which you can then apply not just to the invention projects in chapters 6-11 but also to your writing for other college courses and beyond.Students receive the most up-to-date information on MLA documentation with the enclosed tri-fold card providing NEW 2009 MLA Handbook formats. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Good
The book arrived in time. It looks good, no marks or torn pages or anything. The cover is a little faded but it's nothing. The book also has a little funky smell to it, but over all it's good.

Nice paperweight
This was the text for my introductory composition course. The authors discuss methods for inventing and improving arguments with rhetoric, grammar, and other points of style. They write well and with authority on the subject. However, that material totals about 100 pages; the bulk of this 864 page brick is filler, primarily essays pulled from other publications and some student essays (their addition being the main apparent addition over the first edition) that weren't worth being published in the first place. For instructors' purposes, the text offers numerous activities and MLA/APA guides, but nothing that couldn't be found in shorter and more detailed books.

Great book until it fell apart...
So far this term we've just been in the beginning chapters, as soon as we moved to the back of the book the pages fell out.They weren't torn out, they hadn't even been bound into the book. ... Read more