Product Description
This brutally honest, moving and insightful book abouthigh school sports evokes the tradition of Friday Night Lights, BuzzBissinger’s classic book.

John Rosengren was given unlimited season-long access to theBloomington Jefferson Jaguars, a Minnesota championship team wherehockey is religion and failing to win is a mortal sin. Under thewatchful eye of pro scouts and the weight of massive expectations, theJaguars rank number one in the country.

This is a story of high drama and emotion; intense and poignant, it is dramatic narrative at its best. Dealing with the classic issues of what happens to boys under enormous pressure to win, Blades of Glory draws into sharp focus the challenges of divorce, teen suicide and performance-enhancing drugs.

Blades of Glory follows five of these young men and their coach, showing a rare look inside an elite high school program. It is both an insightful story for parents and a thrilling read for sports fans everywhere. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

An inside look into the world of Minnesota high school hockey
Folks, this is a hockey classic, John Rosengren paints a perfect picture for the reader on all the different characters involved in high school hockey in Minnesota. Put a log on the fire, pour yourself a cold one, kick back and enjoy this book.

Very enjoyableread from a number of perspectives
As a sports fan I found Blades of Glory to be a great story of a team's journey toward fullfillment of a life long dream. Rosengren does an outstanding job of highliting the ups and downs of high school athletics and the culture of youth/hs hockey. Additionally, the historical aspects of the book made me more appreciative of past programs and the role the sport plays in the hearts and minds of Minnesota residents.
However, as a high school coach, what I found even more valuable were the qualities and characteristics needed to build and maintain a successful program. Rosengren's brings to life a number of ethical questions that coaches face concerning winning, loyalty, and relationships making this a must read for anyone interested in coaching.

The Inside Story
This is a great inside look at an elite high school hockey program. From the players to the coaches to the parents to the cheerleaders to the fans, no angle is left unturned.

Humor, History, Controversy(orginally posted, Jan 1 2004)
Humor, history and controversy: Blades of Glory has it all. More important, Rosengren taps into truth from a variety of perspectives, including those parents, players, coaches--and scouts whose livelihoods depend upon not just upon a prospect's potential but also his circumstances.

But these aren't the reasons I selected the book in the first place. No, I picked up Blades of Glory because I'm a hockey fan (of all levels) and a hockey player; I selected the book because I have lived in Minnesota and have coached hockey (and other sports). I didn't know I'd learn so much about things I thought I knew about, and I didn't realize I'd get more than just a fleeting glimpse of the big hockey picture.

There is a wide variety of hockey books sitting on the virtual shelves at Amazon.com: NHL autobiographies, training manuals and minor league misadventures. I have read many of these books. I'll continue to read them--and will enjoy them for what they are. But these other books won't likely be laced with the same doses of humanity and history as Blades of Glory.

Great book - loved it
The story of Bloomington Jefferson Jaguar hockey in 2001 could easily have been written about my high school 15 years prior.I grew up one 'burb over and attended Tom Saterdalen's hockey schools as an early teen.It was held at the Bloomington Ice Garden in "prestigious West Bloomington" - the storied venue chronicled in the book.

High school hockey in the Lake Conference is a very big deal.I knew as much from the time I was a Mite and my dad took me to watch our community's team play.Yes it is competitive.Yes there is a win-at-all-cost mentality that draws fire from many - including some of those that have reviewed the book for this site.You can be the judge of whether that is good, bad, or neither.

We (and I'm including pretty much every male hockey player in my community) all wanted to suit up for Varsity very badly.We wouldn't have wanted it so much if it weren't as competitive, as important.Like professional sports, successes are a great source of civic pride.

Blades of Glory takes you inside this world for one sometimes glorious, sometimes frustrating season.Indiana basketball, Texas football, Minnesota hockey.This isn't participatory high school athletics in obscure sports at some random school.Rosengren does a very good job of capturing the emotions.He also weaves in enough tales to make stabs at social commentary without coming across as preachy.

My only knock against the book is that he opts for an effect that takes things out of their chronological sequence in order to emphasize certain emotions and certain points.(Example - wait until you read about the Jefferson Jaguars GIRLS hockey team late in the book.We hear about how some of the boy players are dating girls that play on the team throughout the book... their successful season is covered late, almost as an afterthought.Another example - much is written about a parent's critical letter to the community paper in the early 90s about Saterdalen's overzealous competitive drive.Context on the source is provided at the very end.I'm not sure why that was held back as some sort of finale.)

Anyone that thinks they'd like this book will.A great work.
... Read more

Product Description
Illustrated entries for each letter of the alphabet present information about the history, geography, natural resources, and important sights of Minnesota. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Minnesota is a great place...
...to live or to visit. The artwork and accompanying paragraphsclearly define what Minnesota is all about. Written for young people,it's a great gift for grownups as well. No wonder it's popular at da U. ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1922.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Product Description
Mentorship: The Essential Guide for Schools and Business

Selected as one of the best School to Work Programs by the U.S. Department of Education.

Many students learn best in mentorships, either as an alternative educational experience or as an added component to traditional education.Mentorships are being used increasingly by business leaders, companies, and schools.This book describes how to establish a highly successful program similar to that developed by the author.Criteria and sample forms for establishing a mentorship program are included and may be copied. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Step by step guide for integrating a mentor program
This book has a well oiled plan for mentorship with reasoning to back it up. This plan has been thoroughly researched and extensively tested to offer the reader a detailed step by step guide to mentorship in anyorganization.

If you're looking for a mentoring structure, a good start.
This book begins with a discussion of mentoring and when and why it might be appropriate.General issues regarding mentoring are discussed, such as finding mentors, developing relationships, involving school personnel,parents and the community.The book then goes into the specific mentoringproject entitled "The Mentor Program."Several questionnaires and formsare included for reference (although the forms are copyrighted).This bookexplains that successful mentorships don't just happen and aren't alwayseasy to set up.Several "how to" suggestions appear throughout the book. Of special interest is the preparation for participation in the firstaspect of the program called the "Mentor Seminar." That is a prerequisitefor participating in the "Mentor Field Experience," the actual mentorrelationship. Some good ideas can be gleaned from examining how thisprogram was set up and where it succeeded. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.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 an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.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

Book Description

Customer Reviews (3)

German social theory meets American scientism, and more
Toward the end of The Frankfurt School in Exile Thomas Wheatland reflects on the legacy of German proponents of Critical Theory active in the United States in the period of the 1930s through the 1960s, including for at least some of that time Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Franz Neumann, Friedrich Pollock, Paul Lazarsfeld, and especially Herbert Marcuse, among others.He observes that in the 1970s and 1980s adherents of the views associated with this group quickly found homes within the American academy, but that they "disappeared from the public intellectual arena."It is tellingly supportive of this conclusion that the reading audience for this book likely will be primarily academic specialists.

The Frankfurt School in Exile is probably best approached as a supplement to the more comprehensive histories by Martin Jay or Rolf Wiggershaus, but persons unfamiliar with those works will not be lost entirely since Wheatland provides sufficient background on both the institutional history and the ideas. He covers the American phase exhaustively, offering several fresh insights.

In 1934 The Institute for Social Research ("The Frankfurt School," then in exile in Geneva and headed by Horkheimer) relocated to the United States and attached to Columbia University.Wheatland uncovers new information on how this affiliation came about, with the alliance seeming to represent a win-win for both parties.

The relationship did not remain entirely congenial, however, since Columbia thought part of what it was getting was an empirical research capacity in sociology.Wheatland describes the vicissitudes of the attitudes of what he calls the "Horkheimer Circle" toward empiricism (versus theory), moving from resistance, to accommodation, then back again to an opposition to positivistic social science.Ultimately, though, Horkheimer, Pollock, and Adorno returned to the University of Frankfurt in 1949 and contributed to the adoption of American research methods in German sociology.

The Institute did not produce all that much in its years at Columbia, and much of what it did put out was in German, including articles for the theoretically oriented Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung.In 1939 Horkheimer and Fromm, who was the most well-known of the group in America (at the time), had a falling out over financial and possibly intellectual matters and Fromm moved on.

Wheatland explores the connections between the Horkheimer Circle and the "New York Intellectuals" (the author's capitalization; a sample of who he means includes Philip Rahv, Lionel Trilling, James Burnham, Clement Greenberg, Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, etc.).He concludes that overall there was only limited meaningful contact, which he attributes to Horkheimer's determination to insulate the Institute from politics.He covers what calls a "narcissism of small differences" dispute between Horkheimer and Sidney Hook (Horkheimer was critical of pragmatism, Hook of dialectical materialism). He also addresses some of the mass culture issues of interest to both groups, and relates a largely unsuccessful overture by Dwight McDonald to ally with the Institute on this subject.

Wheatland's final two chapters are on the relationship between the Frankfurt School, Marcuse in particular, and the New Left in the 1960s.He concludes that Marcuse may have been more influenced by the New Left than the New Left was by him.Based on personal experience I was prepared to resist this conclusion, but in the end I found Wheatland's case convincing.

A portion of the book was published previously as a journal article, and certain of the chapters give the appearance of having been prepared for that purpose.One consequence is that readers must tolerate a bit of repetition, where one wonders whether the author has forgotten that he has told us that before.

It is somewhat frustrating as well that many of the issues that interest the author turn out to lack documentation.I counted numerous apologies for "scarce archival material," "missing transcripts," and so on, hardly the author's fault but not the way one wants to fill up a history book.In some cases Wheatland was able to apply memoirs or oral interviews to help fill the gaps.

All in all, this is a valuable contribution to the history of social thought during a unique period of intersection of differing intellectual traditions.

The well-known history of Critical Theory in an unfamiliar light
"The Frankfurt School in Exile" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Wheatland's book interview ran here as cover feature on December 2, 2009.

It is a useful book...
Thomas Wheatland's book provides a useful historical account of the travels, connections, and ideas of an important Jewish intellectual movement. Wheatland agrees with Prof. Kevin MacDonald that a persistent motivation of the Frankfurt School was to understand why a working class revolution failed to occur in Germany.

This book should be read in conjunction with Amazon's other books: A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy (1994), Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (1998), and The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (1998)---the trilogy by Prof. Kevin MacDonald.

Prof. Wheatland is typical of so many American intellectuals who become caught up in the well-honed mystique of the Frankfurt School, completely losing their critical sense--this is why you have to read the trilogy of books by Kevin MacDonald to make sense of Thomas Wheatland's useful and well researched book. ... Read more

Product Description
Discusses the history, formation, development, and popularity of the Minnesota Vikings football team, including a look at individual players who have had an impact on the success of the team. ... Read more

Product Description
Guidance Procedures in High School was first published in 1950. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. This volume is number 1 in the Modern School Practices series; established in 1950 by the College of Education at the University of Minnesota, and the Bureau of Educational Research. The series is designed as a replacement to two earlier series: the Series on Individualization of Instruction and the Modern School Curriculum series. This monograph presents some recommended practices within the framework of a comprehensive and balanced program proposed for student personnel services in high schools. Topics discussed include: organizing and developing guidance services; orientation of new students; understanding the student through the individual inventory; counseling students; learning from group experience; health services; placement in jobs and in further training; and checking on effectiveness of the guidance program. ... Read more

Product Description
The Legal Status of Church-State Relationships in the United States was first published in 1934. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. ... Read more