Cambria Press
An American urban residential landscape, 1890-1920; Chicago in the progressive era.
This volume offers a description and analysis of grassroots urban residential improvement in Chicago during the Progressive Era, 1890-1920, addressing the relationship of contradictory elements of progressive thought, the changing meaning of grassroots improvement, and the motivations of its practitioners. Turnbull discusses the contributions of village improvement societies to the residential landscape; the relationship between the residential real estate industry and grassroots improvement; the objectives, activities, membership, politics, and organizational structure of national improvement associations; the practice of planting street trees; and increasing illiberalism in these associations and improvers that contributed to racial segregation in housing. Turnbull has taught history at Victoria U., Wellington, the U. of Sydney, and the U. of New South Wales in Australia. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Andragogical instruction for effective police training.
Vodde, director of the School of Criminal Justice and Legal Studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University, details a two-year study that compared the efficacy of an andragogical instructional methodology to that of a traditional, prescriptive, pedagogical, and militaristic format of basic police training. The study reveals that not only did the andragogical approach yielded greater outcomes in terms of skills and competencies, it was preferred among recruits due to the emphasis placed on experiential learning and a collegiate and collaborative approach. Vodde identifies six thematic constructs by which basic police training programs can be organized and administered, which prepare recruits for working within a quasi-military hierarchal organization and for the emotional and physical challenges associated with police work. About 100 pages of appendices offer a real-life example of a training curriculum, sample letters and forms, pre- and post-training questionnaires used in the study, and statistical tables used for evaluating the results of the study. The book is for educators and researchers in criminal justice and police training. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The art of literary thieving; The catcher in the rye, Moby-Dick, and Hamlet.
Glasser (President Emeritus, Southern Vermont College) analyzes the common themes of fate and uncontrollable external forces in Hamlet, Moby Dick and Catcher in the Rye and notes how this connected and "intensified vision of reality" can lead to a greater appreciation of these literary works as one. Written for students and scholars of literature, this volume addresses the concept of free will as it pertains to protagonists Hamlet, Ahab and Holden Caulfield. The author also makes a case for including J.D. Salinger in the same lofty group as William Shakespeare and Herman Melville by examining the shifting criticism toward his masterpiece as well as its enduring popularity among younger generations. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Building a healthy black Harlem; health politics in Harlem, New York, from the Jazz Age to the Great Depression.
Wilson (history, Salem State College, Massachusetts) explores the many ways that black residents of Harlem mobilized around issues of health and health care between the world wars, as one crucial dimension of community building. He covers health conditions in the district in the early years of black urbanization, the criminalization of magico-religious workers, health activism and the Harlem Hospital, community agency and responses to health conditions, the dubious impact of the New Deal on health and well-being in Harlem, and enduring poor health. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The challenge of change in Africa's higher education in the 21st century.
The rationale for the anthology is that a multiplicity of views is necessary to shape the future of higher education towards the continent's development, and scholars from a wide range of disciplines based across sub-Sahara Africa and in the US and Australia provide that perspective. Their topics include the need for strategic planning, students' satisfaction with academia in Nigeria, lessons from the British and American legal education systems on developing programs in Commonwealth African law schools, total quality management and health services administration in Zambia's University teaching hospital, journalism education in the age of Global Terrorism, science in higher education and research institutions, and strong women as messengers of change and revolution. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Corporate governance and organization life cycle; the changing role and composition of the board of directors.
Roche (management and international business, Salisbury U., former investment officer, World Bank) studies the function of corporate boards of directors during the different phases of the life cycle of an organization. He defines the role of the board in three primary functions: monitoring the organization's financial performance, advising top management on strategies and risks, and interacting to help acquire resources, which can include information and contacts. Topics include organization life cycle and the changing role of the board, the rationale for qualitative research and reflections from preliminary fieldwork, research questions and interview protocol design, interviewee profiles, fieldwork finding and analysis. Appendices include additional information such as the role of the board member, experience versus expectations, the role of board members in various organizations, and the most important issues that directors face today. The book will interest anyone responsible for board member selection and existing and prospective board members. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Development of the software industry in post-reform India; comparative regional experiences in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala.
Written for economists, software engineers and international business executives, this guide to software industry in post-reform India emphasizes development strategies, national policies and the country's emergence as a major world center for software production since the early 1990s. Kumar is a senior officer in the Indian Administrative Service, and he provides a comparative analysis of the industry in terms of regional variations of software exports in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. The author also provides a strategy for high-technology industries in the less developed regions in India. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The evolution of aesthetic and expressive dance in Boston.
When Weber (dance, Bridgewater State College) asked about the history of modern dance in Boston, she was consistently told that it did not exist at whatever year the speaker arrived in town — dates ranging from the 1970s to the 1950s. That inspired her to investigate the city's historical dance tradition and specifically Boston's relationship to expressive dance as it emerged in the US during the early 20th century. She explores the trends in health reform, women's rights, and expression that set the stage for the acceptance of expressive movement as an art; what populations supported this change; the most influential teachers and performers; and what was being taught in the schools and offered choreographically to Boston's citizens. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The revival of Scottish Gaelic through education.
Efforts to eliminate Scottish Gaelic, not to mention the Highland culture whose citizens spoke it, began — more than likely — in the last decade of the 16th century. But it had already been dying out. McIntyre (U. of Phoenix and the San Bernardino Art Institute) reports on the numerous efforts to revive the language through education, pointing out that the loss of a language is also the loss of a distinct worldview, an ethnic and cultural identity, and a linguistic heritage, among other things. He discusses a number of language revival programs, such as Gaelic immersion primary schools, high schools, nursery schools, formal and informal adult education, and cultural activities. He also contends that the fight to revive Gaelic also has political implications for minority rights. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The role of special education interest groups in national policy.
Itkonen (education, California State U.-Channel Islands) investigates what types of groups participate in special education somewhere on a continuum between interest group and social movement; the relationship between group types and how they frame policy interests; how groups negotiate differences among themselves and with policy makers; and the relationships between a group's organizational character, its choice of targets and strategies, how it frames its policy interest, its arenas of action, its effectiveness in the legislative and judicial arenas, and the kinds of issue positions it takes. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Travel narratives from New Mexico; reconstructing identity and truth.
Dean (English, Texas A&M International U.) offers a scholarly examination of how a number of popular American and Native American authors responded to and described their characters' experiences in the unique environment of New Mexico. Possibly even more so, Dean explores the effect on individuals as their expectations confront the real experience of the place. As the author put it in his conclusion, "Travel is an act of negotiation between what we expect to experience and what we actually experience." He notes further that the act of travel can have an indelible effect on the individual's perception of self and place in the world when expectations wither in the face of reality, regardless of ethnicity or perspective. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Ubiquity, mobility, security.
Anderson (communications, Elon U.) directs the Imagining the Internet on-line compilation of survey studies and documentary videos on the potential future of the Internet; Rainie, formerly managing editor of U.S. News and World Report, directs the Pew Internet and American Life Project. They analyze recent responses of people heavily involved in the Internet to their questions about the possible directions of evolution for the communication technology and socio-political phenomenon. Overall, they find anticipation that improvements in the technology will continue but will not overcome human foibles, that challenges to privacy will multiply, that intellectual property wars will persist, and that the demands of work will continue to invade leisure sanctums. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Villages, women, and the success of dairy cooperatives in India; making place for rural development.
This is a geographic study of India's cooperative dairying program, which was the centerpiece of national dairy development in India from the 1970s until the liberalization of the dairy sector in the 1990s. Basu (geography, U. of South Florida) focuses on the meaning of development in the context of the village, thus replacing the question of success and failure of dairy development as defined by development institutions and replaces it with examination of discursive and material productions of livelihoods and identities in rural places. She approaches the issue with three main lines of inquiry concerning the ways village-level political struggles find expression in the village dairy cooperative, the extent to which existing distributions of agricultural resources are reflected in the membership of village dairy cooperatives, and the ways gender divisions of labor shape the ability to participate in cooperative dairying. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Welsh mythology: a neo-structuralist analysis.
Revising his Ph.D. dissertation at Aberdeen University, Scotland, Miles-Watson (anthropology, U. of Tallinn) applies the approach to myth most associated with Lévi Strauss to the traditional mythology of Wales. He begins by explaining structuralism and the neo-structuralist version that he adopts; then setting out the context of the material in the various texts, editions, and manuscripts. The following chapters focus in turn on each of the tales or groups of tales in The White Book of Rhydderch and the Red Book of Hergest: the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, the romances, the ancient Culhwch and Olwen, Peredur, and the very different dreams of Ronobwy and Maxen Wledig. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
