Friday, May 29, 2009

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Product Description [provided by the publisher]

A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize–winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier.

In the 1680s the slave trade was still in its infancy. In the Americas, virulent religious and class divisions, prejudice and oppression were rife, providing the fertile soil in which slavery and race hatred were planted and took root.

Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh north. Despite his distaste for dealing in “flesh,” he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, “with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady.” Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master’s house, but later from a handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved.

There are other voices: Lina, whose tribe was decimated by smallpox; their mistress, Rebekka, herself a victim of religious intolerance back in England; Sorrow, a strange girl who’s spent her early years at sea; and finally the devastating voice of Florens’ mother. These are all men and women inventing themselves in the wilderness.

A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and of a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.

Acts of mercy may have unforeseen consequences.

PS3563.O8749 M47 2008

Riefenstahl Screened: An Anthology of New Criticism

Product Description [provided by the publisher]
"Screening Riefenstahl" offers an opportunity to rethink the place of Leni Riefenstahl and her work in contemporary culture and in academic discourse.Leni Riefenstahl is larger than life. From the lure of her persona as it enters our homes via television to our pleasure in the recognition of film images at rock concerts, to her place as part of the history of the Nazi period, Riefenstahl lives on in our imagination and in our cultural productions. Thus, the editors' introduction to this volume examines the manner in which Riefenstahl 'haunts' debates on aesthetics and politics, and how her legacy reverberates in the contemporary cultural scene. The essays that follow explore our highly invested discursive struggles over the meaning of her persona and films in this particular historical moment: post-unification, post-twentieth century, post-Riefenstahl.The editors view the collection as a three-part framework. The essays in the opening section of the book show that Riefenstahl is still very much alive and well - and controversial - in popular culture. Fair game for the contemporary memory work, she is part of productions on the History Channel; her images provide inspiration for bands like Rammstein. Her films continue to determine the way in which we think about the Nazi period, providing instantly recognizable images and messages that often go unquestioned.We cannot separate these phenomena from Riefenstahl's years of avid self-fashioning. With that fact in mind, the second section of the book offers treatments of the shifting, mobile relationship between Riefenstahl's stubborn attempts to create and control her personae and her reactions to others' re-appropriations of the meanings of her life and work. Reading the texts and discourses surrounding 'Riefenstahl', these scholars treat her memories - and her repeated assertions about herself - as a springboard into understanding anew how we might approach her films in a productive way.The closing section of the volume comprises essays that go right to the heart of the matter: Riefenstahl's films and photography. The new contexts, theoretical discussions and emerging discourses that animate these essays include Scarry's treatise on beauty, justice and the global, the problems of history and memory, the place of Riefenstahl's filmmaking technique in contemporary cinema, and her appropriation of German musical traditions, to name only some of the critical trajectories addressed in these contributions.Fueled by the work of a diverse range of scholars, then, It insists upon a critical self-examination that maps a topography of how scholars and teachers avail themselves of Riefenstahl's corpus.

PN1998.3.R54 R54 2008

CLEP Official Study Guide 2009

Product Description [provided by the publisher]
Every year, students save countless hours and dollars through the College-Level Examination Program (R) (CLEP (R)). CLEP examinations allow students to demonstrate college-level knowledge, for which they can earn credit at more than 2,900 colleges and universities. The CLEP Official Student Guide 2009, developed by the test maker, features practice questions for all 34 CLEP exams. It includes exam descriptions and test-taking tips and strategies.

LB2353.68 .O44 2009

Statistical Abstract of the United States 2009


Bureau of Census; 128 edition

HA202.U52009

Friday, May 22, 2009

Adobe After Effects CS4 Classroom in a Book

Product Description provided by the publisher:

Visual effects and motion graphics pros of all stripes - from broadcast professionals to VFX supervisors to Web designers who need to produce occasional video segments - will welcome the dramatically accelerated features provided in the brand-new After Effects CS4. This best-selling book has been revised to cover all that's new in this upgrade: the ability to import 3D layers from Photoshop; the Cartoon effect that converts live-action footage into stylized imagery; Adobe Device Central CS4, which lets you preview and test animations for mobile devices, and more. Designed around a single complex project that’s broken down into manageable lessons, this book-and-DVD package mimics a real-world workflow - but one that readers tackle at their own pace. The DVD contains all the lesson files and footage readers need to complete the lessons.

About the Author
The Adobe Creative Team of designers, writers, and editors has extensive, real-world knowledge of Adobe products. They work closely with the Adobe product development teams and Adobe's Instructional Communications team to come up with creative, challenging, and visually appealing projects to help both new and experienced users get up to speed quickly on Adobe software products.

TR858 .A36 2009

Jews and American Comics: An Illustrated History of an American Art Form

Product Description provided by the publisher:

A treasure trove of Jewish comic book art by both acknowledged masters and little-known stars, from Rube Goldberg to Aline Kominsky Crumb.

"Jews built the comic book industry from the ground up, and the influence of Jewish writers, artists, and editors continues to be felt to this day."MAD magazine writer Arie Kaplan

Readers have long cherished the work of comic masters such as Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer, and Art Spiegelman, all of whom happen to be Jewish. Few, however, are probably aware that the Jewish role in creating the American comic art form is no less significant than the Jewish influence on Hollywood film making. Filled with the most stunning examples of this vital artistic tradition, Jews and American Comics tells us how the "people of the book" became the people of the comic book.

With three brief essays by Paul Buhle, the well-known historian of American Jewish life, Jews and American Comics offers readers a pictorial backstory tracing Jewish involvement in comic art from several little-known strips in Yiddish newspapers of the early twentieth century through the mid-century origins of the modern comic book and finally to contemporary comic art, which has at last found its place in museums, in private collections, and on the bookshelves of both critics and millions of avid readers.

Featuring more than two hundred examples of the work of Jewish comic artists going back a century—much of which has been unavailable to the general public for decades—this extraordinary collection will be a major contribution to Jewish and American cultural history. Jews and American Comics is also a gorgeous package, sure to be treasured by comic art lovers and fans of Jewish culture—and destined to become the bar and bat mitzvah gift of the decade.

About the Author

Paul Buhle is a senior lecturer at Brown University, author or editor of more than thirty books, including the three-volume Jews and American Popular Culture. He has also co-edited several books, including A Dangerous Woman: The Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman (The New Press). He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

PN6725 .J49 2008

The Black Girl Next Door: A Memoir

Product Description from the publisher:

A powerful, beautifully written memoir about coming of age as a black girl in an exclusive white suburb in "integrated," post-Civil Rights California in the 1970s and 1980s.

At six years of age, after winning a foot race against a white classmate, Jennifer Baszile was humiliated to hear her classmate explain that black people "have something in their feet to make them run faster than white people." When she asked her teacher about it, it was confirmed as true. The next morning, Jennifer's father accompanied her to school, careful to "assert himself as an informed and concerned parent and not simply a big, black, dangerous man in a first-grade classroom."

This was the first of many skirmishes in Jennifer's childhood-long struggle to define herself as "the black girl next door" while living out her parents' dreams. Success for her was being the smartest and achieving the most, with the consequence that much of her girlhood did not seem like her own but more like the "family project." But integration took a toll on everyone in the family when strain in her parents' marriage emerged in her teenage years, and the struggle to be the perfect black family became an unbearable burden.

A deeply personal view of a significant period of American social history, The Black Girl Next Door deftly balances childhood experiences with adult observations, creating an illuminating and poignant look at a unique time in our country's history.

F869.P25 B37 2009

Cognitive Therapy of Schizophrenia

Product Description provided by the publisher:

Drawing on the authors' decades of influential work in the field, this highly practical volume presents an evidence-based cognitive therapy approach for clients with schizophrenia. Guidelines are provided for collaborative assessment and case formulation that enable the clinician to build a strong therapeutic relationship, establish reasonable goals, and tailor treatment to each client's needs. Described in thorough, step-by-step detail are effective techniques for working with delusional beliefs, voices, visions, thought disorders, and negative symptoms; integrating cognitive therapy with other forms of treatment; reducing relapse risks; and enhancing client motivation. Special features include reproducible client handouts and assessment tools.


RC514 .K5653 2008

Shakespeare on the Couch

Product Description provided by the publisher:

Drawing upon a vast literature in psychoanalytic journals either upon Shakespeare’s characters themselves or alluding to those characters in the course of other topics, this book discusses eight of Shakespeare’s plays and the relationships between the main
characters within them. Psychoanalytic and literary approaches sometimes diverge, but they can also concur in seeing characters either as true examples of different psychological states and types of relating or as symbolic of aspects of the personality. The chapters contain many references to psychoanalytic interpretations from Freud onwards.

The importance of this book lies in its drawing together from a large number of disparate sources, many of which will be inaccessible to those who do not have access to the journals or psychoanalytic databases. It is relevant for counselors and therapists, as well as for those interested in literature, particularly in Shakespearean studies. It is written for the thinking lay reader, and does not blind the ordinary reader with psychoanalytic terminology and concepts. Readers who are therapists may gain some insights into aspects of some of their clients; everyone should be encouraged through these ideas and theories to muse upon aspects of his or her own personality, thoughts, fantasies and behaviors.

PR3065 .J33 2008

Sexual Enslavement of Girls and Women Worldwide

Product Description provided by the publisher:

They are in different countries but share the same hell. Maria is one of 14 women lured from Mexico to Seattle, Washington, with the promise of a job, then held by force in a brothel and required to sexually service men 12 hours a day. Anna is a young mother from the Ukraine who left her husband and children there to take a job as a housecleaner in Italy, where she was put in a barred, guarded house and forced into prostitution. Nadia is an 11-year-old girl in Africa, kidnapped and forced to have sex with a militiaman daily, with a machete ever ready nearby should she refuse. All three women are part of horrific sex slavery that has drawn the attention of officials in countries around the globe. It is not rare; officials say it is increasing, at least partly due to the billions of dollars it brings in for organized crime. The U.S. State Department estimates 800,000 victims, mostly women and children, are trafficked for sex trade across nations each year and millions more are trafficked within countries - including the U.S., Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands. As a Seattle Times reporter explained when Maria's case hit the news there, the reality is that sex slaves for the most part are young women and teenaged girls who come from almost every one of the world's poorer countries and end up in almost every country where there is a combination of sexual demand and money. But they are also in undeveloped Africa, in prisons internationally, locked in forced marriages, or sold to men by parents.

In this book, Parrot and Cummings outline the scope and growth of the sex slave market today and explain the history with various elements - including economic, political, cultural, and religious - that make this trade difficult to fully expose, quell, combat, and shut down. We hear from girls and women around the world describing how sexual enslavement has tortured them physically, emotionally, and spiritually, whether they suffer at the hands of prison guards in Turkey, criminals in Washington, or buyers dealing with parents who sell their daughters for the sex slave trade in Greece, Belgium, or France. The authors also describe national and international efforts and legislation passed or in design to stop sex slavery. Successful countries and regions are spotlighted. Then Parrot and Cummings point out actions still needed to stop the sex slavery trade.

HQ281 .P37 2008

No Time To Think: The Menace of Media Speed and the 24-hour News Cycle

Product Description

An eviscerating look at the state of journalism in the age of the 24 hour news cycle by a Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic and a veteran news correspondent.

No Time To Think focuses on the insidious and increasing portion of the news media that, due to the dangerously extreme speed at which it is produced, is only half thought out, half true, and lazily repeated from anonymous sources interested in selling opinion and wild speculation as news. These news item can easily gain exposure today, assuming a life of their own while making a mockery of journalism and creating casualties of cool deliberation and thoughtful discourse. Much of it is picked up gratuitously and given resonance online or through CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and other networks, which must, in this age of the 24-hour news cycle, "feed the beast."

In dissecting this frantic news blur, No Time to Think breaks down a number of speed-driven blunders from the insider perspective of Charles Feldman, who spent 20 years as a CNN correspondent, as well as the outsider perspective of Howard Rosenberg, who covered the coverage for 25 years as TV critic for The Los Angeles Times.

No Time to Think demonstrates how today's media blitz scrambles the public's perspective in ways that potentially shape how we think, act and react as a global society. The end result effects not only the media and the public, but also the government leaders we trust to make carefully considered decisions on our behalf. Featuring interviews ranging from former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw to internet doyenne Arianna Huffington to PBS stalwart Jim Lehrer to CNN chief Jonathan Klein to a host of former presidential press secretaries and other keen-eyed media watchers, this incisive work measures lasting fallout from the 24-hour news cycle beginning in 1980 with the arrival of CNN, right up to the present. [Description provided by the publisher]

PN4867.2 .R67 2008

African American Folktales

Product Description

African American culture has a rich tradition of folktales. Written for students and general readers, this volume gathers a sampling of the most important African American folktales. Included are nearly 50 tales grouped in thematic chapters on origins; heroes, heroines, villains, and fools; society and conflict; and the supernatural. Each tale begins with an introductory headnote, and the book closes with a selected, general bibliography. Students learning about literature and language will gain a greater understanding of African American oral traditions, while social studies students will learn more about African American culture.

African American culture has long been recognized for its richness and breadth. Central to that tradition is a large body of folklore, which continues to figure prominently in literature, film, and popular culture. Written for students and general readers, this book conveniently gathers and comments on nearly 50 African American folktales. Included are fictional tales, legends, myths, and personal experience narratives. These exemplify the vast diversity of African American culture and language.

The tales are grouped in thematic sections on origins; heroes, heroines, villains, and fools; society and conflict; and the supernatural. Each tale is introduced by a brief headnote, and the volume closes with a selected, general bibliography. Students learning about literature and language will gain a greater understanding of African American oral traditions, while students of history will learn more about African American culture. [Description provided by the publisher]

GR111.A47 A37 2009

Crossing the Continent 1527-1540: The Story of the First African-American Explorer of the American South

The true story of America's first great explorer and adventurer—an African slave named Esteban Dorantes

Crossing the Continent takes us on an epic journey from Africa to Europe and America as Dr. Robert Goodwin chronicles the incredible adventures of the African slave Esteban Dorantes (1500-1539), the first pioneer from the Old World to explore the entirety of the American south and the first African-born man to die in North America about whom anything is known. Goodwin's groundbreaking research in Spanish archives has led to a radical new interpretation of American history—one in which an African slave emerges as the nation's first great explorer and adventurer.

Nearly three centuries before Lewis and Clark's epic trek to the Pacific coast, Esteban and three Spanish noblemen survived shipwreck, famine, disease, and Native American hostility to make the first crossing of North America in recorded history. Drawing on contemporary accounts and long-lost records, Goodwin recounts the extraordinary story of Esteban's sixteenth-century odyssey, which began in Florida and wound through what is now Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, as far as the Gulf of California. Born in Africa and captured at a young age by slave traders, Esteban was serving his owner, a Spanish captain, when their disastrous sea voyage to the New World nearly claimed his life. Eventually he emerged as the leader of the few survivors of this expedition, guiding them on an extraordinary eight-year march westward to safety.

On the group's return to the Spanish imperial capital at Mexico City, the viceroy appointed Esteban as the military commander of a religious expedition sent to establish a permanent Spanish route into Arizona and New Mexico. But during this new adventure, as Esteban pushed deeper and deeper into the unknown north, Spaniards far to the south began to hear strange rumors of his death at Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico.

Filled with tales of physical endurance, natural calamities, geographical wonders, strange discoveries, and Esteban's almost mystical dealings with Native Americans, Crossing the Continent challenges the traditional telling of our nation's early history, placing an African and his relationship with the Indians he encountered at the heart of a new historical record. [Description provided by the publisher]

E125.E8 G66 2008


Civic Engagement in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices

Product Description
Numerous studies have chronicled students lack of trust in large social institutions, declining interest in politics, and decreasing civic skills. This book is a comprehensive guide to developing high-quality civic engagement experiences for college students. The book defines civic engagement and explains why it is central to a college education. It describes the state of the art of education for civic engagement and provides guidelines for designing programs that encourage desired learning outcomes. In addition, the book guides leaders in organizing their institutions to create a campus-wide culture of civic engagement. [Description provided by the publisher]

LC220.5 .C58 2009

Monday, May 11, 2009

Shakespeare and Modern Culture

Product Description [Provided by the publisher]
From one of the world’s premier Shakespeare scholars, author of Shakespeare After All (“the indispensable introduction to the indispensable writer”–Newsweek): a magisterial new study whose premise is “that Shakespeare makes modern culture and that modern culture makes Shakespeare.”

Shakespeare has determined many of the ideas that we think of as “naturally” our own and even as “naturally” true–ideas about human character, individuality and selfhood, government, leadership, love and jealousy, men and women, youth and age. Yet many of these ideas, timely as ever, have been reimagined–are indeed often now first encountered–not only in modern fiction, theater, film, and the news but also in the literature of psychology, sociology, political theory, business, medicine, and law.

Marjorie Garber delves into ten plays to explore the interrelationships between Shakespeare and twentieth century and contemporary culture–from James Joyce’s Ulysses to George W. Bush’s reading list. In The Merchant of Venice, she looks at the question of intention; in Hamlet, the matter of character; in King Lear, the dream of sublimity; in Othello, the persistence of difference; and in Macbeth, the necessity of interpretation. She discusses the conundrum of man in The Tempest; the quest for exemplarity in Henry V; the problem of fact in Richard III; the estrangement of self in Coriolanus; and the untimeliness of youth in Romeo and Juliet.

Shakespeare and Modern Culture is a tour de force reimagining of our own mental and emotional landscape as refracted through the prism of protean “Shakespeare.”

PR2989.G35

Nursing Informatics: Scope and Standards of Practice

Nursing informatics (NI) integrates nursing science, computer and information science, and cognitive science to manage, communicate, and expand the data, information, knowledge, and wisdom of nursing practice.
Nurses trained in NI support improved patient outcomes through their expertise in information processes, structures, and technologies, thus helping nurses and other care providers to create and record the evidence of their practice.

This updated edition emphasizes NI competencies and functional areas. Overall. it articulates the essentials of NI, its accountabilities and activities - the who, what, when, where, and how of its practice - for both NI specialists and generalists. Its standards are those by which all nurses practice NI, and reflect and specify practice priorities and perspectives. The book's discussion scope of NI practice - its characteristics, development and trends, education and training, its practice environments and settings, its general and specialized practice roles, and its ethical and conceptual roots - lends the context for optimal use of the standards.

While primarily for practicing nurses and nursing faculty and students, the book is also an essential source document for other health informatics, healthcare providers, researchers, and scholars, and those in funding, legal, policy, and regulatory activities.[Description provided by the publisher]

RT50.5.N8696

Genetics/ Genomics Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice

While primarily for practicing nurses, it is also an essential resource for others in related health care work.

RB155.5.I555

Cardiovascular Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice

Reference guide for practicing nurses and nursing faculty and students.

RC674.C366

Barthé: A Life in Sculpture

From the Publisher
Richmond Barthé (1909-1989) was the first modern African American sculptor to achieve real critical success. His accessible naturalism led to unprecedented celebrity for an artist during the 1930s and 1940s. After four years of academic training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Barthé reaped the benefits of the 1920s New Negro Arts Renaissance. He also endured difficulties as a gay, Roman Catholic, Creole sculptor working during the nation's post-World War II era. He gave his black subjects in particular an intensity and sensuality that attracted important European American patrons and the press.

Much of Barthé's biography is recorded here for the first time in tandem with analyses and interpretations of his sculpture. Born to Creole parents in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, Barthé's art brought him out of poverty. At the height of his fame, he was often criticized for not talking about injustices African Americans faced. He expected his art to speak not only for itself, but also for him. He fled the United States for an expatriate's life in Jamaica only to learn that, as an artist and a black man, he could not be accepted on his own terms, and there was no such thing as a perfect home. Barthé: A Life in Sculpture reveals the breadth of Barthé's oeuvre through readings of his figurative masterworks that attest to accomplishments in a life lived well beyond race.

NB237.B367.V46

Immigration (American Experience)

Product Description
The United States has often been referred to as a "nation of immigrants" - at some point in almost everyone's ancestry, someone journeyed to the land that is now the United States. Upon arrival, immigrants encountered people from different cultures, who often maintained different religious, social, and political beliefs, and who often perceived the newcomers as potential rivals for jobs and opportunities. "Immigration", now a volume in the "American Experience" series, examines the history of immigrants in the United States, updating their stories to the present. Coverage has now been extended to the years after the closing of Ellis Island, focusing on such contemporary issues as the experiences of illegal immigrants and the transformation of immigration law since September 11, 2001. This comprehensive volume presents the voices of immigrants as well as data on immigration to this country.Each chapter in "Immigration" begins with a detailed narrative section that chronicles the experiences of those who traveled to the United States as well as the reactions of religious and political leaders, social workers, and more. A chronology of events highlights important dates in the history of immigration. Eyewitness testimonies include passages from Thomas Jefferson, Jacob Riis, and Anna Quindlen, as well as hundreds of accounts from immigrants, social workers, politicians, and many others. Appendixes provide concise biographies of more than 100 important individuals, such as Benjamin Franklin, Jane Addams, and Cesar Chavez; as well as primary source documents, either full text or excerpts; a glossary; maps; graphs and tables; a through bibliography; and an index. "Immigration" is enhanced throughout by more than 110 black-and-white images, portraying immigration and immigrants in this country. [Description provided by the publisher]