A Ghost at Heart's Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption

Book Description

Sixty short stories and poems reveal the sometimes heartbreaking, often affirming tales of adoption. Written from the point of view of birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees, this unique anthology spans nations and cultures. Includes works by Isabel Allende, Charles Baxter, Edward Hirsch, Alison Lurie, Joni Mitchell, Alberto Rios, Mary TallMountain, and others.

Customer Reviews:

I didn't get it.......2006-08-07

As the grandmother of 3 adoptees, I was eager to get this
book an was sorely disappointed. It did not give me any
insights...........a lot of it I just could not relate to.
I made myself read it through to the end, hoping that
I would find some thoughts that would connect me to the
poems, etc. Fortunately, my precious adoptees are all
aware of their beginnings, know that God makes all children and
is the glue that holds all families together.

A Rich Tapestry of Truth & Beauty.......2002-11-08

"A Ghost at Heart's Edge" is a rich tapestry of truth, beauty and pain, woven with heartfelt honesty. It offers rarely seen glimpses into all facets of adoption, not just the standard "joyous" reunions that are always more complex in real life than in TV drama. It should be required reading for anyone considering adoption. For those already adopted or who have adopted a child, it will ring with boldly familiar truth. I am pleased to be included in this groundbreaking work.

A Family Treasure.......2002-03-16

Susan Ito and Tina Cervin have skillfully compiled a beautiful meditation that challenges our most insidious assumptions of what it means to be a True Family. Required reading for anyone with a beating heart.

What a Collection!.......2001-06-14

You don't need to be an adopted child or adoptive parent to love this collection. You need only to have been a child or a parent. This collection is about the strings that link us to the most important people in our lives. From the stories by Chitra Divakurni and Isabel Allende to the poetry by editors Susan Ito and Tina Cervin - what gems! This is a book that -"after the long drought and the barren silence" (from a poem by Edward Hirsch included in the collection) - embraces families of all ethnicities and walks of life to shine a literary light on what it means to be a parent, to be a child. I feel so lucky to have found it. Highly recommended.

The Most Literate Adoption Reader.......2001-04-12

As as adoptive mom & as a writer, I find it hard to locate books that satisfy my yearning for both literary fulfillment AND insight into the "triad" that is Adotpion. "Ghost at Heart's Edge" is that rare book; It's elevating intellectually, an imaginative opening (lots of them) while giving deep thought to what adoption, at its "heart" entails.

This is not a "reunion" book, good though those are, nor is it a psychological tome, good though theory can be for understanding. Rather, this compendium is literature of a high order and insight with unusual depth. I've carried my copy, literally, from East coast to West, from Canada to Hawaii, hoping to meet one of the editors and get it signed. Along the way, I dip in and out of these poems and stories, and am never anything but fully immersed. Highly recommended, and not just for those who are in Adoptive world, but for us with a hole in our hearts or, better said by the editors, with a Ghost at the Heart's Edge, which includes virtually all of us. Yes? Yes!

Book Description

In June 2001, there was a decidedly new look to the graduating class at Virginia Military Institute. For the first time ever, the line of graduates who received their degrees at the "West Point of the South" included women who had spent four years at VMI.

For 150 years, VMI had operated as a revered, state-funded institution-an amalgam of Southern history, military tradition, and male bonding rituals--and throughout that long history, no one had ever questioned the fact that only males were admitted. Then in 1989 a female applicant complained of discrimination to the Justice Department, which brought suit the following year to integrate women into VMI.

Philippa Strum traces the origins of this landmark case back to VMI's founding, its evolution over fifteen decades, and through competing notions about women's proper place. Unlike most works on women in military institutions, this one also provides a complete legal history--from the initial complaint to final resolution in United States v. Virginia--and shows how the Supreme Court's ruling against VMI reflected changing societal ideas about gender roles.

At the heart of the VMI case was the "rat line": a ritualized form of hazing geared toward instilling male solidarity. VMI claimed that its system of toughening individuals for leadership was even more stringent than military service and that the system would be destroyed if the Institute were forced to accommodate women.

Strum interviewed lawyers from Justice and VMI, heads of concerned women's groups, and VMI administrators, faculty, and cadets to reconstruct the arguments in this important case. She was granted interviews with both Justice Ginsburg, author of the majority opinion, and Justice Scalia, the lone dissenter on the bench, and meticulously analyzes both viewpoints. She shows how Ginsburg's opinion not only articulated a new constitutional standard for institutions accused of gender discrimination but also represented the culmination of gender equality litigation in the twentieth century.

Women in the Barracks is a case study that combines both legal and cultural history, reviewing the long history of male elitism in the military as it explores how new ideas about gender equality have developed in the United States. It is an engrossing story of change versus tradition, clear and accessible for general readers yet highly instructive and valuable for students and scholars.

Customer Reviews:

Arguing past each other.......2002-07-30

Philippa Strum's sympathies clearly lie with those who argued for admitting women to the Virginia Military Institute. However, they haven't prevented her from giving us a comprehensive and fairly balanced look at the VMI case from start to ... if not finish, at least to the graduation of the first women to begin the school in the rat line.

One area where Strum's analysis is particularly strong is in tracing the history of anti-discrimination and equal rights law in the United States. She shows the jurisprudential evolution of the idea that, rather than women requiring special protection, all people are entitled to the rights and benefits of equal citizenship, regardless of sex. Indeed, following the trend of relevant Supreme Court cases as the author lays it out for us, it's hard to see how VMI's defenders could have believed the Court would ever do anything *but* order the publicly-funded military academy to admit women on an equal basis.

But believe it they did, and Strum shows how the two sides in the case were arguing fundamentally different points: VMI, that tax-funded single-sex education served a public good, and the Justice Department that, whether single-sex education is good or not, public funding of it (VMI being a government school) is unacceptable under the 14th Amendment. Neither side seemed fully to understand the other, and Strum does a thorough job of showing how the two sides in many ways failed to confront one another's arguments head-on.

Strum frames VMI as a defender of outmoded stereotypes and anachronistic ways of thinking (notably the 'women-as-lady' myth, as she calls it). It's a portrait VMI's defenders no doubt resent, but it's clear that their focus on 'how men learn' versus 'how women learn' was based more on differences between men and women *as groups* than on what kind of system might be best for any given *individual*. After all, as Strum points out, if VMI's adversative system isn't right or attractive for most women, the undeniable fact (based on the number of male high school seniors who apply to VMI relative to their number nationwide, for example) is that it's not right or attractive for most men, either.

This brings us to some areas I wished Strum had developed further. Most interesting was her assertion -- based on circumstantial evidence -- that the Bush Administration (Bush I) must have blocked the Justice Department from arguing that VMI's treasured adversative system was unnecessary for molding the kind of citizen-soldier leaders that VMI exists to produce. Certainly (as Ed Ruggero relates in 'Duty First: West Point and the Making of American Leaders'), the USMA ultimately decided its adversative system was actually counterproductive for that purpose, and so abandoned it. But Justice planted its flag on the (arguably weaker) ground that forcing VMI to admit women would not cause a fundamental change in the VMI system or ethos. The jury is still out about whether that's proven true.

Another question this book raised for me that Strum left entirely unaddressed was the appropriateness of cause-activists pursing their agenda on the bench. Specifically, Strum titles her chapter on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 'The Advocate.' Justice Ginsburg (clearly the hero -- can we still say 'heroine'? -- of this book) spent her pre-Court career promoting a certain understanding of law and pursuing specific social and policy objectives. Once on the bench, judges assume a mantle of impartiality -- in exchange for which they enjoy the 'procedural consensus' Strum defines as the key to translating Court decisions into social change. And yet, Strum makes it clear that Ginsburg's jurisprudence in the VMI case was of a piece with her earlier work. Strum quotes another legal scholar describing the VMI decision as 'the vindication for [Ginsburg's] legal career ... the opinion she hoped the Court would one day arrive at when she first started arguing cases of discrimination in the 1960s' (p. 295). Is it right for judges (of any philosophical persuasion) to continue as advocates once they're on the bench? Public acceptance of that idea would seem to threaten the very 'procedural consensus' the advocates rely upon to achieve their goals.

That question aside, though, I enjoyed reading this comprehensive look at the VMI case. Despite clear indications of where she stands on the question, a few broad ideological brush strokes (conservatives are frequently described as 'angry'), and the occasional off-the-wall comment ('Nothing had been more central to the South than racism' [p. 102].) the author's presentation of both sides of this important case was, on the whole, equitable and balanced. As I said, it's hard to escape the conclusion that VMI's stand was doomed from the start. So long as government runs schools, they will be subject to the political process. And in 1996 as in 1864, VMI couldn't withstand the weight of Uncle Sam, no matter how much its defenders loved it, or how fervently they sacrificed to protect it.

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Women in the Barracks: The VMI Case and Equal Rights
Philippa Strum
Manufacturer: University of Kansas Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LTT5YW

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Women in the Barracks: the VMI Case and Equal Rights.(Book Review): An article from: Journal of Southern History
D'Ann Campbell
Manufacturer: Southern Historical Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B00082568Q
Release Date: 2005-07-31

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Southern History, published by Southern Historical Association on February 1, 2004. The length of the article is 592 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Women in the Barracks: the VMI Case and Equal Rights.(Book Review)
Author: D'Ann Campbell
Publication: Journal of Southern History (Refereed)
Date: February 1, 2004
Publisher: Southern Historical Association
Volume: 70 Issue: 1 Page: 199(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Women in the Barracks: The VMI Case and Equal Rights

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Women in the Barracks: The VMI Case and Equal Rights
Philippa Strum
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MU86RW

Book Description

This study presents a refined Afrocentric critique of world politics. Rejecting earlier wholesale condemnations of Eurocentrism, the author instead roots Afrocentrism in its capacity to offer itself as a worldview supportive of scientific paradigms suggesting social science theory. Arguing that African peoples--their history and humanity--are denigrated in many Eurocentric analyses, Henderson makes clear that Africans in particular, though not exclusively, must promote paradigms rooted in their own historical image and interests. The author offers kimira, an historical African-centered paradigm rooted in an analysis of cultural groups, as a distinct framework for explicating global political dynamics, and an appropriate starting point toward a new understanding of international affairs.

Book Description

Discover the latest advances in discrete distributions theory

The Third Edition of the critically acclaimed Univariate Discrete Distributions provides a self-contained, systematic treatment of the theory, derivation, and application of probability distributions for count data. Generalized zeta-function and q-series distributions have been added and are covered in detail. New families of distributions, including Lagrangian-type distributions, are integrated into this thoroughly revised and updated text. Additional applications of univariate discrete distributions are explored to demonstrate the flexibility of this powerful method.

A thorough survey of recent statistical literature draws attention to many new distributions and results for the classical distributions. Approximately 450 new references along with several new sections are introduced to reflect the current literature and knowledge of discrete distributions.

Beginning with mathematical, probability, and statistical fundamentals, the authors provide clear coverage of the key topics in the field, including:
* Families of discrete distributions
* Binomial distribution
* Poisson distribution
* Negative binomial distribution
* Hypergeometric distributions
* Logarithmic and Lagrangian distributions
* Mixture distributions
* Stopped-sum distributions
* Matching, occupancy, runs, and q-series distributions
* Parametric regression models and miscellanea

Emphasis continues to be placed on the increasing relevance of Bayesian inference to discrete distribution, especially with regard to the binomial and Poisson distributions. New derivations of discrete distributions via stochastic processes and random walks are introduced without unnecessarily complex discussions of stochastic processes. Throughout the Third Edition, extensive information has been added to reflect the new role of computer-based applications.

With its thorough coverage and balanced presentation of theory and application, this is an excellent and essential reference for statisticians and mathematicians.

Customer Reviews:

A must in any Statistician's personal library.......2000-04-04

This book was providencial during my Master in Statistics research. It is THE reference when it comes to discrete distributions, a topic in Stats which has bloomed in the last two decades. This new edition covers some state-of-the-art topics in the field, such as mixture distributions and new families of discrete random variables. It is well written, but never verbose: it cuts to the chase and will be of great help to a practitioner in dire need of an arcane test. And finally, believe it or not, discrete random variables are FUN. The more you know about them, the more you perceive they can be applied in almost any practical situation. And you don't need much more than the contents of this book to be an expert.

Visual Statistics Text with Student CD-ROM package

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Excellent book

Visual Statistics Text with Student CD-ROM package
David P Doane , Ronald L Tracy , and Kieran Mathieson
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill/Irwin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0072400943

Book Description

Visual Statistics is an interactive multimedia tool designed to teach statistical concepts in a graphical and user-friendly environment. The software consists of 21 topics that are typically covered in an Introductory Statistics or Business Statistics course, and can be found in other courses such as Regression, Quality Control and Forecasting. The software can be used alone or with a textbook. This unique tool fosters "interactive learning" through competency-building exercises, individual and team experiments, relevant examples and built-in databases.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent book.......2002-04-30

This book is for people who want to learn statistics by conducting experimentations.
With the aid of my notebook, I really enjoyed having a portable statistical laboratory which enhanced my understanding to some difficult statistical theories. The examples also enrich the understanding as well as provide a practical dimension to most of statistical concepts.

Four Volume Set: Univariate Discrete Distributions Second Edition Continuous Univariate Distributions Volume One Second Edition Continuous Univariate Distributions ... Edition Discrete Multivariate Distributions

Average customer rating:

amazing content, but too many errors
Mixed Feelings
Johnson et al. (2nd Ed.) Continuous Univariate Distributions
beta distribution
beta distribution

Four Volume Set: Univariate Discrete Distributions Second Edition Continuous Univariate Distributions Volume One Second Edition Continuous Univariate Distributions ... Edition Discrete Multivariate Distributions
Norman L. Johnson , N. Balakrishnan , and Samuel Kotz
Manufacturer: Wiley-Interscience
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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General | Mathematics | Science | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0471127914

Customer Reviews:

amazing content, but too many errors.......2001-12-05

I agree completely with the reader from Ithaca. The last time
I used it for something important, there was a serious typo in a
formula, and much time was wasted.

Mixed Feelings.......2000-05-11

I have mixed feelings about this book.

On the positive side, it contains a wealth of useful information about a large number of continuous probability distribution functions. I use it all the time as a reference in my work. The book contains a extensive bibliography which has been useful time and time again when I need to look up things in the literature.

My first complaint is there are a number of mistakes. I realize this is a huge mass of information and mistakes are inevitable, but I found it quite unacceptable that the probability density function for the Normal distribution was incorrect. Equation 13.1 is missing a factor of sigma in the denominator. This one was quite obvious, but there have been several more subtle errors, which have caused me to waste a large amount of time searching my own work for mathematical errors, until I finally realized the source of the error was the book!

My second complaint is consistency (or lack thereof). The symbols and notation used for one distribution are not necessarily used in the same way for another distribution. This can be quite frustrating! Also, the organization from chapter to chapter (each chapter corresponds to one distribution or one distribution family) is not consistent. For example, for the Lognormal distribution, there is one section (called "Introduction") which gives the pdf of the distribution and a second section (called "Moments and Other Properties") where the moments of the distribution are listed. For the Weibull distribution, both the pdf and the moments are in one section (labeled "Definition"). This sounds like a minor point, until it comes time for you to look one of these things up!

In summary, I need this book to do my job. But I keep wishing there was another book that had the same information, but with better accuracy and organization.

Johnson et al. (2nd Ed.) Continuous Univariate Distributions.......2000-04-02

Johnson and Kotz in particular continue their series of ongoing descriptions and analyses of probability/statistics distributions which is an ingenious production. They have the Creative Genius talents of summarizing, organizing, emphasizing open questions, and open mindedness to new ideas (although I have not quite tested them on some very ideas of my own). These qualities in various combinations can also be found in Allday's 1998 book in physics (which I reviewed)and Weinberg's 1974 and later books in physics (some of which I reviewed). Johnson et al. have some Creative Genius categories which are rarely found. For one thing, they cross-categorize distributions ("graphs" for the non-specialist)by their applications to real world problems, which is usually notoriously lacking in math and physics publications (beyond one or two problems). Secondly, they CHARACTERIZE distributions by various properties such as heredity (the same distribution holds for a sum of variables as for one variable, etc.), exponential derivation from other distributions, conditional expectations (I would prefer logic-based probability (LBP) expectations, but it's better than nothing), etc. In other words, their very categorization of distributions is by critical research categories and fundamental logical-factual categories, at least as far as they know them. I recommend this book and the whole series from the same authors (or at least most of them) without reservations except the ones mentioned for LBP, and I urge specialists in these fields to recommend that their students and even "laymen" (non-academic people)purchase this volume and hire a consultant or tutor to translate them or explain them in closer to ordinary English if their probability/statistical background is lacking or deficient.

beta distribution.......2000-03-23

I need to review the MLE for the parameters of Beta distribution

beta distribution.......2000-03-23

I need to review the MLE for the parameters of Beta distribution

Program statistics research technical report

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Program statistics research technical report
Paul W Holland
Manufacturer: Educational Testing Service
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006RBSC6

Thesaurus of Univariate Discrete Probability Distributions

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Thesaurus of Univariate Discrete Probability Distributions
Gejza Wimmer
Manufacturer: Stamm
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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UNIVARIATE DISCRETE DISTRIBUTIONS
NORMAN L. KOTZ, SAMUEL KEMP, ADRIENNE W. JOHNSON
Manufacturer: JOHN WILEY AND SONS LTD
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N5EXHS

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