Customer Reviews:
This book will not get you there.......2001-12-10
This book is written as the product of an Institute of Medicine initiative to reduce the mortality and morbidity from errors in the American healthcare system. The Institute of Medicine is a private organization created by congressional charter to advise the federal government on specific matters. Their mission statement is to "advance and disseminate knowledge to improve human health." This book is the final report of the Committee on the Quality of Health Care in America. Their homepage is available by searching the Internet using the full committee name. Membership of the committee and sponsors of the project are available at that web site.
The format of the book is to present evidence for quality problems in healthcare in America and make recommendations. The operational definition of quality used in the book is "The degree to which health care services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge." There are thirteen recommendations presented initially and are discussed in relevant chapters. The recommendations vary in scope from suggesting that multiple parties need to be committed to quality as a way to decrease the burden of disease to suggestions that specific agencies fund pilot studies to look at how reimbursement can be aligned with quality. Six major parameters are discussed as guiding quality and it is suggested that 15 specific conditions be a focus for improving quality.
There is no difficulty in identifying literature studies that demonstrate quality problems in hospital and clinical populations. A survey of current research is included in Appendix A. A review of the tables in this appendix show the types of quality markers that are typically studied in the literature. The authors make the argument that errors due to quality lapses or deficiencies need to be actively worked on and that the current high error rates are not acceptable. Health care has become a major political issue and the political factions are shaping up to be government and business on one side and physicians and other health care providers on the other. There has been a major revamping of the health care system in the past decade to control costs. That required the active cooperation of the insurance industry and government. There is still medical inflation and limited access with 40 million Americans uninsured. Should we believe that another cooperative effort between industry and government will improve quality any more than it has controlled cost or improved access?
The authors acknowledge weaknesses in their suggestions about changing the face of American medicine, but they minimize the adverse impact of the current funding mechanisms for medical care and the issue of information systems integration and security. A good example can be found in their application of engineering principles to clinical settings - - where teams see patients for four hours of direct contact time and the remaining time is for documentation and returning calls. That plan would not be economically feasible in many settings. The high cost and lack of flexibility of the current reimbursement schemes are not mentioned as a potential reason why these plans won't work.
Information technology is seen as a way to enhance both productivity and safety. The authors suggest that e-mail can lead to productive exchanges between physicians and patients. Many physicians have been doing this for years. Many have also stopped with the advent of security concerns about medical privacy. With larger IT systems the critical issue is backward compatability with older systems. That usually requires custom designs that are extremely expensive. Those problems usually need to be solved before bedside computing and decision support can be developed. Security is acknowledged as a problem that needs to be solved. In spite of a federal initiative in this area, the important precedent to remember is how the financial privacy of Americans was protected. The authors point out that medical privacy requirements need to be more stringent than other industries. At the same time they point out that some opinions suggest that there is a trade off between privacy protections and the need to advance information technology in health care. If they are suggesting that the Internet should be at the heart of this infrastructure and the Internet is not secure, what does that mean?
A practical approach might be to focus on the areas where data is entered into computer systems and make sure that non-human analysis occurs at those levels. For example, all hospitals enter pharmacy orders into computer systems. Many hospitals require that physicians write separate discharge orders. Both of these points are areas where there could be immediate improvements in accuracy. A focused study and solution could be engineered now. The necessary software and hardware requirements could be placed on a central web site and available for download by hospital and clinic IT staff. Existing reviewers could be charged with documenting the baseline level of errors and the degree of improvement.
This book succeeds as a broad survey of what has been done about quality in certain settings. It contains some interesting ideas about what can possibly be accomplished by applying conceptual advances from other fields. It does not discuss the significant drawbacks of evidence based medicine. It lacks a practical plan for transitioning to a new system and in effect creates a new chasm. With a work like this, whether you like the conclusions depends a lot on your interpretation of the evidence and your personal experience. As a practicing physician and a previous quality reviewer I have significant areas of disagreement with what is presented in this book. Areas of controversy are not elaborated upon. I suppose you could say that level of analysis is not required, but recommendations about the future of health care in America should at least meet the criteria of "evidence based" and all the evidence should be discussed.
George Dawson, MD
Essential Reading for Everyone in Health Care.......2001-12-02
If you are in anyway involved in health care, this is essential reading. Physicians, hospital administrators, purchasers, health plan execs, and grad students must immediately put this on the top of their reading list. Lives may depend on it.
In it, the highly respected Institute of Medicine builds a powerful case for how the current health care system is severely broken and how it has produced a "chasm" between what we known must be done for patients (based on current science of medicine) and what is actually done. The information conveyed is shocking but true. Even more importantly, the Institute gives us a plan for building a new, more accountable quality-driven approach to health care.
Read it and perhaps you too will be motivated to take action to improve health care delivery in America.
Book Description
In traditional scholarship, Native Americans have been conspicuously absent from urban history. Indians appear at the time of contact, are involved in fighting or treaties, and then seem to vanish, usually onto reservations. In Native Seattle, Coll Thrush explodes the commonly accepted notion that Indians and cities-and thus Indian and urban histories-are mutually exclusive, that Indians and cities cannot coexist, and that one must necessarily be eclipsed by the other. Native people and places played a vital part in the founding of Seattle and in what the city is today, just as urban changes transformed what it meant to be Native. On the urban indigenous frontier of the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, Indians were central to town life. Native Americans literally made Seattle possible through their labor and their participation, even as they were made scapegoats for urban disorder. As late as 1880, Seattle was still very much a Native place. Between the 1880s and the 1930s, however, Seattle's urban and Indian histories were transformed as the town turned into a metropolis. Massive changes in the urban environment dramatically affected indigenous people's abilities to survive in traditional places. The movement of Native people and their material culture to Seattle from all across the region inspired new identities both for the migrants and for the city itself. As boosters, historians, and pioneers tried to explain Seattle's historical trajectory, they told stories about Indians: as hostile enemies, as exotic Others, and as noble symbols of a vanished wilderness. But by the beginning of World War II, a new multitribal urban Native community had begun to take shape in Seattle, even as it was overshadowed by the city's appropriation of Indian images to understand and sell itself. After World War II, more changes in the city, combined with the agency of Native people, led to a new visibility and authority for Indians in Seattle. The descendants of Seattle's indigenous peoples capitalized on broader historical revisionism to claim new authority over urban places and narratives. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Native people have returned to the center of civic life, not as contrived symbols of a whitewashed past but on their own terms. In Seattle, the strands of urban and Indian history have always been intertwined. Including an atlas of indigenous Seattle created with linguist Nile Thompson, Native Seattle is a new kind of urban Indian history, a book with implications that reach far beyond the region.
Customer Reviews:
disapointing..........2007-06-24
Essentially another book about Puget Indians written by a college professor with no understanding or respect for tribal culture. The first thing that struck me was the lack of Native sources. Thrush mentions that he had a hard time finding Natives to interview for this book, esp Duwamish Tribal members. Perhaps then he should have held off writing the book until he developed relationships with his subjects?
The writing was also terrible. His thesis is mentioned literally almost very other paragraph; take this out and there is probably only 3 or 4 pages of "history".
I also found that using the translated version of Indian place names, sometimes without explaining the Native name or etymology, was extremely disrespectful to Native-Americans.
In the foreword Thrush compared the problems he's faced because of his sexual orientation with the plight of Puget Indians. With statements like that, I can understand why few natives would work with him for this book.
The only redeeming part of the book is the Section on the update of Waterman's native place names in Seattle, which wasn't written by Thrush.
To summarize, poorly written, no information or history, and extremely condescending and disrespectful to Puget Indians...
Must Read for PNW Historians.......2007-05-12
This is a great book. I met Dr. Thrush once when he was a tour leader for one of the Museum of History and Industry's tours of the Ballard Locks. His insights really come through in this book.
Native Americans in the beginnings and history of Seattle.......2007-05-02
With regard to the beginnings of the city of Seattle, the local Native Americans were not part of what was called the "Vanishing Race" of Native Americans from the westward growth of America. Native Americans played a large, vital, and conspicuous role in the founding and early growth of Seattle. Thrush, an assistant professor of history at the University of British Columbia, makes the point that the role of Native Americans regarding other cities is worth looking into as well. In Seattle, Native American men and women provided the large majority of the manual labor in such work as sawmills and fishing; and many started small businesses. By intermarriage, some Native Americans, particularly women, assumed prominent and influential positions in the community. The other side of the Native Americans' experience with Seattle is their being supplanted as more and more whites came to Seattle in the latter years of the 19th century. Subject to discrimination, racism, oppression, and demonization, the Native Americans lost their position in the city's economy and social structure. They were, for instance, labeled as "hostile," and said to be unable to adjust to urban life; the women were considered prostitutes. In recent years, the fundamental role of local Native Americans in Seattle's origins and the impression this had on the character of the city are being given their due. Numbers of Native Americans, showing an entrepreneurial spirit and media savvy equal to any big-city dweller, are finding places in today's Seattle. Thrush writes the full story of the changing social relationship of Native Americans to Seattle. Central to his perspective--noted in the "Foreword"--is the false, unsubstantiated dichotomy between "civilized" and "uncivilized" peoples. Following the text is an "Atlas of Indigenous Seattle" containing maps and Native American terms evidencing the prevalence of the Native Americans through the Puget Sound area, how much they had developed this area already through use of its resources, and the place of the Native American culture in the origins and development of Seattle.
Book Description
One part Lewis and Clark, one part Heart of Darkness, Brutal Journey tells the story of an army of would-be conquerors who came to the New World on the heels of Corts. Bound for glory, they landed in Florida in 1528. But only four of the four hundred would survive: eight years and a 5,000-mile journey later, three Spaniards and a black Moroccan wandered out of the wilderness to the north of the Rio Grande and into Cortss gold-drenched Mexico. The survivors brought nothing back other than their story, but what a tale it was. They had become killers and cannibals, torturers and torture victims, slavers and enslaved. They became faith healers, arms dealers, canoe thieves, spider eaters, and finally, when there were only the four of them left in the high Texas desert, they became itinerate messiahs. They became, in other words, whatever it took to stay alive long enough to reach Mexico, the only place where they were certain they would find an outpost of the Spanish empire. The journey of the Narvez expedition is one of the greatest survival epics in the history of American exploration. By combining the accounts of the explorers with the most recent findings of archaeologists and academic historians, Brutal Journey offers an authentic narrative to replace a legend of North American exploration.
Customer Reviews:
Good story.......2007-08-09
Definately worth reading. Not the greatest but far far from lame. A bit hard to follow at times. Overall though I would call it, interesting, somewhat gripping and well.... fun.
These were real men.......2007-07-09
Back when men were men...wow, these guys endured more than could be possibly imagined. In addition to starvation, captured Europeans might find themselves the victims of having their beards pulled out hair by hair by some of the indian tribes as they had never seen bearded men before. Truely an apropos title.
Amazing! Couldn't put it down........2007-05-22
What attracted me to this book was the history of Native Americans prior to European conquest. The descriptions of what they were like are fascinating. And the journey of Cabeza de Vaca is absolutely mind-boggling. This was better than any suspense thriller - I couldn't put it down.
Excellent supplement to Cabeza de Vaca's Narrative.......2007-05-04
I have always been fascinated by Cabeza de Vaca's dramatic story of survival in early 16th Century North America after being shipwrecked on the Texas coast. I saw the sensational (and greatly fictionalized) Mexican film, and a couple of years ago I read the excellent new translation of Cabeza de Vaca's NARRATIVE by Favata and Fernandez. I really cannot get enough of this story so I was thrilled when Paul Schneider's BRUTAL JOURNEY came to my attention. Schneider's book provides a lot of detailed background information for this story and focuses more on the whole ill-fated Narvaez expedition than on the story of Cabeza de Vaca's trek across Texas. He also suggests motives for why Cabeza de Vaca wrote the book in the first place and why he is sketchy on some parts of the narrative and extremely detailed on others. The other members of the expedition are more clearly defined in Schneider's book as well. Esteban, the black slave who also survived the harrowing trek comes into sharper focus. It is shocking to think that after all he went through, he was sold and was shipped back to the New World, this time as a guide. He then disappeared on a subsequent expedition, allegedly killed by hostile Indians. However there is the intriguing possibility that he survived and "went native," as several other members of the Narvaez expedition did, abandoning European ways to live the rest of his life among the Indians. I found this book quite gripping and would recommend it highly to lovers of Texas history and anyone with an interest in the early exploration of North America. Four stars.
NOT A WINNER.......2007-04-11
The epic story of the first crossing of North America, if you consider a lost party going from Fla into Tex and Mexico an epic crossing of North America.
Entire story could have been told in one chapter.
Very little is available on the events so the author takes other experiences of other explorers and plugs them in, saying they may have happened.
Consider this book a real rip off. Paul must have had a writers block and needed a few bucks.
Amazon.com
The title Atlantic Crossings refers to the cross-pollination of social thinking between the United States and Europe (primarily Britain) in the first half of the 20th century. Princeton history professor Daniel T. Rodgers's extensive narrative shows that while many Americans saw themselves as essentially isolationist, many ideas that influenced their daily lives, such as city planning and concepts of social security, were not homegrown. A network of government planners, academics, and concerned citizens communicated back and forth across the Atlantic; their correspondence was marked by controversy, and an aversion to "non-American" ideas persists in American social planning to this day (Rodgers notes the scuffles over health care reform in the early 1990s as one example). Rodgers has assembled a prodigious mountain of facts, and he's written a credible and comprehensive account of how people on both sides of the Atlantic contributed in sometimes surprising ways to the social reforms we consider utterly American. --Robert McNamara
Book Description
"The most belated of nations," Theodore Roosevelt called his country during the workmen's compensation fight in 1907. Earlier reformers, progressives of his day, and later New Dealers lamented the nation's resistance to models abroad for correctives to the backwardness of American social politics. Atlantic Crossings is the first major account of the vibrant international network that they constructed--so often obscured by notions of American exceptionalism--and of its profound impact on the United States from the 1870s through 1945.
On a narrative canvas that sweeps across Europe and the United States, Daniel Rodgers retells the story of the classic era of efforts to repair the damages of unbridled capitalism. He reveals the forgotten international roots of such innovations as city planning, rural cooperatives, modernist architecture for public housing, and social insurance, among other reforms. From small beginnings to reconstructions of the new great cities and rural life, and to the wide-ranging mechanics of social security for working people, Rodgers finds the interconnections, adaptations, exchanges, and even rivalries in the Atlantic region's social planning. He uncovers the immense diffusion of talent, ideas, and action that were breathtaking in their range and impact.
The scope of Atlantic Crossings is vast and peopled with the reformers, university men and women, new experts, bureaucrats, politicians, and gifted amateurs. This long durée of contemporary social policy encompassed fierce debate, new conceptions of the role of the state, an acceptance of the importance of expertise in making government policy, and a recognition of a shared destiny in a newly created world.
Customer Reviews:
Superior scholarship, but tedious at times.......2002-03-25
Daniel Rodgers' thesis in Atlantic Crossings is simple and direct: "the reconstruction of American social politics was of a part with movements of politics and ideas throughout the North Atlantic world that trade and capitalism had tied together." (3) He concludes that from the 1870s through World War II, America was not an internalist or an imperialist nation, but instead these years saw an "opening" for social reformers in the U.S. to import foreign models and ideals from other North Atlantic countries. Furthermore, these imported policies and reforms (mostly from Britain and Germany) were not adopted in America (if at all) unchanged upon reaching the Atlantic's western shores, but instead were adapted to the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of American society and political structure. Finally, Rodgers argues, the seeds of the New Deal can be found in the activities and positions of the social reform activists of the last two decades of the 19th century and the first thirty years of the 20th century.
Rodgers convincingly supports his thesis by describing "a largely forgotten world of transnational borrowings and imitation, adaptation and transformation" (7) from the 1870s through the 1940s, a time during which Americans had an abundance of solutions to the myriad social problems of their day. This "borrowing" was a process that changed significantly over time. Initially, Americans were primarily recipients of reform ideas from abroad. Later, during the prosperity of the 1920s, a more even exchange of social solutions took place among North Atlantic countries, which eventually led to "a great gathering...of proposals and ideas" in the New Deal. Finally, by the end of World War II, the differing experiences of the nations of the North Atlantic world and the varying effects suffered by each from the conflict largely ended the former transnational exchange, and saw the Cold War rise of American exceptionalism.
Rodgers provides numerous convincing examples of the cross-national exchange process of ideas and reforms to illustrate his arguments. Workmen's compensation insurance in America, for example, was based upon a pre-World War I British model, a "ready made solution with a history of success behind it" (248) that made similar acts in the U.S. possible. Additionally, housing, health and streetcars were a major concern of American social reformers in large cities, who often borrowed ideas about municipally-guided urban and industrial projects from experiments and visions in Berlin and London. As Rodgers notes regarding the new "self-owned" city, "municipalization was the first important Atlantic-wide progressive project...[that] borrowed experience and transnational example." (159) European precedents gave American progressives "a set of working, practical examples." (144) "He describes, however, in chapters 5 and 6, the impossibility of wholesale American import of strong European municipality due to the unique and equally strong traditions in the U.S. in favor of property rights, a tradition buttressed and maintained by legal tradition and the courts. One need only look at excess condemnation, widely practiced in Paris and London, to see an example of reforms disallowed by the courts, which held that public interests of taste and beauty did not surmount the rights of property owners. Housing in America "was a private matter," (196) unlike the European examples progressives saw.
Although some reviewers have taken exception with Rodgers' claim that within the progressive movement's ideology one can see the footers of the New Deal, his argument is convincing. What New Dealers "did best," he asserts, "was to throw in to the breach, with verve and imagination, schemes set in motion years or decades before." (415) A large number of New Deal projects came out of the old Atlantic progressive connection, and in "gathering in so much of the progressive agenda, the New Deal gathered in large chunks of European experience as well." (416)
Perhaps the weakness in Atlantic Crossings is that which is left out, not in the arguments Rodgers articulately presents. First, it is surprising that Rodgers presents no detailed discussion regarding education reform, particularly when this issue was so important to the Germans at the time. Second, one would never know that there was an American South during this time period, a region where progressives were active even despite a lack of urban areas there. Nevertheless, Rodgers has done a masterful job of comparative history by emphasizing trans-national borrowing and cooperation.
The next definitive work on the Progressive Era........1998-12-31
This is the policy-side answer to Kloppenberg's UNCERTAIN VICTORY. While that book focussed on intellectual links between European (esp. German or French) thought and early American pragmatism, Rodgers seeks more practical applications, well into the 20th century. He is so well versed in the literature that scant references are made to secondary sources. It is rich in the literature of the time, particularly journals, magazines, and newspapers from several different countries. Interestingly, unlike Kloppenberg this book examines England and Scotland which provide springboards for American reforms. Rodgers' thesis is that the Europeans tried numerous policies which Americans learned about and then implemented, almost always later than their counterparts across the Atlantic--and sometimes with very limited success. The book is also noteworthy for some of the most practical applications of MODERNISM yet seen in contemporary scholarship. This is a hot topic, largely seen in discussions of art or literature. Here Rodgers takes all that knowledge, absorbs it, and then demonstrates it in action across the POLITICAL spectrum. Despite the enormous research behind it, Rodgers has written an enjoyable, readable work that is of considerable importance. After all, this is the author of the famous article, "An Obituary for the Progressive Movement," (1970) which claimed that there NEVER WAS such a movement. Here Rodgers answers his own claim, saying that the American reform impulse built upon a European foundation and produced policies which survive to the present. My only complaint is that this book is slanted TOWARDS Europe, with maybe 60% of the discussion dwelling across the Atlantic ... the format gets a little tedious, with most chapters beginning in Europe, then the Americans pick up on the policy (welfare, municipal gas/water etc) and then they try it themselves. This is nitpicking, though, for such a substantive, well-researched, lucid work that defines this generation's scholarship on the Progressive Era.
Book Description
Turn your next driving trip into an adventure.
Crossing America
More than 3,500 places to visit:
Historic sites and distinctive towns
National and state parks
Scenic and recreational areas
Hidden corners and small surprises
Fun for the whole family
All just a short drive from the major interstates and keyed to 72 detailed maps
Customer Reviews:
I shoud have asked about the copywrite..........2007-03-09
my copy was an old one-so naturally it was pretty much useless.
National Geographic does it again!.......2006-02-06
This is a travel guide of a different nature.Rather than dealing with a city,state or region, it deals with the major Interstates of America.It is a terrific guide that makes it very simple to choose between the many routes you can take on a trip from one place in America to another;and gives a very simple way of telling what you will see and the places of interest you'll pass along the way.It is arranged in a way that allows you to skip around from one route to another.The way the book is set up, of page numbering,route organization,points of interest identification by numbers,has been well thought out and results in unbelievable simplicity in use.The Interstate maps are right along with the information and negates the need to bounce all around the book.It is loaded with excellent photos that show what the scenic features as well as the points of interest look like.On top of that, it has an excellent index at the back of the book.For instance,all you have to do is think of a point of interest,look it up in the index,go to the page;you'll be placed right on the Interstate and be shown where it is.You'll also see immediately how to get there and also what else you'll pass on the way.
This book is constructed with excellent paper,printing and cover and binding construction that will insure that it will stand a lot of use for many years.It is definately a guide that you will not toss out in a year or so because of wear or being out of date.These people are real pros at making such a guide.I do lot of birdwatching and we use guides that must be tops from an information standpoint;but must be of supurb construction to withstand hard use in the field and last for years.The Nat.Geo."Birds of North America" is such a book ;in fact it has no equal in the opinion of most Birders.This Interstate Travel guide is of the same high quality.
A great little travel guide that you need........2002-08-05
Since most vacations involve some travel on the Interstates, a book that covers them is indispensible. This is that book. It is pocket-sized for easy carrying and jam-packed with useful information.
The book covers all major freeways, and has over 600 full-color photos and maps carefully selected to closely follow a well-written and well-organized text. An excellent feature is that the discussion of each Interstate begins at one end of the road and terminates at the other. This enables the traveler to briefly review the book at day's end to plan the following day's activities. The book shows and discusses National and local parks, museums, historical sites, and major cities along each road.
This book is an excellent way to capture the varied geography of the continental United States in a nutshell. You will be amazed at the things you discover and at how many interesting places are near where you live. Obviously, I recommend this book very highly
Book Description
On a spring day in 1961, over-the-road trucker Jim Harper was en route from Mauston, Wisconsin, to his home in Minneapolis. At 70 miles per hour, with a combined 60,000 pounds of man, machine, and material, he approached a curve along the Great River Road and hit the brakes. The tractor-trailer didn’t slow. Harper’s brake lines had been cut.
In preceding months, Harper had led an insurgency in his Teamsters’ Local 544 to clean up corruption among its leaders. His efforts drew the attention of none other than Jimmy Hoffa, at the time focused on securing his right to lead the national Teamsters organization without government intervention.
Jim Harper had his reasons for confronting his local’s leadershipâa hardscrabble childhood and a stint in Angola prison had left him seeking redemption, and Jimmy Hoffa had publicly called for union reform. But Hoffa, under federal investigation for questionable financial dealings, had deep, dark secrets; the last thing he needed was a spotlight on Minneapolis. Despite the increasing threats to his life and those of his young family, Harper continued to press his case.
In this fascinating account, Harper’s son traces the interwoven paths of these two menâa criminal icon and a determined vigilanteâfrom their formative years through their unbelievable face-off.
Steven J. Harper has been a litigation partner in the international law firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP for more than twenty years and has tried civil cases to judges and juries throughout the country. This is his first book.
Customer Reviews:
Crossing Hoffa.......2007-08-23
A very riveting book that drips with a son's respect and admiration for his father's crusade for reform in a notorious and corrupt Teamster chapter. The author's father stands toe-to-toe with Hoffa and risks all.
Fantastic read.......2007-08-20
Great reading as the author, with his litigation experience, puts the pieces togethet of the story so that all the facts are represented and the story flows. Even though I knew the outcome, I was still pulling for the dad to muscle out and be the victor against Mr. Hoffa. Besides the story about his father, what a wonderful way to remember your childhood thru the eyes of your father.
Intriguing story with a meaningful message.......2007-08-04
This is an extremely well-written book that will appeal to all! Harper's story of one man (the author's father) reminds us of what really matters in one's life - being true to who you are. In the telling of his father's intriguing story, the author illustrates to us that we need not be afraid of life's setbacks and obstacles for they can be used to build personal strength, character,and wisdom, and expand our empathy, acceptance and love of others. Harper's exceptional writing style results in one of those rare books that leaves you feeling like you were there -- "But by the grace of God go I...." And regardless of the dark places our life's journey might take us, it is never too late to leave our legacy --especially when it is built on on love and honor. A fascinating and moving true story --a must-read.
Crossing Hoffa.......2007-06-29
This is a very well written book that tells a compelling story of two men's lives and how they intersect. It has the feel of a good mystery novel and, even though the phrase is trite, really is hard to put down. The reader gets drawn into the story immediately and is carried along from page to page in anticipation of what will happen next. If you enjoy reading any subject matter at all, you'll enjoy this book.
Book Description
It can come as no surprise that the ethnic makeup of the American population is rapidly changing. In this volume, John Francis Burke offers a mestizo theory of democracy and traces its implications for public policy.
Mestizo, meaning "mixture," is a term from the Mexican socio-political experience that represents a blend of indigenous, African, and Spanish genes and cultures in Latin America in which the influences of these cultures remain identifiable but interact with each other in dynamic ways.
Burke analyzes democratic theory and multiculturalism to develop a model for effectively dealing with cultural diversity. He applies this model to official language(s), voting, employment, housing, and free trade, concluding that in the United States we are becoming mestizo whether we like it or not.
Book Description
On assignment for Newsweek, noted photojournalist John Annerino journeyed deep into one of the least hospitable spots on the planet — the scorched 4,100-square-mile "empty quarter" that straddles Mexico and Arizona. There he met four Mexican nationals determined to cross a 130-mile trail illegally to find work to feed their families. Dead in Their Tracks is the record of their experience. Annerino’s unflinching camera and sensitive text capture the lives of these men, along with the ranchers, Border Patrol trackers, and drug runners whose livelihoods also depend on this grim realm. Dead in Their Tracks’ unforgettable images of anonymous travelers who may survive, and the bleached bones of those who did not, show the ultimate price sometimes exacted by an unforgiving nature — and by those who make policy in this area. 70 photographs and maps are featured in this harrowing chronicle of the dangers and struggles fought for a better way of life.
Customer Reviews:
Not worth the time or effort to read.......2007-08-09
This book was extremely disappointing unless you would like to know how many gallons of water it takes to illegally cross from Mexico into the United States. The author takes a liberal and sympathic view of illegals and tries to sway the reader into thinking that breaking the law is OK for these people. Give me a break. Where is the equal-sided journalism? What about the economic drain to healthcare, gang violence and drugs that these people bring into the United States? If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck then it is a duck. Illegals are illegals are illegals. Don't waste your time on this book.
Walk the Line in this New World.......2006-02-01
-"Photojournalist John Annerino plunges into a world few Americans ever consider, much less confront: a pitiless trek through the southwestern Arizona Desert that can deliver a man to steady work - or to a whimpering death," Laura Brooks, The Arizona Daily Star.
-"Anyone interested in this slaughter should run, not walk, to John Annerino's Dead in Their Tracks," Charles Bowden, author of Down by the River.
-"A passionate chronicle. The story...is gripping and profoundly disturbing," Susan J. Tweit, The Bloomsbury Review.
-"A stunning portrayal of the dangers (including death) faced by immigrants eager to work in the United States," Library Journal.
-"I'm trying to illuminate the lives of those who continue to die in America's killing ground," Annerino said," abcnews.com.
-"A gripping firsthand account of crossing the Camino del Diablo in the company of Mexican nationals...Annerino's evocative words and haunting pictures make the issue impossible to ignore," Donnamarie Barnes, People Magazine.
-"The story is riveting.Annerino's writing is emotional and graphic," Ernesto Portillo, San Diego Union-Tribune.
-"Through cholla cactus and scorpions, along sands simmering at 140-160 degrees, John Annerino and four Mexican companions stumble toward an oasis north of poverty: the American dream," oneworldjournies.com.
-"The book is a testament and a memorial.Thirty pages list the known dead...Annerino deserves praise for putting this story into words and pictures," Will Chaffey, San Antonio Express-News.
-"A gripping work of investigative reporting," Nicole Davis, National Geographic Adventure.
-"Seen on CNN and featured on CNN Bokchat, John Annerino has worked on the border for Newsweek, ABC Primetime, National Geographic Adventure, and America 24/7," KmG
Flesh and Bones.......2006-01-26
"A passionate exponent of more human solutions to the problems of illegal border crossings...John Annerino, an Arizona writer-photojournalist, tells the story up close and personal in a gut wrenching, bare knuckle account...His account puts flesh and bones on the story behind the dreams, and skeletons,too," Desert Candle.
Annoying, short, and thoroughly belabors the obvious........2005-06-09
This book is poorly written, _utterly_ disjointed, and has a cloying sentimentality that is really annoying. By that I mean it's not at all analytical: it includes random snippets of poems, etc. that serve only to confound the reader looking for some meat. Plus, there are certain phrases like "cutting sign" that I hadn't the foggiest idea about until I looked it up. Help the reader out here.
Yeah, it's hot as hell in the desert, and it's doggone handy to have water. It sucks that people are dying in the desert and the forces that draw them to _El Norte_ are highly complex and not necessarily their fault. Still, they are breaking the law from the word go, and well they know it, and it seems to me there are worse tragedies involving truly innocent people. Plus, it peeves me to no end that these illegals have largely trashed some of the most beautiful and exotic wildernesses in the U.S. So my sympathy is just not all that deep.
The photos are for the most part of lousy quality as well. Why it took carrying several cameras, as the author claims, to produce these pictures is beyond me.
Lastly the book is VERY short, with a ridiculously long appendix addressing every single death that has occurred in this area ... newsflash: no one is going to read that.
How could the editors have allowed a book like this to go to press? It's absolutely amateurish, despite being driven by sincere emotions.
Those who dare........2004-08-28
There are those who call themselves experts on the subject and those who are. John is the genuine expert. His points on the subject can only be done by being there and doing it. That is John, that is how he is. That is how he lives. A Master photographer, a Father, Journalist. His treatment on the border issue is a no-holds-barred trip into the unknown. He makes it known, he does it masterfully! When I read Dead in Their Tracks I found it to be the best publication on the subject. It should be required reading for those who are studying Hispanic Culture here at the University of Arizona! When one has the folks at ABC News and other News organizations beating on your door for your knowledge on the subject you know it is John Annerino. When you read a John Annerino book or see his imigaes you are guaranteed that you have exposed to the very best in subject treatment. Dead in Their Tracks will take you for a ride you won't soon forget.
Average customer rating:
- Emotionally Stirring By A Most Literate Writer
- Happiness and sorrows of a truly literary person
- A Grief Understood
- A Grief Understood
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Crossing Highbridge: A Memoir of Irish America (Irish Studies)
Maureen Waters
Manufacturer: Syracuse University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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New York Irish
ASIN: 0815606826 |
Customer Reviews:
Emotionally Stirring By A Most Literate Writer.......2001-06-21
I could relate to nearly everything that Miss Waters wrote about in Crossing Highbridge, because I came from that Irish Catholic enclave, I knew the Waters family long ago, and I went to Sacred Heart with Maureen's sister, Agnes.
Maureen Waters is a gifted writer who combines history, philosophy, religion, and the socio-econimic conditions in a working class environment in the 1940's and 1950's, with utter grace, and at the same time, the reader can experience some strong emotions of saddness and joy.
Happiness and sorrows of a truly literary person.......2001-06-21
I was able to identify with nearly everything Miss Waters wrote about her Irish Catholic upbringing in Highbridge, because I too came from the same place, and I knew her sister Agnes many, many years ago. However, if I had not had the privilege of knowing Maureen and her literary family, I would still have been able to appreciate the writer's gift of style where she combined gracefully, history, philosophy, religion along with the socioeconomic conditions of the 1940's and 1950's growing up in Highbridge.
A Grief Understood.......2001-06-01
This profoundly moving memoir of growing up Irish/Catholic/female in the midcentury Bronx began with the author's need to understand the loss of her son to accidental death by drugs and alcohol. As she puts it, "the drive to piece together cause and effect was a belief that I had far more power than I actually did for good or ill." She sifts the past out of psychological necessity, desperate, guilty, and finds ordinary treasure: in human characters - her father, an immigrant from Sligo, her mother from Mayo, a feisty and lovable little sister, Agnes, and, above all, in her beautiful and enigmatic lost child of the flaming red hair, Brian Patrick - and also in their brave and lonely human places (Highbridge on Hudson, Long Island). She looks back for clues to her loss from the perspective of a divorced single mother trying to juggle children and hold her own in academe (she's now a professor of English). Memory sifted through the prism of such luminous prose and honest emotion offers a gentle and moving consolation to this reader. The story of the author's Catholic journey, from insider - the parish was Sacred Heart - to outsider is told with devastating brevity. I'll never forget the final image of women's exclusion. It rings so true. The abyss is present in Waters' world, but to me this is a book of hope
A Grief Understood.......2001-06-01
This beautiful memoir of growing up Irish-Catholic-female in the Bronx at midcentury began with the author's tragic loss of one of her sons to an accidental death from drugs and alcohol. In order to survive herself, she must understand: "The drive to piece together cause and effect was a belief that I had far more power than I actually did for good or ill." The bereaved mother, who is also a professor of English, sifts her past for answers. She uncovers the treasure of human characters (her father, Daniel Waters, an immigrant from Sligo, her mother from Mayo; her rebel little sister, Agnes) in their brave and lonely human settlement (Highbridge on the Hudson). She looks back on the cost of parenting alone as a divorced young mother and trying to hold her own in academe. The consolation that memory - and Waters' luminous prose - makes for her and for this reader is profoundly moving. The story of her Catholic journey, in particular, the movement from insider - the parish was Sacred Heart - to outsider, is especially strong: she tells it with a devastating brevity and one final image that I'll never forget. It rings so true. This is a courageous book about loss in which you come to see that what remains is, after all, a matter of life understood and hope.
Book Description
"In editing this collection, Martha Hodes has performed an invaluable service to those of us in the profession who endeavor to teach what has been the focus of our own scholarship: race and sex."
—The Journal of Southern History
"Important. . . . The breadth of human experience and historical subfields traversed by the authors is astonishing."
—Journal of Social History
"Hodes has compiled a thoughtful collection of essays which explore the implications of interracial sexual activity from the colonial period to the late 20th century."
—Virginia Quarterly Review
Since pre-colonial days, America has been both torn apart and united by love, sex, and marriage across racial boundaries. Whether motivated by violent conquest, economics, lust, or love, such unions have disturbed some of America's most sacred beliefs and prejudices.
Sex, Love, Race provides a historical foundation for contemporary discussions of sex across racial lines, which, despite the numbers of interracial marriages and multiracial children, remains a controversial issue today. The first historical anthology to focus solely and widely on the subject,
Sex, Love, Race gathers new essays by both younger and well-known scholars which probe why and how the specter of sex across racial boundaries has so threatened Americans of all colors and classes.
Traversing the whole of American history, from liaisons among Indians, Europeans, and Africans to twentieth-century social scientists' fascination with sex between "Orientals" and whites, the essays cover a range of regions, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. In so doing,
Sex, Love, Race, sketches a larger portrait of the overlapping construction of racial, ethnic, and sexual identities in America.
Customer Reviews:
an interesting collection.......2004-04-26
This is an interesting collection of tales of inter racial politics as it applies to love making and sexual relations in America. Many subjects are covered in these essays. From the development of 'aggressive' homosexual women in prisons to the fascination of people for 'oriental' relations between whites and Asians. Also explored is the phenomenon of black and white sexual liaisons. A good review of American melting in the pot of racial diversity.
Seth J. Frantzman
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