Books and knowledge

Creating the Constitution Copley Pub. Group A Copley ed edition John P. Kaminski

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A remarkable collection of original eighteenth century letters and newspaper articles that were written during the debate over the ratification of the Constitution in 1787-1788. These pieces are intoduced with brief descriptions and explanations that will help students use this volume. The volume also has a general introduction that explains the events leading up to the Constitutional Convention, the ideas of those who wrote the Constitution and then supported its ratification, and the arguments of those who opposed it. All documents have been carefully selected for readability and importance.

About the Editors:

John Kaminski has worked on “The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution” since 1969, first as assocaiate editor and since February 1980 as director. In 1981 he founded, and continues to direct, The Center for the Study of the American Constitution in the Departmant of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Kaminski has edited, co-edited, or written twenty-six books as well as many articles on the Revolutionary era.

Richard Leffler has been deputy director of The Center for the Study of the American Constitution since 1981 and is senior associate editor of “The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, 1787-1791″ (14vols., Madison, 1976).

Creating the Constitution (Sources of the American Tradition)

John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon Palgrave Macmillan John M. Logsdon

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On May 25, 1961, President John Kennedy declared: I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. Over his remaining time in the White House, JFK actively involved himself in space decisions and several times reviewed his decision to go to the Moon, each time concluding that the benefits of being the leader in space outweighed the massive costs of the lunar landing enterprise.Logsdon traces the evolution of JFK’s thinking and policy up until his assassination, which brought to an end his reexamination of the program’s goal and schedule and hishope to collaborate, rather than compete, with the Soviet Union in going to the Moon. This study, based on extensive research in primary documents and archival interviews with key members of the Kennedy administration, is the definitive examination of John Kennedys role in sending Americans to the Moon.

Space policy was not an issue in the 1960 presidential election won by John Kennedy, who until April 1961 exhibited little interest in it. Then Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth. Logsdon recounts what ensued in this meticulous tracking of Kennedys decision to launch America toward the moon. Focusing on bureaucratic and budgetary aspects, Logsdon reasonably concludes that JFKs decision was politically rational, though the evidence Logsdon adduces also could support the view that JFK acted hastily, out of motivation to restore his and Americas prestige. He certainly was unlike Eisenhower, who cared little about image and who favored fiscally sustainable progress in space technology, not an impetuous moon program that ultimately had no follow-through. As these rival interpretations vie for the readers loyalty, Logsdons narrative details JFKs subsequent decisions related to the Apollo programs budget, the political derby to win its installations, and futile gestures to entice Soviet participation in the adventure. For the inside facts about JFKs instigation of the lunar missions, Logsdon, often seen in documentaries and television news about space, is the definitive authority. –Gilbert Taylor

Echoes of this time lift off the pages of John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, a new book by John M. Logsdon, a political scientist and longtime space policy specialist at George Washington University. He has drawn on new research in archives, oral histories and memoirs available in recent years to shed new light on the moon race.The New York TimesSome say that Kennedy conceived of the race to the moon principally to recover from the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs. John Logsdon, the doyen of American space studies, takes a more generous view in his new book Kennedy was not especially interested in space, and said as much in private. But after the Soviet Union sent Yuri Gagarin into orbit he believed it to be vital for America to take on and beat the Soviets at something very hard. The moon fitted this need like a glove. Planting a man on its surface required no big technological innovations, says Mr. Logsdon, just very expensive mastery over nature using the scientific and technological knowledge available in 1961.The Economist

Logsdon charts the evolution of JFKs thinking about spaceincluding repeated offers as president to cooperate with the Sovietsfrom his senatorial career up until the assassination. He chronicles the intergovernmental struggle for consensus and highlights the policymaking contributions of presidential aide Ted Sorensen, science advisor Jerome Wiesner, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and NASA administrator James Webb.Kirkus

For the inside facts about JFKs instigation of the lunar missions, Logsdon, often seen in documentaries and television news about space, is the definitive authority.Booklist A new account by John Logsdon, an eminent historian of the space program.The Washington MonthlyIn a time when America is looking for another Sputnik Moment to spur the country on a number of fronts, this scholarly and well-written look at the nations Apollo Moment captures presidential decision-making stemming from the heat of the space race between the United States and the former Soviet Union. Readers will find this book a treasured resource. Logsdons devotion to this book is visible through and through including an invaluable and insightful set of notes for each chapter. Beyond the U.S. President, youll find a landscape of people that also helped shape that one small step off planet. A must-read.The Coalition for Space ExplorationIn John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon, historian John Logsdon examines the political forces that shaped space policy in the tragically brief tenure of the Kennedy Administration. Logsdon is returning to familiar ground: in 1970 he published The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest, one of the first books to examine the rationale for embarking on such a risky, expensive endeavor. Why revisit the topic now? As Logsdon notes in the books preface, a lot of key documents from that era have been released in the intervening years; the 1970 book had been based primarily on interviews with key players and secondary sources, with the research mostly completed prior to Apollo 11 itself. And, just as important, the perspective that four decades of distance provides offers a new perspective on the events of that era and their aftermath.The Space Review

A comprehensive and insightful retrospect of the conception and early days of Project Apollo. Space aficionados will see immediate parallels between President Kennedys thought processes and the space policy debates of today.Neil Armstrong, Commander, Apollo 11

In contrast to the hesitations, reconsiderations, and cancellations that have plagued recent U.S. activities in space, President John F. Kennedys shining May 25, 1961, challenge to send humans to the Moon remains a beacon of national resolve. John M. Logsdons review of the whole history of President Kennedys civil space policy, especially events after the May 25 speech, reveals the special circumstances that kept the lunar goal on track. Hesitation arose, but Kennedys pragmatism ultimately prevailed. Logsdon explains why. With this insightful analysis, Logsdon demonstrates again why he remains the dean of space policy historians.Howard E. McCurdy, Professor of Public Policy, American University and University of Washington, and author of Space and the American Imagination

John Logsdons book is a high quality scholarly work, deeply researched, but also an easy read. It is an insightful history of JFKs decision to use the space program and especially the Apollo lunar landing project as a rational Cold War response to the perceived missile gap and the Soviet space challenges of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarins flight.Bill Anders, Astronaut, Apollo 8, and Executive Secretary, National Aeronautics and Space Council, 1969-1972

One of the definitive political histories of the quest to put a man on the Moon.Matthew Brzezinski, author of Red Moon Rising

John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon provides a comprehensive, insiders account of one of the most important and far-reaching policy decisions of the Kennedy administration. It is a masterful case study of presidential decision making. Professor Steven J. Wayne, Presidential Scholar, Georgetown University

An extraordinary book on the genesis of Project Apollo . . . Indeed, the first clear and definitive account of the pivotal role played by John F. Kennedy in shaping the American space program. How President Kennedy reached his fateful decision to enter the space race to reach the Moon is now told fully in an insightful and authoritative way.Von Hardesty, Curator, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

One of the definitive political histories of the quest to put a man on the Moon.Matthew Brzezinski, author of Red Moon Rising

John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon (Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology)

Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture 1890-1930 W. Fitzhugh Brundage The University of North Carolina Press

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“This first-rate collection of essays seeks to move conversations about black performance, black culture, and the embodiment of both beyond the heretofore ‘comfortable’ terrain of blackface and minstrelsy. It does so with resounding success. Bravo to the essayists of this excellent collection.”–Jonathan Scott Holloway, Yale University

“This anthology deftly illuminates the revealing innovation and experimentation that characterized black culture, American popular culture, and the rich fruits of their cross-pollination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These rich essays make abundantly clear the extraordinary impact of African Americans and African American culture on the making of modern American popular culture.”–Waldo E. Martin Jr., University of California, Berkeley

This collection of thirteen essays, edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage, brings together original work from sixteen scholars in various disciplines to present a fresh look at the history of African Americans and mass culture. This book depicts popular culture as a crucial arena in which African Americans struggled to secure a foothold as masters of their own representation and architects of the nation’s emerging consumer society.

This collection of thirteen essays, edited by historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage, brings together original work from sixteen distinguished scholars in various disciplines, ranging from theater and literature to history and music, to address the complex roles of black performers, entrepreneurs, and consumers in American mass culture during the early twentieth century.
Moving beyond the familiar territory of blackface and minstrelsy, these essays present a fresh look at the history of African Americans and mass culture. With subjects ranging from representations of race in sheet music illustrations to African American interest in Haitian culture, Beyond Blackface recovers the history of forgotten or obscure cultural figures and shows how these historical actors played a role in the creation of American mass culture. The essays explore the predicament that blacks faced at a time when white supremacy crested and innovations in consumption, technology, and leisure made mass culture possible. Underscoring the importance and complexity of race in the emergence of mass culture, Beyond Blackface depicts popular culture as a crucial arena in which African Americans struggled to secure a foothold as masters of their own representation and architects of the nation’s emerging consumer society.
The contributors are:
Davarian L. Baldwin, Trinity College
W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Clare Corbould, University of Sydney
Susan Curtis, Purdue University
Stephanie Dunson, Williams College
Lewis A. Erenberg, Loyola University Chicago
Stephen Garton, University of Sydney
John M. Giggie, University of Alabama
Grace Elizabeth Hale, University of Virginia
Robert Jackson, University of Tulsa
David Krasner, Emerson College
Thomas Riis, University of Colorado at Boulder
Stephen Robertson, University of Sydney
John Stauffer, Harvard University
Graham White, University of Sydney
Shane White, University of Sydney

Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930 (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman Series)

Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940

“Expands our understanding of lynching. . . . Wood’s most important contribution is her well-informed discussion of the impact of photography and film on lynching’s rise and demise.”
-Georgia Historical Quarterly

“An engaging treatment of the ‘spectacle of lynching.’”
-The Alabama Review

“Adds an important chapter to a branch of scholarship that must remain as fluid, and sometimes uncertain, as its subject. . . . Wood, in choosing a ritualized form of violence and a unique set of sources through which to examine it, has made both a wise and creative choice, which has yielded a rich and troubling history.”
-Southern Cultures

“The freshness of approach provides a unique perspective and contributes to several fields of study. . . . Wood thinks clearly, demonstrates an impressive range of research skills, and writes well. . . . Offers the best account to date of the American film industry’s disturbingly cozy appropriation of lynching in its early decades. . . . [Wood] provides so much primary source material and interpretive aplomb that her narrative rarely wavers in its originality or self-reliance.”
-Journal of Southern History

“Wood succeeds admirably. . . . One of the most enlightening studies of lynching produced in recent years.”
-Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies

“This insightful exploration of lynching’s cultural power is a groundbreaking addition to a growing body of scholarship focused on racial violence. . . . Essential.”
-Choice

“Wood’s effective contribution refines our understanding of the relationship between lynching and culture. . . . Compelling and insightful. . . . A well-executed book that should be read by all who are interested in the cultural relations of lynching.”
-Journal of American History

“Should be required reading for all studying racial violence in the South. . . . Wood is admirably balanced in assessing her evidence and placing it in perspective. . . . In evidence, argument, context, and writing, this is an impressive study that will inspire future scholarship and will offer teachers a rich set of contexts to enliven their discussions of race in the era of lynching.”
-American Historical Review

“This study incorporates a tremendous amount of information and provides a thorough understanding of lynching as spectacle, which will be of interest to scholars of American religion, the South, and American Studies.”
-Journal of Southern Religion

“Wood deserves praise for synthesizing the expansive body of scholarship on lynching while offering an insightful cultural analysis of southern white sadism.”
-North Carolina Historical Review

“The scholar interested in southern culture will find the book rewarding.”
-Journal of Mississippi History

“This thoughtful and amply illustrated monograph shows how photography served first to cast atrocity as civility and subsequently undermined the practice of lynching by reconstruing what had become folk custom as, instead, an outrage.”
-Arkansas Historical Quarterly

“The public nature of lynching receives heavily researched and imaginative treatment in Wood’s readable analysis.”
-Journal of Interdisciplinary History

“[A] thoughtful, well-researched study. . . . Wood has established the centrality of visual media to the formation of racial identities and the perpetuation of a related culture of lynching more cogently and elaborately than any previous writer. . . . Provocative and lucid. . . . A significant contribution to our understanding of race and racial violence in American history.”
-Southern Quarterly

“Insightful. . . . One of the work’s greatest strengths is the interplay between local and national contexts. . . . An excellent example of how visual culture and theory can enhance historical research without obscuring the argument. . . . Recommended for historians interested in how race and violence worked together to shape popular culture, and vice versa.”
-Indiana Magazine of History

“Lynching and Spectacle is a work of both impressive analysis and serious historical craft that makes a number of important contributions to our understanding of the American South and violence there. Combining attention to place, time, and context with an acute sensitivity to cultural expression, ranging from photography and film to journalism, Wood has written the most mature, finely grained, and insightful study of the culture of lynching available.”–W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Lynch mobs in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America exacted horrifying public torture and mutilation on their victims. In Lynching and Spectacle, Amy Wood explains what it meant for white Americans to perform and witness these sadistic spectacles and how lynching played a role in establishing and affirming white supremacy. Lynching, Wood argues, overlapped with a variety of cultural practices and performances, both traditional and modern, including public executions, religious rituals, photography, and cinema, all which encouraged the horrific violence and gave it social acceptability. However, she also shows how the national dissemination of lynching images ultimately fueled the momentum of the antilynching movement and the decline of the practice. Using a wide range of sources, including photos, newspaper reports, pro- and antilynching pamphlets, early films, and local city and church records, Wood reconfigures our understanding of lynching’s relationship to modern life.
Wood expounds on the critical role lynching spectacles played in establishing and affirming white supremacy at the turn of the century, particularly in towns and cities experiencing great social instability and change. She also shows how the national dissemination of lynching images fueled the momentum of the antilynching movement and ultimately led to the decline of lynching. By examining lynching spectacles alongside both traditional and modern practices and within both local and national contexts, Wood reconfigures our understanding of lynching’s relationship to modern life.

Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (New Directions in Southern Studies)

The Fall of Constantinople 1453 Steven Runciman Cambridge University Press New edition edition

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‘Once again Sir Steven Runciman demonstrates his mastery of historical narrative … an excellent tale, full of suspense and pathos … He tells the story and, as always, tells it very elegantly.’ History

‘Runciman [is] eminently accessible and readable.’ Evangelicals Now –This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

While their victory ensured the Turks’ survival, the conquest of Constantinople marked the end of Byzantine civilization for the Greeks, by triggering the scholarly exodus that caused an influx of Classical studies into the European Renaissance. –This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

This classic account shows how the fall of Constantinople in May 1453, after a siege of several weeks, came as a bitter shock to Western Christendom. The city’s plight had been neglected, and negligible help was sent in this crisis. To the Turks, victory not only brought a new imperial capital, but guaranteed that their empire would last. To the Greeks, the conquest meant the end of the civilisation of Byzantium, and led to the exodus of scholars stimulating the tremendous expansion of Greek studies in the European Renaissance.

‘Runciman [is] eminently accessible and readable.’ Evangelicals Now –This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

The Fall of Constantinople, 1453

Greece, The Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule from the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence

“David Brewer’s book is by far the best work that I have read on the Turkokrateia, the hidden centuries when what is now Greece was under the rule of the Ottoman Turks. His book is thoroughly researched and very well written, and it opens up for the general reader a fascinating and little known era of history. Highly recommended.” – John Freely

“This is the story of seven centuries of Greek life before Greece became a modern, self-governing nation in the early nineteenth century, told for a new generation and from both the secular and religious viewpoints of the emerging nation. David Brewer writes with verve, a sharp eye for detail, and a finely balanced sense of the moral uncertainties involved in looking back into the past from the point of view of the early twenty-first century.” – Roderick Beaton, Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature, Kings College London

“Brewers concise, sane, and independent assessment is a fine achievement…Greece: the Hidden Centuries scores high marks for its scope, its international frame of reference, and its objectivity. Brewer is the best sort of Philhellene, seeing the Greeks for what they are and as the product of their circumstances” –John Psaropoulos, TLS

For almost 400 years, between the fall of Constantinople and the Greek War of Independence, the history of Greece is shrouded in mystery, distorted by Greek writers and begging the question: What was life really like for the Greeks under Ottoman rule? In this wide-ranging yet concise history, David Brewer explodes many of the myths about Turkish rule of Greece. He places the Greek story in wider, international context and casts fresh light on the dynamics of power not only between Greeks and Ottomans, but also between Muslims and Christians, both Orthodox and Catholic, throughout Europe. This absorbing account of a crucial period will ensure that the history of Greece under Turkish rule is no longer hidden.

Greece, The Hidden Centuries: Turkish Rule from the Fall of Constantinople to Greek Independence

The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction Ancient Aztec David Carrasco Oxford University Press USA

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Davd Carrasco is the Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America at Harvard University. For his scholarship in Mesoamerican religions and his work on Mexican American culture he received the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle.

This Very Short Introduction employs the disciplines of history, religious studies, and anthropology as it illuminates the complexities of Aztec life. Readers meet a people highly skilled in sculpture, astronomy, city planning, poetry, and philosophy, who were also profoundly committed to cosmic regeneration through the thrust of the ceremonial knife and through warfare. Davd Carrasco looks beyond Spanish accounts that have colored much of the Western narrative to let Aztec voices speak about their origin stories, the cosmic significance of their capital city, their methods of child rearing, and the contributions women made to daily life and the empire. Carrasco discusses the arrival of the Spaniards, contrasts Aztec mythical traditions about the origins of their city with actual urban life in Mesoamerica, and outlines the rise of the Aztec empire. He also explores Aztec religion, which provided both justification for and alternatives to warfare, sacrifice, and imperialism, and he sheds light on Aztec poetry, philosophy, painting, and especially monumental sculpture and architecture. He concludes by looking at how the Aztecs have been portrayed in Western thought, art, film, and literature as well as in Latino culture and arts.

The Aztecs: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

The Conquistadors: A Very Short Introduction

“Dismissing hoary myths, revising the political narrative, integrating the new findings from ethnohistory, and never losing sight of the conquistadors themselves and their indigenous allies as the protagonists of the story, this book provides an intelligent and fresh overview of the conquest of Spanish America for twenty-first century readers.” -Stuart Schwartz, author of Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico

With startling speed, Spanish conquistadors invaded hundreds of Native American kingdoms, took over the mighty empires of the Aztecs and Incas, and initiated an unprecedented redistribution of the world’s resources and balance of power. They changed the course of history, but the myth they established was even stranger than their real achievements. This Very Short Introduction deploys the latest scholarship to shatter and replace the traditional narrative. Chapters explore New World civilizations prior to the invasions, the genesis of conquistador culture on both sides of the Atlantic, the roles black Africans and Native Americans played, and the consequences of the invasions. The book reveals who the conquistadors were and what made their adventures possible.

The Conquistadors: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

The Book of Margins University Of Chicago Press 1 edition Edmond Jabes

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The death of Edmond Jabès in January 1991 silenced one of the most compelling voices of the postmodern, post-Holocaust era. Jabès’s importance as a thinker, philosopher, and Jewish theologian cannot be overestimated, and his enigmatic stylecombining aphorism, fictional dialogue, prose meditation, poetry, and other formsholds special appeal for postmodern sensibilities.

In The Book of Margins, his most critical as well as most accessible book, Jabès is again concerned with the questions that inform all of his work: the nature of writing, of silence, of God and the Book. Jabès considers the work of several of his contemporaries, including Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Roger Caillois, Paul Celan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Leiris, Emmanuel Lévinas, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and his translator, Rosmarie Waldrop. This book will be important reading for students of Jewish literature, French literature, and literature of the modern and postmodern ages.

Born in Cairo in 1912, Edmond Jabès lived in France from 1956 until his death in 1991. His extensively translated and widely honored works include The Book of Questions and The Book of Shares. Both of these were translated into English by Rosmarie Waldrop, who is also a poet.

Religion and Postmodernism series

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The Book of Margins (Religion and Postmodernism Series)

A Sport of Nature Knopf 1st edition Nadine Gordimer

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After being abandoned by her mother, Hillela was pushed onto relatives where she was taught social graces. But when she betrayed her position as surrogate daughter, she was cast adrift. Later she fell into a heroic role in the overthrow of apartheid.

This ninth novel (July’s People, Burger’s Daughter, The Conservationist, etc.) by Gordimer deals, as does most of her writing, with South Africa, her native land, with the emerging black leadership of surrounding states and with the ways in which human beings survive physically, emotionally and morally under, and struggle against, racism and injustice. Required reading for our era, it is a moving and powerful book that, in a career rich with distinguished works, could well be considered her masterpiece. The title comes from the translated Latin term for a plant or animal form that is unlike its parent stock, and applies equally to the protagonist, Hillela, a Jewish South African followed from adolescence into her 40s, and to South Africa itself. Abandoned early by her mother for a lover in Mozambique, Hillela lives for a time with her father in Rhodesia; is expelled from boarding school there and is shuttled between the households of two maternal aunts, until her burgeoning sexuality and an innocence of appropriate categories as to whom one may love, cast her out of the family circle. As she grows into womanhood, Hillela becomes an increasingly impressive personality, ever more closely linked to contemporary events. The strands that make up her life, as that life is reported, rumors and all, by an unnamed narrator, are woven into the larger tapestry that portrays South Africa over a span of more than a quarter of a century, from the late 1950s, when the government became increasingly oppressive, to the rise of black consciousness and militancy in succeeding decades and into the near future. Gordimer, who vividly conveys the impossibility of living decently under apartheid, clearly sympathizes with Sasha, Hillela’s pro-revolutionary cousin, who writes, “The mines and petrol bombs are planted by blacks, but it’s the whites who have killed their own children.”
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gordimer achieves a remarkable imaginative integration of private and public experience in this powerful novel, which traces the life of a beautiful South African woman from childhood to early middle age. Born to white privilege but abandoned by her mother, who bequeaths her a rich sexuality; reared by two aunts, who embody the opposing worlds of material comfort and social consciousness; on her own by 17, and soon immersed in the first of a series of relationships whose direction no one could have predictedalways Hillela is passionately grounded in her own feelings as she becomes increasingly involved in the black struggle, nationally and internationally. Yet she remains elusive, transcending simple definition even as her story, shaped by intense moral concerns, reaches a climax of stunning grandeur. A brilliant, engrossing noveland highly recommended. BOMC dual main selection.Elise Chase, Forbes Lib., Northampton, Mass.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A Sport of Nature

The Sign for Drowning: A Novel Trumpeter Rachel Stolzman

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Anna has grown up haunted by her younger sister’s death. In the life she constructs as a barrier against the emotional wreckage of her family tragedy, Anna settles comfortably into a career as a teacher of deaf children. But a challenge arrivesin the form of a young girl. Adrea’s disarming vulnerability and obvious need for love offer Anna the possibility of reconnecting with the world around herif she has the courage to open her heart.

In this debut novel, Rachel Stolzman has crafted a moving and poetic witness to love’s power to transcend grief, pain, and the constraints of human language. The Sign for Drowning is a poignant story of loss and the unexpected occasions of grace that enable us to heal from it and grow beyond it.

As Stolzman’s character-driven debut opens, eight-year-old Anna Levy and her mother witness a horrific scene: the small boat that her five-year-old sister, Megan, is on with their father capsizes close to shore, and Megan drowns. In the immediate aftermath, Anna blames herself for not plunging into the water and joining the frantic search. She begins an imaginary, one-sided conversation in sign language with Megan that leads the grown-up Anna to adopt a deaf five-year-old (whom she mistakenly renames “Adrea” by incorrectly signing “Andrea”) and to a career working with deaf children. As Anna and Adrea grow into their lives together, watchful Anna is forced to confront ghosts from her past and to learn to stop living life as a spectator. Stolzman gives Anna a poetic soul (“words of sympathy had exhausted my tolerance for words themselves”), and a carefully constructed redemption that unfolds with vivid observational detail.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

By offering her heroines hesitant optimism through such disarmingly honest confessions, Stolzman exhibits an authentic emotional and narrative integrity, an impressive feat for a debut novelist. Stolzman brings this lyrical sensibility to an elegiac tale of a familys heart-stopping tragedy and hard-won redemption, in which a tarnished silence can once again be made to shine through the resonate power of love.Foreword Magazine

At a time when cool, ironic fiction is too much the rage, here is a novel written straight from the heart, a tender yet fearless portrait of a loving family crippled by grief. Rachel Stolzman reminds us what kind of stories matter, and move us, the most.Julia Glass, author of Three Junes and The Whole World Over

Reminiscent of Ian McEwans The Child in Time and Frederick Reichens The Odd Sea, this is a moving and important novel. Rachel Stolzman’s story about a womans attempts to find order in the broken world she inhabits deftly captures grief and the struggle to live within its lifelong specter.Bret Lott, author of Jewel and A Song I Knew by Heart

Against the themes of loss and mourning in this radiant novel are balanced those of nurturing and hope.Roy Hoffman, author of Chicken Dreaming Corn and Almost Family

Rendered in spare and original prose, The Sign for Drowning is a piercing and poignant tale of loss and love. Rachel Stolzman writes from the heart and speaks to the heart. This haunting first novel is the story of unspeakable horror and extraordinary beauty.Patty Dann, author of The Goldfish Went on Vacation

"It’s a delicately balanced novel, spare but not taciturn, emotional but not overwrought, and finally hopeful but not unnaturally cheerful."Margaret Quamme, The Columbus Dispatch

Against the themes of loss and mourning in this radiant novel are balanced those of nurturing and hope.Roy Hoffman, author of Chicken Dreaming Corn and Almost Family

"It’s a delicately balanced novel, spare but not taciturn, emotional but not overwrought, and finally hopeful but not unnaturally cheerful."Margaret Quamme, The Columbus Dispatch

The Sign for Drowning: A Novel

Anything Anywhere Anytime Silhouette Catherine Mann

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With one week to complete a top-secret mission, Major Jack Korba did not need emotional distractions. But that’s exactly what he got when flight surgeon Monica Hyatt was added to his team!

When flight surgeon Major Monica Hyatt’s sister Sydney is kidnapped on an international aid mission to war-torn Rubistan, her estranged husband, USAF Major Jack “Cobra” Korba, finagles his way into the job of primary planner and lead pilot for the mission. Monica then demands that she be included in the mission as well. This is a joint forces rescue operation, and rife with conflict of interest. Navy SEAL Blake Gardner is Sydney’s ex-lover, and Daniel “Crusty” Baker’s father and stepmother were assassinated by the same man who took Sydney. Then Colonel Drew Cullen discovers that the Hyatts’ half-sister, Yasmine, has infiltrated the camp in an attempt to gain asylum, and, despite his honorable attempts to keep her at arm’s length, he finds himself attracted to her. Continuing her Wingmen Warriors military romance series in her first single-title issue, Mann deftly weaves the three sisters’ stories together while providing a stark, edgy, and compelling look at the dangers faced by military personnel in conducting the war on terror. Lynne Welch
Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved

“Emotionally intense, rich and heartbreakingly patriotic…. It’s so easy to see why Catherine Mann is one of the hottest rising stars around…”

Anything, Anywhere, Anytime

Prayers to Share Year B: Responsive Prayers for Each Sunday of the Church Year

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Based on the scripture readings from the Revised Common Lectionary, Prayers To Share offers church leaders an entire year’s worth of responsive prayers for use in worship, and other church group settings. This first volume is for year B. Includes Call to Worship, Opening Prayer, Prayer of Confession, Words of Assurance, Offertory Prayer and Commissioning Prayer for each Sunday of the church year, including all the propers. A thematic index allows leaders to pick prayers by subject, for use in a variety church settings.

Prayers to Share, Year B: Responsive Prayers for Each Sunday of the Church Year